Salif T.

Hi! My name is Salif and I am a rising sophomore at Promise Academy. The thought of engineering has always been in the back of my head, but when my school gave me the opportunity to join BlueStamp I decided to take it. When I came into BlueStamp I didn’t know anything about engineering but I’ve learned a lot during the past few weeks like coding and soldering. Being in BlueStamp taught me that I can do anything if I put my mind to it.

Reflection

My experience in BlueStamp was great. I learned a lot the past few weeks like different codes and how to solder. My starter project was a TV-B-Gone and my main project was a WiFi camera. My first choice was the Jasper voice control system but it was too difficult so I changed it to the camera. When I leave BlueStamp I am going to continue working on my projects and make modifications. BlueStamp helped me realize what I might want to do as a career.

Documentation

Bill of Materials

Final Milestone

My final milestone was to create a case for my WiFi camera and to make my camera portable. I bought a case and had to assemble it myself. The problem was that the case didn’t have a place for my camera so I had to figure out how to put the camera in without breaking anything. But then I put the camera through a wide hole in the case and used tack to keep it down. After I fixed the camera problem, I connected my camera to a portable charger. This helped me make my camera portable because before I had to plug the camera to an outlet but now I don’t need to do that. I also stopped using the mouse for navigation and started using a stylus. BlueStamp helped me learn a lot about engineering. My experience at BlueStamp was great.

Second Milestone 

My second milestone was to get my camera working. In order for the camera I had to write codes. The problem was that the codes that I found was for a different camera and not mine so I had to rewrite parts of the codes. After rewriting parts of the codes I then had to change my camera. When I finally got my camera working I had to setup an online storage place so when I take photos it automatically saves the photos to Dropbox. The photos save when you’re using WiFi. So now every picture I take it can be saved online.

First Milestone

My first milestone is to get the touchscreen calibrated. I had to write and run a few codes and then I had to do calibration in order for the touchscreen to work. I have a Raspberry Pi 3 with USB ports and an HDMI port, It also has Bluetooth and WiFi. Connected to my Raspberry Pi is an LCD screen that has a Resistive touchscreen. A Resistive touchscreen is a screen where you need to use a stylus. The two types of touchscreens are Resistive and Capacitive. So since I have a Resistive touchscreen I can use a stylus to navigate instead of using a mouse.

Starter Project

My starter project is the TV-B-Gone. There is a button and it is connected to the microcontroller’s reset pin so when you press it the microcontroller will automatically reset and send codes to switch off televisions of different vendors. The oscillator generates a frequency which is read by the microcontroller. The codes are sent to these 4 bipolar junction transistors which amplifies the signal and sends them to the IR leds which translates the signal into infrared light and the sensor in the TV sees the infrared light and gets the signal that turns the TV off.