DESIGN IS NOT JUST WHAT IT LOOKS AND FEELS LIKE. DESIGN IS HOW IT WORKS - Steve jobs
The first group meeting of the week was to discuss our deliverables for the eighth week of the internship, which is also the third of four weeks in the engineering design process' prototype stage. The group then gave me the following assignments: Training kit (Power supply and Lighting system), Vein Finder (Dimensions and Layout), and Neonatal Monitor (Temperature sensor probes). In the late afternoon, I began using the KiCAD application to design the printed circuit board (PCB) for connecting the DLP projector to the Raspberry Pi. I was also experimenting with the intensity of the infrared LED light needed for the vein finder's lighting system.
The following morning, when I worked on the project's lighting system for the laparoscopic training kit, I determined the amount of light that would be necessary to illuminate the kit's interior. We were testing the Vein Finder in the afternoon to see if the light intensity we came up with was sufficient to capture the veins, but we discovered that it was only effective on some people. After that, we began working on the Neonatal Monitor's design choices. We received advice to create a casing that is equivalent to the Display LED used on the monitor and to be developing a device that complies with the design criteria that we developed on the Neonatal Monitor.
We started working on a vein finder case on Wednesday morning using a laser cutter that wasn't functioning properly, but we were able to create one. We also created some pieces for the laparoscopic training kit case. We did group presentations in the afternoon in front of Ms. Will Moyo, Mr. Hillary Lodzanyama, and both of our TAs. As we only have one week left in the prototyping stage, their advice for all three of our projects is to work on connecting all the relevant components. Then we were instructed to inform them of the items that would be delivered the following day, and we suggested that we come up with a power source for the laparoscopic training kit, the vein finder, and the neonatal monitor as well as the proper configuration for the vein finder's lighting system and IOT component.
On Thursday morning, we began working on the vein finder's power system to power both the Raspberry Pi and the DLP Projector in the vein finder, the configuration of the Vein Finder's lighting system, and the power system of the Laparoscopic Training Kit, but we were able to complete the work on the vein finder's power system and the configuration of the vein finder's lighting system. We had the group individual presentation in front of our TAs to present the deliverables we had proposed the day before, and they instructed us to make sure those deliverables were completed by Thursday and to get started as soon as possible on the deliverables for the following week on Tuesday.
We continued learning about the StartMeUp Program on Friday, covering Module 05: Value Creation for Customers. By the end of the module, I was able to recognize the company's distinctiveness, recognize the kinds of customers the company must serve, recognize the competitors of the company, and determine the size of the market I am willing to serve.
As a group, we experienced setbacks on all of our projects this week because we failed to advance them from low fidelity to medium fidelity prototype. As a result, we decided that we should get together on the weekends to catch up on the internship's schedule.