1. Principles and practices

I started sketching my final project, a volleyball serve mat, and worked on the documentation process.

Sketching My Project

Sketching my project allowed for me to find some issues in it. Would I hook it up to a wall? How would the plates withstand the force of the volleyball? How would I protect the LED Display? I hope FabAcademy will help me answer these questions.

My project is focused towards those who want to improve their volleyball serve and not have to deal with the time it takes to pick up balls served over the net. What the sketches are trying to represent are what the mat would look like from a side view and a head on view. This project has gone through a lot of editting, but with that editting more features have been added. Instead of just being for volleyball, the end goal for pure commercialization would be to open it up more for every type of sport. To have little bits and pieces that would have a user-friendly interface that would network them in a particular shape suitable for the sport. For example, a lacrosse shooter might want to practice making goals without having to scoop out all the balls after they score a goal. They’d set up the mat for their sport.

Class Review

I got reviewed by Dr. Gershenfeld on January 30th. He said that my project was already looking good, but that I would need to change a few things. Instead of a styrofoam back to my volleyball mat, I would use a rubber backing. It would most likely be some sort of urathane frmo Smooth-On or McMaster Car. I didn’t get much feedback on how I would make my sensor or get my project to hang, but that didn’t exactly matter. I started thinking about how the ball would exactly bounce back. In the end, I came up with a layered model of foam and copper that would sort of act like a sandwich. Depending on how close the copper plates were (by compressing the foam between them) when the volleyball hits is how I’ll measure force, thereby measuring speed. Making the display to show the speed would be as equally hard to do.

Issues With Gitlab

I had a couple issues with GitLab like many of my other classmates. I had to search through several emails to get the correct one to confirm my email address. After that, I had a few other problems. While using the .yml file, I editted thing that would not allow for my website to publish. Once I reverted them back to the original, I was able to get my edits through (like right now!)

Markdown

Markdown is a very easy to use programming editor that replaces HTML in Gitlab. I prefer markdown to HTML, mainly because coding in HTML is far to tedious. Markdown uses a .yml file, which can be editted and kind of spreads through like a net amongst everything else. Thats how you customize the layout of your site. Everything else (like numbers, subtitles, titles, text, pictures, etc.) is done through an almost plain text editor. One thing I like about Markdown is that it can be used in Sublime.