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“As perfect as I am, I’m also extremely competitive” – Teruhashi Kokomi, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

New project week!!!! As usual I was extremely sceptical that I’d enjoy this project, but I was once again proved wrong. Coding little robots to solve a maze is so fun. And we can take these projects home for once, which helps with my personal goal of finishing this project early.

We learned about algorithmics and worked on creating a basic line following code, and it turned into a competition on who can make their robot the fastest. Turns out, along with bribery, competition is a great motivator for me. I was determined to have the fastest robot, I stayed late on Wednesday to really optimise my code. I don’t actually care about winning, the key is to know you tried your best regardless and be proud of yourself for that. Its the concept of being in a competition that motivates me.

One part of coding the robot to stop reminded me of my second c++ project back when I was in the games course. To get this robot to stop at a finish line we have an ‘if’ statement at the beginning of the main loop. If the ‘if’ statement was at the end of the loop then it would keep running since the loop just restarts regardless, whereas the loop is cut short when it reaches the fulfilled ‘if’ at the beginning.

I used the same logic to code a deck of cards being delt, it’s really cool to reuse something I didn’t even know was helpful.

“Nothing starts until you take action. If you have time to worry, then run.” – Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)

With one week left to finish my controller, the only thing keeping me from panicking was the fact that it was never meant to be a final draft, only a prototype.

Long story short, the gyro stopped working and I never figured out why. Luckily I had recorded footage of it when it was functional, and the controller has enough other components to still play simple platformer games. But it took everything for me to not immediately go back to spending all my time doing gyro troubleshooting.

Instead, I focused on finishing the code for the joystick and the final revision of the shell. It was hard to focus when my mind kept drifting back to the gyro, as a result I didn’t have time to print that final shell. But I did finish the controller, and it plays fireboy and watergirl very well haha.

The hat I made also didn’t work, turns out my pins were upside down so it can’t actually connect to the Arduino. I used a breadboard to make it work, and since I still made the hat I could photograph it for my documentation. But the fact that everything stopped working really threw me off.

I’ve decided to look at it positively because in the end I still got all my work done and had plenty to write about (and I wrote about those new developments very quickly with my new focusing routine).

“What’s a flip phone?” – My 8 year old sister

Interchange may have been the most productive week of my life. True to my word I did my research and have found a few tricks that have helped me focus on my work. I finished both documentations and walkthrough videos this week ith time to spare.

First of all, a friend of mine suggested I may have adhd which could suggest why I lose track of time and struggle to focus. Now I do not have the resources to get an official diagnosis or anything, but I did try something called body doubling (https://www.simplypsychology.org/adhd-body-doubling.html) and it works SO WELL. All I had to do was go sit with my brother and I could just type without getting distracted once it was awesome.

One of the projects I researched for the first half of my sustainability documentation(that I didn’t end up using) was dumb phones. They’re just any phone that doesn’t have smart phone capabilities, like social media apps, and are mostly marketed towards the elderly. But I, a sucker for anything electronically retro, became OBSESSED with them.

I definitely use too much social media, and as its easier to open Twitter than Microsoft Word my productivity does suffer a bit. But dumb phones have solved that, specifically the modern flip phone variant. I uninstalled all social apps from my iPhone to see if I could handle using a dumb phone, and I have gotten so much work done just by not scrolling online.

Also learned that I can be bribed, “get all your work done and you can research which flip phone to buy” worked WONDERS. I can happily tell you that I’ll be buying a Kyocera KYF42 in blue.

“Ninja never quit” – Master Wu, LEGO Ninjago

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I really struggle to “quit” or accept defeat. What I mean is, when I start a task, I will not stop until I succeed in what I intend to do. And that can be a great trait! Not giving up when something is difficult is often challenging, and I am proud that I do it often, but it can also be a big weakness.

I spent a lot of time, probably too much time, focusing on making a gyro work in my controller. My whole plan is to make it function like a Wii Remote, using motion to control a mouse. But a gyro is not the only component my controller is going to have, but the gyro wasn’t working and I just needed it to work.

Now that I have 2 weeks left (or just one, because of interchange) I slightly regret not delegating my time better. I did get the gyro working, but now I have to finish the joystick, hat, and shell in quite a short amount of time.

The problem is that I know this is a problem, as I finish most deadlines with minimal time to spare, but I don’t know how to solve said problem. I can tell myself that I’ll work on time management, I’ve even done so in past posts here, but how do I actually do that?

Maybe it’s something I can work on over interchange? I also have my documentation to write, something I’m very good at not doing haha.

“The true meaning of life is finding your own way to enjoy it.” – Sussie, The Amazing World of Gumball

After a lot of debate I have chosen to make a one-handed controller to help fulfil Goal 10. I chose to go over my reasoning more in my supporting documentation, here I want to (try to) explain and reflect on the type of project I chose as it relates to the personal planning folder.

I believe I come off as a creative person, suiting a creative technology course, but I actually have little interest in pursuing a career in a creative field. As I grew up home schooled, I had more time to figure out what interests me and what doesn’t.

I quickly learned that I do not enjoy creating for anyone other than myself. When I draw it is not posted online, when I sew it is clothing alterations for myself, and whenever someone asked me to create something for them I started hating tasks I love to do.

But technology is different because I enjoy engineering for the process. I would happily sit and solder anything for hours, I could be planted in a room full of circuit designs and asked to prototype them and wouldn’t get bored at all. I could be asked to code the most boring website and do so without fail.

And so I decided to give myself a very practical project. I want to be an electrical engineer, and with an interest in gaming devices a controller is a dream job. Not only will my project be helpful, but it’s a great portfolio piece!

“You gotta do something else first before moving on.” – DJ Professor K, Jet Set Radio Future

When I first heard that our 2nd project would be on sustainability I was not very excited. When people think of sustainability they think of making the world greener, something I am all for, but whenever I’ve had a project on sustainability it’s always been about doing research, with the project never actually being helpful.

I was very surprised to learn that a green world is only one of the 17 sustainability goals created by the United Nations. Our project was to pick one and create something that helps fulfil a goal.

Our first task was to do a lot of research, look into a goal and present how close it is to completion. I was planning to pick gender equality, as a nonbinary person it’s something I care about a lot. But someone else picked it so I chose goal 10, reduced inequalities. Turns out gender equality is mostly about men getting paid more than women, and reduced inequalities fits what I’m interested in much more.

I have written about lack of representation for minorities for all my university essays in the past. It’s something I care about a lot, but I was worried that I should pick something new instead of choosing the easiest option for myself. I spoke about it with my lecturer and she heavily encouraged me to pick what I’m passionate about, pointing out that I’ll get bored quicker and put less effort into something I don’t care about.

So I have officially chosen Goal 10 and will be making something to help rid the world of inequality!

“And remember that bad times… are just times that are bad…” – Katrina, Animal Crossing

With one more week to work on the motor circuit I was feeling very nervous. The main thing I needed was to get my laser cutting design cut, and to pick up the final version of my box.

My laser cutting session was reliant on the fact that I wanted to get a UV printed design on my gear, but the technician told me their printer was acting up and it could take up to 3 days to get done. When Wednesday rolled around and I hadn’t heard from them I got very nervous, but luckily it had been done and I just didn’t get an email. I managed to get the gear cut and ready the same day!

The box I picked up still had some errors, I didn’t think about how the wires would fit inside, so I had to rush to send in another model. The 3d technicians are so nice and let me skip the queue, but I can’t rely on that in the future so I need to better manage my time.

Writing the arduino code was very simple. I took the default colour sensor code and plugged the separate r, g, and b inputs into the LED’s RGB function and it worked pretty quickly.

I got so much done on Monday and Wednesday, but I still had to come in on Thursday to put everything together, pickup my new box, and film footage for my showcase video. But while I was picking up my box, my battery’s wires somehow touched and melted! I am SO lucky my circuit wasn’t damaged, I just had to borrow a classmate’s batteries and I was done.

“A dream is a wish your heart makes.” – Cinderella

Laser cutting was a very interesting class, I didn’t expect it to go the way it did. I assumed it’d be a lot more technical, but once we learned to navigate Illustrator we could do pretty much whatever we wanted.

As I plan to add the extra components of both LEDs and a sensor, I decided to stick with only one gear as to not overwhelm myself. Doing this also allowed me to be more creative with my design, as I don’t have to think about how multiple gears can fit together.

My first design included a lot of geometric shapes, I was taking inspiration from stained glass windows. It was very sharp and symmetrical, and though it looked nice I felt like it didn’t fit what I was going for. I want the colour sensor to control both the speed of the motor and the colour of the LEDs, and I felt like stained glass is to ridged for that concept.

I decided to make a design based off of this (https://youtu.be/xEcqC_lBXkc) artwork I really like, along with the bubbles seen in 1950s Cinderella (https://media.giphy.com/media/cAv1t940DC8la/giphy.gif). Both pieces show circles that overlap with each other to create new colours, and I wanted to try recreating that with the techniques we learned. I brought this up to our lecturer, and she mentioned that I could UV print in transparent ink to create different textures on the acrylic. I plan to utilise that, along with rastering and engraving to give the circles in my design different textures that reflet the LEDs like bubbles reflect light.

”Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today.” – Sensei Wu

On Monday we were given LEDs to experiment with, and the one I ended up using was programmable through a data cable. Though I am not yet confident with my engineering skills, I am very proficient in C++ and that motivated me to attempt to add that LED into my circuit.

It reminded me of my first C++ project, I was not confident with my coding so I chose to code a version of Concentration, a card game a like a lot. I find that using something you know to learn something else can help gain a better understanding of it.

Our Fusion and 3D printing class is what helped me decide on a plan for my circuit. The lesson was very fun and I am very proud of my box, though in hindsight I should’ve spent time planning it out before class, “winging” it was very stressful.

I had a look through the sensors provided and found one that can set RGB colours. I immediately thought of combining the sensor with the LEDs, coding the LEDs to change to whatever colour the sensor detects! And printing my box in clear filament will reflect the lights very nicely.

Tomorrow is our laser cutting lesson, I’m hoping to be able to make my gears out of acrylic instead of wood so it too can reflect the lights. If not then maybe I could attach clear vinyl or tissue paper to the wood for a stained-glass effect. I’ll wait until tomorrow to properly decide.

“Afterthoughts are still thoughts. They just come after other thoughts.” – Pascal, Animal Crossing

I like Ohm’s Law, it makes sense to me. Back in 2024 a lecturer said to me that “90% of coding is just googling what to do” and that made me feel like I had wasted a lot of time. But calculating resistance feels meaningful, I feel important when I do it.

Learning about transistors made me really question what I knew about engineering. I realise that I’ve never thought about electronic parts outside of “I need this part to make this thing work”, I never questioned why I need a part to make something work. That’s what I enjoyed most when reading about transistors. I never would’ve thought that such a small device would have so much put into it, or the different ways electrons act in a PnP vs an NpN type.

I loved soldering. I first learned the basics from my grandad who also wanted to be an engineer. It felt so rewarding to see my circuit go from a breadboard to a protoboard, I kept saying to my mum “look, I made this!”.

I didn’t know what an Arduino was until this course started, and working with one for the first time is what first made me feel like I was going to be good at this. When I first saw it I actually recognised the LEDs on it, I’d worked with them before back in March when repairing a Nintendo DS Lite. Recognising that part was such a big confidence boost, like everything that was overwhelming me went away because I had proof that I can remember all this stuff.