July 31- Kampala

Today was very successful. We met up at 9 am and headed over to Ntinda at about 10 am. At Ntinda we spent some time at Hardware World, buying all of the tools that we bought at Home Depot at home that are stuck in the crate. We dropped those tools off at Angela's house, and headed off to Kampala.

We had lunch and then met up with Emmanuel at Ssebegala & Sons to buy the wire, breaker boxes, combiner boxes, etc. Too many people inputting their opinion can just make things harder, so it worked out that Bryan, Shavi, and Emmanuel worked with the Ssebegala & Sons employees, while Angela, Marisa, and Tess sat in the store window and hung out. The process took quite a few hours because they made us custom wire connectors for the batteries, but finally (after a few pieces of cake and a lot of hanging out) all of the wiring pieces were bought, and we headed back to Angela's house.

We had a very good dinner (our last one in Kampala for a while!) and we are now enjoying a relaxing time sitting in Angela's living room. We can't wait to go to the village and get started. I don't know when I'll next be able to blog, but hopefully I will update you soon.

Cosmos Recap

Cosmos was fantastic. In every way, the program was extremely beneficial to my knowledge about college and my future career choice. I feel like I have a much better understanding about college life and the life of an engineer, and thanks to Cosmos I am looking forward to both. The month I spent at UCSD is something I will never forget. The people were amazing. Everyone from the proffessors and teacher fellows to the R.A's and the students themselves made the experience at Cosmos wonderful. I couldn't have imagined a better way to spend my summer than at UCSD learning about engineering design. It's an amazing feel to know what I want to major in and knowing what engineering will actually be like when i get to college and beyond. Not many kids my age have a clue about what they want to do in college, but I have been blessed with uniwue knowledge about my chosen field. Thanks to everyone who made this past month possible, it was awesome. Cluster 2 and others, I will miss you all very much. I hope you all achieve wonderful things with your lives.

August 2

Goodbye, COSMOS and the beautiful people who made it so great. I am writing this final blog from home, where I am happy to be yet so sad. I think I have tasted what people refer to as "bittersweet". It is wonderful to be home with my family and dog, but I miss my suite, my floor, my RAs, my roommate, my friends, my teacher fellow, my professors, and UCSD. I know the biggest I have learned about colleges is that the people are the most prominent features of the school. It has been the best of times and the hardest place to leave.
Roger Chin

The Arcageon Files

I'm going to list again. One, our cluster is the best. If you're from another cluster and are reading this, no matter how much you deny it, you're lying to yourself...I'm sorry. Two, the chocolate Crunch sundae bars are definitely better than the strawberry ones Austin. Three, Roger in my cluster group is the key to all the happy and he better not get sick again or we will miss him and our structure will not work again. Four, our structure works!!! Five, we are almost done with the other things for the presentation part. Six, I'm about to go on a haunted tour. Seven, I found my music, no worries...I found it a while ago. Seven, Mr. Park is awesome. Eight, the food has been okay, with periods where it is really good and some when it is really bad.

Yesterday was really depressing. Roger got sick and had to leave, and at the end of the day our sculpture was unfinished and I had to go home and do my individual project. But today was the best day ever! Roger came back and we finished our sculpture! All it took was a morning full of soldering and making track. Our finished sculpture is fun to play with, especially since I beat Sean and Roger by getting the ball into the "money hole" the most. It was really rewarding to play with our sculpture and it definitely made up for all the boring PowerPoint I had to do. Our poster and PowerPoint are almost complete so tomorrow should not be terribly stressful. Hopefully nothing will break and our presentation will go smoothly.

Indiv. Project + Dance -Paul Deardorff

Hello everyone,

Today was a great day because we were allowed to roam around the computer lab and fabrication room to finish the final kinetic sculpture and associated presentation materials (Poster, PowerPoint, etc.). My job today was to de-bug the programs that I created because I had three separate programs from the previous Mini-sculpture and two new ones for the final sculpture. It turns out, mixing digital and analog inputs is somewhat difficult. After a lot of re-programming and testing, the errors were fixed and now the sculpture functions properly. I stayed a little later after class to upload a Working Model simulation, the poster, and export some files for home (dorm) use.

I also finished working on the Individual Proposal Assignment "Discovery Project". My subject is a man-portable, modular wind turbine system which addresses all the current issues surrounding the topic of Wind Turbines. I first started with Wind Turbine efficiency, but found the topic to be too well researched.

An except from my proposal:

"The new design of the wind turbine system includes a series of modular turbines that are environmentally friendly, cost efficient, and easily transported and maintained. The turbine system proposes several long rows of modular turbines which are placed along the ridges and valleys of mountain ranges which provide more constant wind flow. Each modular block of turbines, measuring approximately five to eight feet in height and ten to twelve feet in length would include safe propellers with “scoops” to capture the wind, a sturdy composite material frame, and a modular drive shaft. The shafts would be linked together using a ball and socket joint to allow for maneuverability over rough terrain. The large chain of drive shafts would then be hooked up to a single generator for each row and could be directly transported to the power output source."

And some diagrams from the proposal:
This diagram is a side view of the rotor assembly with the “A” arm frame supporting drive shaft which links the modules together to a single generator.
This front view of a single three propeller module shows the position of each of the rotors which are separated by “A” arm frames and connected to drive shafts.

I am very excited about the project and look forward to entering it into the $500 grant proposal so I can conduct the project.


Thanks for looking!

Cosmos is coming to an end, I am very sad, yet happy that I had a great time!

Regards,
Paul Deardorff

First Day of Final Sculptures -Paul Deardorff

Today was the first day of our final sculptures and each team made very good progress on the full sculpture. Most teams focused on the main structure, which was the main goal of the team I was working in. We decided that it would be best to just start building to allow more time to test out new ideas on the following day. I created another one of my parts on the LaserCAMM and was pleased to see that other teams were also using my infamous "Horizontal Side Servo Mount". This attaches a servo to a blue pipe horizontally and doesn't interfere with its range in motion. I also created a fan type contraption which directs balls in one of two ways, with the help of user inputs. After I had the whole portion of the structure assembled, it was time to actually mount it with a servo. This is where I used my servo mount which I had previously made. Well, it didn't fit because of a slight error in the steps of my assembly. The servo arm had to be put on last, but instead I put it on first. Instead, the servo mount would have to be cut to fit over the collar of the servo and secure with two screws and bolts. With the aid of Mr. Park on the band saw and his precision cutting hands, I was able to make a revision to the original design.

I think in the end, I will make this piece in CAD for future years of COSMOS students to use and modify the way they need it.

I am looking forward to tomorrow's discovery lecture.

Regards,

Paul Deardorff