Principles and Practices

Fab Lab Charter

The Fab Lab Charter gives a basic explanation of what Fab Labs are and how they function. It states that Fab Labs were created in order to give the community access to tools of fabrication so that they can make (almost) anything. It then also briefly goes over your own accountability within these spaces.

Project Proposal

One important thing I have to keep in mind when deciding what to do for my final project is my major. Since this is my senior year, and many internships and labs have been canceled, I plan to do my capstone project with my final project. With that in mind, I must find something that is interesting and feasible to do, while also making sure it has to do with physics.

So I decided to sit down for a while and brainstorm up some ideas. Below are the two main Ideas that I thought were worthwhile.

Back at my house, I have a telescope, yet it is always so tedious to adjust the telescope manually each time. So my first idea is to create a device that uses an arduino and gps to track the given celestial objects in the sky.

One problem I might run into is that there would be a lot of tricky programming to go through on the arduino, but I think that if I go through with it it would be a really intriguing project.

I have fired off some model rockets before at my house, but if I wanted to take things further, I could build my own launcher. The idea would be that I create a stand that launches off a rocket while simultaneously collecting data about the thrust.

I don’t necessarily have too much experience with model rocketry so I might go into a lot of unknown territory with this project.

Rough sketch of rocket idea

My project Ideas might be a little too complex and I am still going to have some conversations with some of the professors around my college about what might, and might not be, a good idea. For the time being I am going to pursue the adjusting telescope idea.

Rough sketch of what I am thinking about

The idea here is to have a system of gears that can rotate vertically and horizontally giving it a full range of motion. This will be controlled by an arduino with some type of button or analog control.

Telescopes are extremley expesive. Telescopes that automatically find celestial objects are even more expensive. This projects goal would be to find the gray area between the two by using my telescope with tracking components that I built myself. This way I will make using my telescope much more time efficient. In this always this project would mainly be built for myself, yet I would also like my family around and friends enjoy it with me

What might I need for my project

Laser cut stand
laser cut gears
What material will be used for such things?
will definetly need an arduino
Motors if I want to make it automatic
GPS
Could possibly use potentiometers
A lot of programming, although there is some work online other people have done that I could use as reference
Probably not going to use my 200$ telescope for now so what will I use at the head
A really cheap telescope?
maybe a substitute like a laser pointer?
If I continue with this idea will need to figure out if it will just track stars or not.

Conclusion

In the end, I do not think anything above is close to final. I don't exactly know how manageable my ideas are, but I have a general path that I want to go down. All I know is that it should involve physics in some way.