Hi everyone,
Wow! Time has truly gone by so fast these past few months. I hope you learned a little more about how gender stereotypes within engineering are quickly changing in today's progressive society. However, above all of the data and interesting articles, I hope that you enjoyed the journey that this project was for me :)
I want to say a special thank you to Dawn, the President of MJS. Thank you for opening your doors to me and for letting me take up a spot on your team for the past few months. It was an honor working at your company with people that were so driven and kind!
Thank you to Chuck Chase, my on-site advisor. Thank you for pushing me when it came to the projects that you gave me. I'm not going to lie, I doubted my abilities a few different times with some of the tasks that you gave me but the fact that you had no doubt about me being able to do it gave me a glimpse of hope in the face of oncoming adversity. While I know that the path down a career in engineering is not going to be easy, you helped me to see that it is possible. Thank you for your support and for your confidence in abilities I didn't even know I had!
I also want to thank Stacy. Thank you for helping me gain my footing and for helping me whenever I had questions (which was pretty often! :) ). Thank you for signing my time sheets every week and for always getting my the most up to date information so I didn't feel lost! I appreciate your guidance through this process!
Lastly, thank you to the team, thank you so much for letting me shadow you around. Thank you for showing me what you do in a day. Everyone that I worked with loved their job which made learning such an easy process because everyone truly wanted me to walk away having learned a new lesson! Thank you for your encouragement and for the fun laughs that we shared!
Thank you everyone! I look forward to seeing all of you tomorrow for my final presentation!!
Friday, May 5, 2017
Presentation Preparation!!
Hi everyone!
I thought it might be nice to give you a glimpse into my life the past few days. In addition to work, I have been working to get my presentation to the best final product!! This includes my powerpoint, my poster, and my final product. In my last post, I talked a little bit about my LED ring final product. Thus, in this post, I wanna take you down the little journey of making my poster.
For me personally, posters have always been a joy for me. I love the opportunity to be not only professional but creative!! For this poster, I wanted to approach it in a very specific and different way. For the panels of my project, I decided to make two timelines. The left panel is dedicated to an individual's life; looking into the things that influence them at different ages and how these mentalities can be seen in university and career level statistics. On the other panel, I decided to focus on a historical timeline of women in engineering. I wanted to answer questions like:
Who are some of the most influential women in the STEM fields?
What caused engineering to shift towards a desirable career path for women?
In what way is the increased number of females in STEM reflective of the shifting standards in society? How does this correlate to more males staying at home and more males entering female dominated fields like nursing and cosmetics?
And lastly, I wanted to look at how companies are CURRENTLY treating females in the field.
The middle portion of my trifold has an interactive activity in addition to photos from my internship. Below, there are photos of my trifold making process (including the removable sticky notes that I used to map out my poster.. haha, yes I have mild OCD).
Making the poster has been a change to take the things I have learned and the events I attended and transform them into a visually appealing manner for everyone to easily digest! Come see my poster on May 6 to see the final product (not shown below ;) )
I thought it might be nice to give you a glimpse into my life the past few days. In addition to work, I have been working to get my presentation to the best final product!! This includes my powerpoint, my poster, and my final product. In my last post, I talked a little bit about my LED ring final product. Thus, in this post, I wanna take you down the little journey of making my poster.
For me personally, posters have always been a joy for me. I love the opportunity to be not only professional but creative!! For this poster, I wanted to approach it in a very specific and different way. For the panels of my project, I decided to make two timelines. The left panel is dedicated to an individual's life; looking into the things that influence them at different ages and how these mentalities can be seen in university and career level statistics. On the other panel, I decided to focus on a historical timeline of women in engineering. I wanted to answer questions like:
Who are some of the most influential women in the STEM fields?
What caused engineering to shift towards a desirable career path for women?
In what way is the increased number of females in STEM reflective of the shifting standards in society? How does this correlate to more males staying at home and more males entering female dominated fields like nursing and cosmetics?
And lastly, I wanted to look at how companies are CURRENTLY treating females in the field.
The middle portion of my trifold has an interactive activity in addition to photos from my internship. Below, there are photos of my trifold making process (including the removable sticky notes that I used to map out my poster.. haha, yes I have mild OCD).
Making the poster has been a change to take the things I have learned and the events I attended and transform them into a visually appealing manner for everyone to easily digest! Come see my poster on May 6 to see the final product (not shown below ;) )
Final Product!
In preparation for my presentation, I've been working mainly on my poster and my visual presentation (more to come on that). However, I also spent the conclusion of my internship working on a final product that I can have at my presentation and to turn in. Now, if you haven't already please take a moment to read the blog on the Adafruit LED Ring.
While that blog gives you an overview of the coding behind my final product, this post is geared towards the hardware end of things.
To actually write and program the code I used a program called MPLab. It is a basic program that anyone can download off the internet and it helps teach you about the coding process. The program itself was very basic which was nice given I was someone new to coding. The picture below shows you what my screen would have looked like.
After the code is written, it (in overly simplified terms) gets sent to a device named "pickit3" which is also a product available on the internet. This takes the data and converts it into a readable language for the microchip.
After that, some magic (just kidding... coding and engineering) makes the LED ring light up in the way you specified in the code.
Below is a photo of what this set up looks like!
The most challenging part of this project was the coding. However, another learning opportunity arose when we needed to find a data port on the microchip. I had to use the schematic and data sheet to find a single pin (out of 100 options) that fit the needed requirements. Not only was this quite a bit tedious, but it had a lot of trial and error. I would find one pin and think it would work and then some little detail made it just enough off for it not to work properly.
This showed me that engineering is about identifying and end goal and then taking risks in the steps you take to get there. It's about failing a few times, but above that, about learning how to grow out of failures!
I love my final product! Come by my table to see the final product at presentations May 6!
While that blog gives you an overview of the coding behind my final product, this post is geared towards the hardware end of things.
To actually write and program the code I used a program called MPLab. It is a basic program that anyone can download off the internet and it helps teach you about the coding process. The program itself was very basic which was nice given I was someone new to coding. The picture below shows you what my screen would have looked like.
After the code is written, it (in overly simplified terms) gets sent to a device named "pickit3" which is also a product available on the internet. This takes the data and converts it into a readable language for the microchip.
After that, some magic (just kidding... coding and engineering) makes the LED ring light up in the way you specified in the code.
Below is a photo of what this set up looks like!
The most challenging part of this project was the coding. However, another learning opportunity arose when we needed to find a data port on the microchip. I had to use the schematic and data sheet to find a single pin (out of 100 options) that fit the needed requirements. Not only was this quite a bit tedious, but it had a lot of trial and error. I would find one pin and think it would work and then some little detail made it just enough off for it not to work properly.
This showed me that engineering is about identifying and end goal and then taking risks in the steps you take to get there. It's about failing a few times, but above that, about learning how to grow out of failures!
I love my final product! Come by my table to see the final product at presentations May 6!
Things I have learned: Messing Up = Growth
Over the course of my internship, I gained access to a lot of information. A lot of the information was from my internship. It was a lot of tangible facts.. but it also was an experience that was more personal than that.
My internship was particularly inspiring because it showed me the value of personal relationships in the workplace. The team that I was with taught me that working hard doesn't have to be emotionally and physically draining.... well there were a lot of days I spent up on my feet... but it all goes to providing the best product for the customer and for making the best working environment for employees.
I learned about work ethic outside of the classroom. Sure, BASIS taught me how to manage my time well, how to work in a team with my peers, and how to sit down and get some grit when things got hard. However, I never really had the opportunity to learn about growth in the workplace. While at MJS Designs, I learned that not only was it completely alright if you messed up... but that it was actually encouraged. Making a mistake gives you the opportunity to learn versus robotically solving a problem without taking anything in.
As I talked about with the LED ring, there was an ENTIRE week where I wasn't even editing the right part of the code. Rather than programming each LED, I was messing with the backbone of the code and the result was a wide variety of messed up results. The point is, I spent an entire week of my project messing up but instead of getting upset with me, my mentor laughed it off and then guided me in the right direction.
I have come to find that for me personally, the biggest struggle I will face as a future engineer is having people tell me that I can't do something. I think that an environment geared towards discouraging girls from engineering is determinantal to society. Females, in general, are more detail oriented and focus on aesthetics so of course, the field needs this manner of problem-solving.
In my opinion, the key to a female's success in engineering is messing up. In equation form..
MESSING UP = GROWTH
Through making mistakes, females will be able to develop their skills and it will give them the confidence to attempt problems even when they aren't certain on how to finish them. Education within engineering should focus on developing an atmosphere where females are encouraged to be bold... After all, those who are bold enough to take risks are the ones who change the world.
My internship was particularly inspiring because it showed me the value of personal relationships in the workplace. The team that I was with taught me that working hard doesn't have to be emotionally and physically draining.... well there were a lot of days I spent up on my feet... but it all goes to providing the best product for the customer and for making the best working environment for employees.
I learned about work ethic outside of the classroom. Sure, BASIS taught me how to manage my time well, how to work in a team with my peers, and how to sit down and get some grit when things got hard. However, I never really had the opportunity to learn about growth in the workplace. While at MJS Designs, I learned that not only was it completely alright if you messed up... but that it was actually encouraged. Making a mistake gives you the opportunity to learn versus robotically solving a problem without taking anything in.
As I talked about with the LED ring, there was an ENTIRE week where I wasn't even editing the right part of the code. Rather than programming each LED, I was messing with the backbone of the code and the result was a wide variety of messed up results. The point is, I spent an entire week of my project messing up but instead of getting upset with me, my mentor laughed it off and then guided me in the right direction.
I have come to find that for me personally, the biggest struggle I will face as a future engineer is having people tell me that I can't do something. I think that an environment geared towards discouraging girls from engineering is determinantal to society. Females, in general, are more detail oriented and focus on aesthetics so of course, the field needs this manner of problem-solving.
In my opinion, the key to a female's success in engineering is messing up. In equation form..
MESSING UP = GROWTH
Through making mistakes, females will be able to develop their skills and it will give them the confidence to attempt problems even when they aren't certain on how to finish them. Education within engineering should focus on developing an atmosphere where females are encouraged to be bold... After all, those who are bold enough to take risks are the ones who change the world.
From A Man's Perspective
Over the past week, I have been working to polish off my presentation. In doing so, I realized that I have a huge blog post opportunity. I have talked about why females seem to struggle in engineering, how universities are responding to the issue, and even some commercials that attempt to counter the stigma through their presence on social media. However, I never really addressed a male perspective on the issue.
One of the people from my internship shared the following article with me and, quite honestly, I am a bit speechless. The article discusses the differences in the kind of struggles faced by engineers. Clearly, engineering isn't any easy profession to pursue. However, this man shows that despite his physical disabilities, mental hardships, and tedious hours spent on rigorous course work ... females still suffered more when it comes to the engineering education system.
Rather than describing the article, I thought I would let it speak for itself... Here is the photo from the newspaper it was published in.
http://shareably.net/male-engineering-student-explains-why-female-classmates-arent-his-equals-v1
I chose to share this as a blog post so that you can see how important it is to consider how your persepctives might be altered when you gain access to more information! I challenge you to seek out someone who challenges sterotypes and thank them for their determination to invoke change in society.
One of the people from my internship shared the following article with me and, quite honestly, I am a bit speechless. The article discusses the differences in the kind of struggles faced by engineers. Clearly, engineering isn't any easy profession to pursue. However, this man shows that despite his physical disabilities, mental hardships, and tedious hours spent on rigorous course work ... females still suffered more when it comes to the engineering education system.
Rather than describing the article, I thought I would let it speak for itself... Here is the photo from the newspaper it was published in.
http://shareably.net/male-engineering-student-explains-why-female-classmates-arent-his-equals-v1
I chose to share this as a blog post so that you can see how important it is to consider how your persepctives might be altered when you gain access to more information! I challenge you to seek out someone who challenges sterotypes and thank them for their determination to invoke change in society.
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Adafruit LED Ring
Hi everyone!
Have you ever been one to take arts and crafts kits and follow the instructions to make them? How about taking a large LEGO kit and following the model to build the coolest buildings and cars? Well, based on everything in society shifting towards a technology based product, a company named Adafruit offers items that you can use to build whatever you can imagine.
For example, some people have made LED ring earrings or bracelets along with a variety of other products! Adafruit has an entire portion of it's website dedicated just to the invention and final products that are created by people who use Adafruit components. Visit this website to look at all the awesome (and completely geeky) inventions that people have come up with using LEDs similar to what I worked with.
While at my internship, I have been working with the NeoPixel Ring which is basically 24 LED rings daisy chained together. Using a program called "MPLAB X IDE", and a debugger I have been programing the ring to light up in different ways based on how much data is given to each LED ring. Using C programming, I started to send each LED lights a specific amount of data from 0-256 bits. The reason that each LED light receives information is because a different amount of data changes the brightness. Furthermore, each LED has three different lights. One is green, one blue, and one red.
Okay let's step back to kindergarten for a moment! What are red blue and green class? Correct! They are primary colors. I know it was a while ago but when you think back to kindergarten you probably remember mixing the colors together and being completely surprised when a I new color formed. Well, as silly as it may sound. This happened to me when I was working on this project. On accident, I had sent both the red and the blue LED data... resulting in a purple color. At first it surprised me and I wondered if I messed up somehow given that I was expecting blue. However, after thinking about it a bit more, I realized that by sending data to both of the lights the result was a combination of them.
To give you a better idea of what I mean when I say "send the LED data" I wanted to include part of my code here. Now mind you, my code ended up being over 2,000 lines (crazy right!?!). This is the part that established the background color for the ring while the other lights rotated through changing color.
for(k=0; k<50; k++)
{
for(i=0; i<24; i++) // Generate Blue Background
{
Ring_Green_Data[i] = Off;
Ring_Red_Data[i] = Off;
Ring_Blue_Data[i] = 255;
}
{
for(i=0; i<24; i++) // Generate Blue Background
{
Ring_Green_Data[i] = Off;
Ring_Red_Data[i] = Off;
Ring_Blue_Data[i] = 255;
}
In basic terms, this is telling the ring to light up with a very very bright colored blue for all 24 LEDs. 255 is the level of maximum intensity for each color. Off means that the light is receiving 0 bits of data, thus it doesn't produce a color. Likewise, If I were to set "Ring_Green_Data[I] = 255" and the red and blue to off then you would see a very bright green.
To see a purple color I could turn both the red and the blue on to a medium intensity by sending 128 bits of both colors.
for(k=0; k<50; k++)
{
for(i=0; i<24; i++) // Generate Purple Background
{
Ring_Green_Data[i] = Off;
Ring_Red_Data[i] = 128;
Ring_Blue_Data[i] = 128;
}
{
for(i=0; i<24; i++) // Generate Purple Background
{
Ring_Green_Data[i] = Off;
Ring_Red_Data[i] = 128;
Ring_Blue_Data[i] = 128;
}
For the project I was working on, we sent each LED it's own color "assignment." The code you see above was to set the "background " color. Once this was established, the other color assignments were sent out to the specific LEDs that we wanted. For instance, if we wanted the 12th LED on the string to be blue we would sent the data to that LED by saying something like "Ring_Blue_Data[12] = 128." This would result in LED #12 showing up as a medium intensity blue light.
Okay, I know this is probably a lot of information to process and a lot of it doesn't make sense. Basically, if you spend a few weeks reading data sheets all over the internet and practicing (with a lot of trial and error) the product is something really awesome. Through this blog I wanted to show that while you may not know how to do something right away just try - it's interesting to see what you come up with!!
| Here some example of bracelets and earrings using Adafruit NeoPixel rings. |
Monday, April 17, 2017
Internship Update
Welcome back!
I have realized that in recent posts there hasn't been a lot of information about my internship. Current, I am working on two different projects, both of which have been incredibly interesting :)
The first is a project with the electrical engineer. I have been teaching myself how to code using C programming... which has been quite the adventure. C programming, in short, is a commonly used language that coders use to program machine functions. I thought that the coolest part was the data log. Each device within the system I am working on has its own data sheet. The part that is actually receiving the data being inputted through the code is the most important one. The data is transferred in three sets of 24-bit data. In basic terms, this means that the data is sent to the device. The device then processes the data and responds based on how the main.c page defines its function. While this can be super confusing, I think that it has been one of the most satisfying parts of my internship to alter the code and then see how that changes how the device functions.
The second main project that I have been working on is with the mechanical assembly team on the grey floor. While this doesn't focus on the engineering aspect of things, I have learned a lot about what engineers should consider while building their devices. This may not apply as much in my intended field of study, electrical engineering, however, if I were to program a device and then build a capsule or enclosure there are certain things to consider. While building a few of the devices in the back, I noticed how diffucult it was to screw things in due to angles that the engineers failed to consider. While it seems small, it takes longer to build and thus slows the entire proces down. Working with the mechanical assembly team has showed me how detailed engineering is and let me just say, I love it! Some call me a perfectionist and I guess I kinda am. I think that when attention is given to the smaller details in life, the final product is of better quality all around.
Come back next week to read more about my internship!
I have realized that in recent posts there hasn't been a lot of information about my internship. Current, I am working on two different projects, both of which have been incredibly interesting :)
The first is a project with the electrical engineer. I have been teaching myself how to code using C programming... which has been quite the adventure. C programming, in short, is a commonly used language that coders use to program machine functions. I thought that the coolest part was the data log. Each device within the system I am working on has its own data sheet. The part that is actually receiving the data being inputted through the code is the most important one. The data is transferred in three sets of 24-bit data. In basic terms, this means that the data is sent to the device. The device then processes the data and responds based on how the main.c page defines its function. While this can be super confusing, I think that it has been one of the most satisfying parts of my internship to alter the code and then see how that changes how the device functions.
The second main project that I have been working on is with the mechanical assembly team on the grey floor. While this doesn't focus on the engineering aspect of things, I have learned a lot about what engineers should consider while building their devices. This may not apply as much in my intended field of study, electrical engineering, however, if I were to program a device and then build a capsule or enclosure there are certain things to consider. While building a few of the devices in the back, I noticed how diffucult it was to screw things in due to angles that the engineers failed to consider. While it seems small, it takes longer to build and thus slows the entire proces down. Working with the mechanical assembly team has showed me how detailed engineering is and let me just say, I love it! Some call me a perfectionist and I guess I kinda am. I think that when attention is given to the smaller details in life, the final product is of better quality all around.
Come back next week to read more about my internship!
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