So far, I have been working as hard as possible on the high voltage system, but with the deadline looming closer and closer, I had to switch gears.  If anything, I have started to work more hours.  My schedule now looks like this:

• Morning - 5 PM: Logistics work, with 1 hr. lunch break
• 5 PM - 7 PM: Dinner in apartment (I had an eating-out spree last month, so I definitely need to pull back some)
• 7 PM - 11 PM: Work on high voltage system and NI CompactRIO

It is quite a tiring schedule, and I wish more people would help with this project.  I also (somewhat foolishly) signed myself up to give high school students some presentations via the Women in Engineering Program (WEP).  I signed up because not many student organizations are active during the summer.  More importantly, I believe that it is important that I pass the baton to a group of younger students.  In any case, I followed through today with the presentations and learned that I love audience-presenter interaction!  Besides talking about the solar car team, I gave them some takeaways for their education now:

1. Be involved: It will give you the chance to learn things that are not in the books and give you hands-on experience with what has been discussed in the books.
2. Take pride in your work: You will set higher standards for yourself and be able to achieve more.
3. Don’t be a fair-weather fan in projects: Never, ever let a project fail without putting up a good fight and giving it everything you got.  You just might be the person who will make or break it.
4. Be patient: Innovation rarely happens overnight, and what you do may contribute to something bigger.
5. Take chances!  Make mistakes!  Learn from them!: Innovation does not happen without people pushing their luck, blowing something up (by accident), falling flat on their faces, etc.
6. Your education is a two-way street: Interact with your teachers, and you will be able to stand on the shoulders of giants.
7. Consider Every Option (even if it is not engineering): Find your passion and pursue it.  Choose a career path that makes you happy.  There are many needs that need to be fulfilled, and many of these needs require people with special qualifications.

Here are just a few pictures from this week:

Throughout the summer, I have been working 70+ hours per week on the solar car project.  It may seem like I have no social life, but nobody took me up on my offer to meet up — I’m on campus and can always spare an hour or two with you.  While on campus, I get the chance to see the demolition of the ESB.  Although they did not employ the typical explosives technique, their method is just as interesting: They are using a backhoe to take out the facade.  While doing so, however, they are spraying water to keep the debris and dust from affecting all of campus.  Here is just a picture of the process:

Although the car is coming along at a decent pace, I think it could be better and some people could be clocking in more hours.  Last week, we used one of the molds to make the lower portion of the mold.  Here’s a picture of the first steps:

Meanwhile, I have been working on logistics and the car’s electrical system (I am an EE, you know).  During this weekend, I pulled two all-nighters to help a friend get the National Instruments compactRIO-based battery management system working even better.  The issue that plagued us was the latency between user input and system response.  My teammate assigned the problem to me and warned me that it could cost me one week of work.  I slept on it last night and solved the problem in the matter of three hours.  By getting the hint that it is a network issue, I pulled out WireShark and started sniffing traffic between the compactRIO and the computer.  It turns out that having the FPGA’s front panel open overwhelmed the compactRIO’s network port and caused the latency.  After downloading the FPGA to the board and running only the realtime program on the computer, everything ran like butter.  When I talked about this with another professor I know, he brought up the question of how one can go about teaching how to troubleshoot.  I do not know whether this can be taught, but I do know that a good troubleshooter is well on its way to being a good engineer.

In one of the all-nighters, I encountered one of my most embarrassing moments.  The faculty advisor wanted to measure voltage across the battery pack.  Since I was slightly incoherent, I handed him the multimeter, but it was set to measure current.  Since current is measured through a shunt resistor in the meter, it would effectively be a short circuit.  Unfortunately, the faculty advisor did not catch my error and proceeded to make the measurement.  Instead, he received a very large arc as if he was welding something.  Fortunately, the system received only cosmetic damage and the multimeter is still fine.  The only loss was a multimeter lead, which was vaporized in the arc.