Journal

Week 1

Flying out from New Jersey and arriving to the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia went smoothly. From Atlanta's airport, I took a shuttle service called Groome Transportation that dropped me off right in front of my dorm. Weeks before flying out of the Newark Internal Airport, my mentor and I had decided to look for off campus housing near the Auburn University campus. We were not able to find anything in the short amount of time we had, so our final decision was for me to stay in one of the residence halls on campus. I am happy with the dorm's location because it is about an eleven minute walk to the Educational and Assistive Technology Laboratory. I was given the first couple of days to settle in and familiarize with my surroundings. On May 31st, my mentor and I had scheduled to meet at the Shelby Center for Engineering Technology. She was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs with her arms open wide and a welcoming smile when she saw me. I also met one of her grad students, Shubbhi, who had gone out to look for me prior to my arrival. The three of us headed to the Educational and Assistive Technology Laboratory where I was introduced to other undergrad and grad students. In the meeting, Dr. Marghitu pointed out where my working station was going to be set up and who my teammates were (Brandon and Derek). We also went to speak with the department's office manager, Jo Ann, who would guide me in the right direction to setting up a login account, access to doors and buildings, and a computer in the lab.

In the next meeting, the team and I had a more technical conversation than the first. Dr. Marghitu and Brandon explained the main research goals and gave a demonstration of the project’s objective with me actively participating in it. To set an image, I was blind folded as if I were in the shoes of a student who cannot see. This research project aims to serve individuals who are visually impaired by creating software applications with a haptic interface that will ease their learning in college level mathematics. Brandon suggested that I should read a couple of papers that related to My A+ Math project over the weekend. He gave me permission to access an online folder where the team posts all information that pertains to our research.

Just for fun, I decided to walk around campus and explore many of its buildings. One of the first things I noticed was the gigantic football stadium located near my dorm. It seats more than eighty-seven thousand people during a game! I also ran into the Student Center which is located right in between the stadium and the Shelby Center. I think this building is really neat because it has a variety of eating places, a little grocery store, game center, study spots, and more.

Right next to the Student Center is the Haley Center which is where most students would have their classes during Fall and Spring semesters. Getting around that building is like being in a maze, plus it has nine floors! The coolest part that I have not yet seen in this building is the observation deck. The doors were locked, but hopefully I will get to see the wonderful 360 view of Auburn. Afterwards, I headed to the nearest map on campus and memorized my way to the library. It wasn’t a far walking distance yet not that close either. While I was there I wanted to try and see if I could connect to the guest Wi-Fi. At that moment, I was relying on my phone’s data. Connecting to the university’s internet was unsuccessful so I decided to go grab a couple of C++ books to read for a while. I also tried checking two of those books out, but was not allowed if I did not have a tiger card (student ID of Auburn).

Week 2

Beginning week two, I met with the team at the lab. There I was assigned to set up and play around with the raspberry pi which we will be using for the project. Brandon gave me a helpful book that was all about the basics of the raspberry pi. I started by following the first couple of chapters step by step to set it up. I also realized that the SD Card had an insufficient amount of space on it for our needs. So before I proceeded any further, Derek and I went to buy one at a local Walmart center.

For the rest of the week, I helped Shubbhi, Yasmeen (both graduate students in Computer Science and Software Engineering), and Dr. Marghitu with Computer Science for All Girls also referred to as CS4ALL-G. This camp was specifically for girls from ages eight to eighteen. Its goal was to increase the knowledge of each individual camper in regards to their computer literacy and skills. Advanced principles and personal interaction with the computer programming device and software application such as Kodu and Xbox controllers were used by the girls. This method of learning was beneficial to each student in the camp. For instance, their understanding of the concepts being taught increased by the instructor while following along with her examples during certain presentations. My role for the first day was to shadow the instructors as well as getting hands-on practice with Kodu. Thereafter, I walked around the room and helped the girls if they needed any assistance with the program. It was great to see all the girls bond and motivate one another to complete their daily assignments. Beside Kodu, the campers were able to solve CS-related puzzles in groups and meet a guest speaker, Alexandra Sugurel. All the girl, their family members, and the school’s mascot attended a ceremony made specially to receive their certificates for successfully completing all tasks in the camp.

Week 3

Another camp called RoboCamp took place at the Shelby Center. Everything taught in the CS4ALL-G camp was also done in RoboCamp, except that both boys and girls were involved in this time. This week I assisted Derek and Nic (both grad students) in most of the activities. Additional activities like building robots with Lego Mindstorms and designing toy cars using Tinkercad were added to the daily events. There was a lot to do in so little time, but I am happy I had experience from the previous camp to help out. My knowledge on using a 3D CAD software like Tinkercad was very little, but it was fun getting to learn about it with the students and design something of my own. Nic and I used MakerBots to 3D print the student’s designs. As a reward, they were able to keep their 3D printed toy cars and test the fastest car amongst all designs on a hot wheels race track.

The personal website for my DREU experience so far was created using a free website builder, Weebly. Using Weebly was just temporarily, but I had planned to create my final website from scratch during the last weeks of the internship.

Week 4

Back in the lab on the fourth week, I formatted and set up the new SD card that Derek and I had gone to purchase for it to be able to work properly with the raspberry pi. Brandon suggested that I should install Arduino IDE for later use. We also chatted over more of the technical implementation of the haptic interface we planned on creating. Our ideas were recorded on paper as a rough draft by drawing detailed pictures and descriptions. As a team, we finished researching the parts required to build the prototype and placed the orders online.

3D printing some of the parts is a decision we made that would help us stay within our project’s budget. I continued learning more about how to use Tinkercad. There were a set of pins I designed for our project and so I showed them to the team. We all agreed on the design that seemed best and added a couple of extra detail to it. Our next step was to print out about 440 pins but not all at once. The Cube was our lab’s 3D printer and the files from Tinkercad were transferred as .stl file to the cube’s software program. In order to print the .stl file, we needed to save it onto a flash drive which we did not have. I went to buy one at the university’s bookstore which had so many cool apparel and souvenirs! Turns out that printing twenty-five pins at once on The Cube takes about six hours and that’s if the printer does not jam (it’s an old one). This was a problem we encountered, but just printed as many as we could meanwhile the other parts arrived. I worked on other designs thereafter.

By the way, there was a really yummy pizzeria called Mellow Mushroom in Downtown Auburn where I ate the world’s best Hawaiian pizza in my opinion.

Week 5

The Arduino Mega had arrived and the team decided for me to set it up like I had done with the raspberry pi. To familiarize myself with the board, I did some research this week on it. Then, I decided to test it out by running a simple program using on it using the Arduino IDE which I installed on my laptop. The program ran successfully proving that the board was working fine. Then, three libraries were installed to the Arduino IDE as well. Those will be needed in the future when we stack the motor shields with the servos onto the Arduino Mega.

Not all parts were expected to arrive this week.

Brandon took some time during the week to teach me how to solder on circuit boards and wires. I really enjoyed learning this because it was something that I had never tried doing before. Kind of reminds me of when I used make jewelry. His purpose for going through this was to prepare me for when the motor shields arrived. Also, we planned to cut the length of the servos’ wires and solder them to save any wire hassling/tangling when assembling the prototype.

Week 6

All motor shields arrived and Brandon began soldering them carefully. Only some servos were shipped while others were still getting shipped. We had a total of 58 servos at the moment and needed 382 more. During our team meeting that week, we had decided to cancel the order of the rest of the servos being shipped. Our new plan was to scale down the size of the prototype due to many factors we had to take in account of. Enough pins were printed for the new plan and so I decided to start print testing the cases of the servos I had designed on Tinkercad. The Cube was an extremely slow printer, but I had remembered that the MakerBots I had used with Nic were faster. I contacted him and he gave me the contact information of the person, Sean, I could ask to use the MakerBots. Sean said he would let us start using them Monday of the upcoming week with the flexibility of keeping the MakerBots in the lab for the use of our project. I continued creating other pieces on Tinkercad to print them soon and soldered a motor shield.

Another focus for the week was reviewing some C++ basics. I read over various chapters in a textbook that Brandon had lent me. Another useful source I used to study was sololearn.com.

Week 7

The 3D printing with the MakerBots began. The quality and speed of these printers were amazing! All shields were soldered midway through this week. However, before Brandon finished soldering, he gave me the Arduino Mega with one motor shield stacked on top and one servo to attach onto the shield. My goal here was to make the servo rotate about 90 degrees then back to its original position. I spent several days researching pulse width modulation and altering the code of one of the three libraries I had installed in the Arduino IDE.

Week 8

Brandon and I showed the team our progress in the project at the beginning of this week. Last week, I was able to get a total of four servos to rotate a full 90 degrees and back. However, I ran into a servo that did not want to work like the others and had a buzzing noise. Brandon and I worked through this issue by playing around with the program I had been using on the other five servos. Finally, we conclude that it was just that one servo that was defective because all other 53 servos worked properly.

Mostly all 3D printing was completed except tiny parts we could print later on, but with The Cube. The MakerBots were returned to Sean’s lab this week. We glued the printed parts together, let them dry for a day, and placed the servos in their cases.

Week 9

What?! Week nine already??? Time went by so fast this summer!

The hardware part of the project came along very nicely, yet I was not going to be able to stay to see a student with visual disabilities use it in a classroom. Derek planned on finishing the software application in late August. Sadly, I had to go back to start my fall semester mid August.

I devoted this week to work on my website’s content as well as writing the rough draft of my final report.

I spent the weekend in Atlanta, GA with a group of friends I had met since the second week of my DREU experience. We all had a fun time :).

Week 10

All great things come to an end :( and so I said my last good-byes to all the brilliant people I met this this summer in Alabama. Dr. Marghitu and I chatted over my future intentions of going to grad school and my potential career paths. She said that we would stay in touch and encouraged me to apply for their graduate program in Auburn University. There was also a conference she said that the team and I will be attending in the upcoming months to present our project. Throughout this week, my final report and website were under construction, but I planned on fully completing them back home. As a whole, collaborating in the My A+ Math project has been a valuable researching experience and hope for it to change the lives of the students who will operate it in the future.