Oh my…it is already Week 9!

Monday

Sam and I began the day, running through torrential rain! It was great. As sooIMG_1239n as we dried off, we spent a few hours working on finally finalizing our paper! Ben sent us a ton of edits and we incorporated all of them.

After spending lots of time on the finalization of our paper, we moved down to the prototyping lab and spent the rest of the afternoon working on finishing our exemplars. I folded the binding  and backing together, pinned it all down together to have a two inch border around the entire quilt. I planned to sew it all together by hand, as I did with my proto-prototype, but changed plans. I realized that it would take me about 6-8 houIMG_1242rs to do by hand. So, I decided to use the sewing machine to close up the quilt and finish it.  At the same time, Sam worked on the conductive thread for the scrapbook’s book cover. She finished all of the pathways and, before we left, we began sewing electronic components into the scrapbook book cover.

 

Tuesday

Today we began the morning working on our video that will capture our entire summer experience in a few minutes. We then had a two hour meeting with Katie to discuss our paper, poster, general project plans and post-summer REU plans. It was quite helpful. I then had a phone conversation with Katie’s cousin Kim, a Senior Actuarial Analyst at Cigna Global in Philadelphia, PA. She truly helped me feel more comfortable with where I am in the academic/internship/REU process. I have always been interested in actuarial science and I realized that I can decide whether or not I’d like it based on my experience in Math 414 next fall. I then spent more time working on the video and then re-organized!

Wednesday

This morning, I worked on finishing up cutting our video down. It started at 10 minutes and is now down to 5 minutes. I feel that we did so much that it is hard to push into a few minutes. I then went to the lab and worked on finishing the cover for the Arduino cutout of the backing of our quilt. Originally, I quilted two pieces of fabric together and added snaps to attach to the actual quilt but the edges frayed and Katie wasn’t happy with it. So, I made a new one from an idea from Cheryl. She suggested that I could fold a piece on material over onto another equally sized piece and sew the sides together. Then, i flipped it inside out to not see the stitching. I closed up the open end with one line of stitching and then sewed the snaps to fit the new back cover.

Since I finished that, we brought Katie’s embroidery machine in. A needle broke because old thread was wrapped around an inner working of the machine. We fixed the machine but couldn’t find  an extra 11/14 needle to fit. Katie later came in and said we could just use the regular needles from the other Brother machines and it worked!

We then went to our weekly Wednesday workshop. Katie discussed research after we leave the REU. I hope to work Eun Kyoung, my research mentor at Penn State, again but possibly continue with a study and find funding.

As I embroidered the numbers for the different times for the scrapbook LEDs, Sam finished the conductive threading for the scrapbook, as well as sewing the components into the electronically enhanced scrapbook cover. Unfortunately, one LED went out before we left for the day today, so we will troubleshoot that tomorrow.

Here’s a link to our updated poster!

Thursday

Today was a very busy day. I started with more embroidering. I finished the back of the quilt. THE QUILT IS OFFICIALLY DONE DONE DONE. YAY. YAY. YAY. We are very happy with how it turned out. Now, on the back flap, it reads: Sam and Olivia- 2016. It looks nice too!

I also embroidered small numbers to display and represent the number of times people have looked at our scrapbook. I plan to sew them onto the cover of the scrapbook as soon as all of the electronics are done.

So, we thought the coding for our scrapbook was done. But, unfortunately, one problem led another, and Katie felt it would be best to re-write the inner workings of our code. We iterated and iterated and got it to work! The errors were in the variables.

Later in the day, Sam and I spent time working on the write-up for the audio for our final video project. We also planned out the new coding flowchart for our poster and worked to finalize our poster.

5 Things

5 Things I wish I knew going into the ProHealth REU:

  1.  The projects on the website aren’t the projects we are working on this summer.
  2.  I needed apartment supplies
  3.  Programming languages**
  4.  How much I should appreciate my writing/speaking skills
  5.  To not bring my life of clothes and stuff because there’s no elevator in Willkie center

5 Things Future ProHealth REU students should consider doing

  1. Bring dishes, pots, pans, silverware
  2. Bring hiking boots for Bradford Woods if you’ll be hiking, sheets, towels, a pillow and toiletries.
  3. Come into the REU knowing as many programming languages as you can. It will help the breadth of projects you’ll be applicable for.
  4. Spend time with your fellow researchers. They will be amazing people if you spend time with them and listen to their thoughts and experiences.
  5. Keep an open mind and you’ll have a fantastic experience.

Here is a link to our GitHub repository:

https://github.iu.edu/ProHealth/Electronically-Enhanced-Crafting.git