About Me and This Blog
My name is Oliver O’Reilly-Hyland, and I am a Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Management student at Trinity College Dublin sharing my progress on some fun projects in my current Design Class, with ambition to continue the blog with some posts on my personal projects.
The class, Design II, resumes learning from our second-year Design I class, where we were guided through the processes of brainstorming engineering solutions, prototyping them in hardware and software, and patenting, presenting, and materializing such solutions, all through lectures and projects. This year, the pandemic has of course necessitated every lecturer to implement novel online testing and teaching methods, though Design II is especially reliant on hands-on experience, so our professor, Dr. McGinn, has had to mail us hardware projects. This has allowed us to continue learning with hardware and prototyping in microcontrollers and electronics without compromise, and these projects are a welcome addition to our otherwise monotonous online activities.
In the past, I have worked with SolidWorks and microcontrollers to create various projects, such as a rug morning alarm clock that requires a predetermined set of push ups to deactivate, using a PIR motion sensor and a Force Sensitive Resistor.
Our first project asks us to take the next step in boosting our proficiency with CAD modeling in SolidWorks, and to put our understanding of microcontrollers to work. We must design a 1:1 model of an Elegoo Tumbller Self-Balancing Robot, and then assemble and modify the robot parts mailed to us. Our following projects ask us to program our modified robots to perform tasks such as navigating complex obstacle courses while catching projectiles, initiating a mechanical Rube Goldberg machine, and more. All of these projects will be shared through this blog, instagram, and twitter.
Fortunately, I have all that I need to get down to the nuts and bolts of this: an old 3D printer, a workbench, duct tape, and a garage. Let’s see what comes of it.
Oliver O’Reilly-Hyland (@olivero_engineering) • Instagram photos and videos
