Blog 1

About me:

Hi my name is Jake and I´m a 23 year old from County Laois. I´m in my 5th year studying Electronic Engineering. I initally came into the college through the Level 7 Electronics degree and I´ve continued my studies by doing the Level 8 degree.

I have various interest such as Golf, Hurling, Formula 1 and Rallying. I spend most of my free time playing Golf with my friends at courses and at the driving range along with watching motorsport races like F1 and rallying. I grew up playing Hurling for my hometown club having good commintment to the club over the years, I have since stopped playing the last year due to college but I will be going back as soon as I get my degree.

Some videos of my interests:

Previous blogs:

Some of the previous blogs I liked submitted by previous students was the IFTTT blog submitted by a student for the "A Big Heart" project. I liked this one as the student clearly described what was going to be implemented and how along with some issues they encountered. I liked this as it demonstrated how the student had to improvise due to certain websites not being free to use and having to improvise as not everything goes to plan. Also showing how they came up with a solution for the lack of GPIO pins on the cloudboard and using a second Microbit dedicated for the GPIO pins to then send the data to the Cloudboard which was a good idea. 

Cool Binbot ideas:

For the project this year we are furhter implementing the Binbot which I'm glad to see snce I was among some other students who helpled improve the Binbot idea so I'm glad to see my "child" being improved upon. 

Some cool ideas I thought up of we're inspired by some robots in movies and real life. I saw the robot seen below in Dublin airport when we sat down for a meal to be met by a nearly fully autonomous restraunt where our server was a robot called the Bellabot. I think this robot would be cool for the Binbot as we could have the Binbot act as our server by coming to our table or when called upon that will allow us to put our rubbish into the bin. Furthermore I loved the style and sounds the Bellabot made which could be cool to put onto the bin. 

I got some more inspiration by Johnny 5 from the movie Short Circuit initally for the project when we began it. I think it would be nice to revist Johnny to take some more of its characteristics like his movement with the tracks to implement the movement and to improve its eyebrow movements to match Johnny 5's as he shows what he feels effectively via the movement of his eyebrows. Also with the use of AI nowadays I think it would be cool to use his voice for the Bin via AI such as "I'm empty" and "I'm full" for example.

State Machine diagrams:

State machine diagrams came about in the 1940's - 1960's where the idea of Finite State Machines (FSM) came about and further again when Moore and Mealy machines came about in the 50's where they formalised synchronus state machines. The Moore machine is derived only from the current state and Mealy machine is derived from the current state and inputs.  As systems became more complex and state diagrams became large David Harel introduced Statecharts which makes reading complex state diagrams easier to read. This idea was implemented into software engineering in the 90's for object oriented programming from where UML State Machine Diagrams were created. This is commonly used presently and an example of which is the Opportunity Mars rover. I watched the documentry film called "Good Night Oppy", this was an interesting watch as such a complex machine was programmed effectively by using state machines turning a robot that was only supposed to last 90 SOLS instead lasting 15 years which is crazy!

A state machine we worked on was the DRS system used in Formula 1 in which I've decent knowledge about. DRS is used in F1 to gain extra speed (roughly 20 km/h) in designated zones around the track being the straight sections. DRS is allowed to be used in Practice sessions, Qualifying laps and in the race when the driver is within 1 second of the car infront determined by the cars timing transponder. The transponder emits the cars ID and when the car crosses a timing loop which is embedded into the track its detected, this is highly accurate. When two cars cross the detection loop it determines the time difference between the two cars called the delta. When the delta is less then a second it allows the driver to use DRS when the driver crosses the DRS line otherwise the driver does not have DRS permissions. DRS is not allowed during the first two racing laps, when the saftey car or virtual saftey car is deployed and in wet conditions. 

Below is a video of Max Verstappen using DRS during a qualifying lap so you can see DRS being activated. 

 Verstappen activating DRS for Suzuka qualifying lap

When Max crosses the DRS line he will hear a beep which you can listen to in the second video I made in the F1 2023 video game so you can hear it. When he presses the DRS button the LED's on the left hand side of wheel will be activated. The lights go off when Max lifts off the throttle as DRS is disabled when a driver either lifts off throttle, brakes or presses the DRS button again. In the video you will notice the delta time to the car ahead in the top left corner being less then a second which allows me to activate DRS when I cross the line prompted by the beep. And once activated the light is activated.

 

Below is a video of a DRS failure which shows how important it is for the DRS system to be reliable or otherwise the DRS stays open which is the cause for the crash below when the DRS got stuck open reducing the amount of downforce required for the cars cornering ability.

DRS failure crash

DRS State Machine Diagram:

Below is the state diagram for DRS which I made:

Thank you for reading :)