Nearly a Year Recap

So What has Happened?

So it's been nearly a year since my last post in the Fenngineer blog. Being busy with school, work, and other nonsense has led to a complete lack of posts. But I'm hoping to fill all two of you in on the details! This is probably going to get a bit crazy so let's quickly outline what's going to be talk about in this post.

• Senior Design Project - Parker Chainless Challenge
• Tech Projects - Raspberry Pi
• Graduation
•  Moving Out - House Hunting
• Games, Games, Games!

To make this as painless as possible, I'm going to try to just hit the highlights. Being that I'll probably be typing a lot at work and not a home I suspect this will probably take me a few days to put together.

Senior Design Project - Parker Chainless Challenge

As part of our schools requirements, all students must do a Senior Design Project during their senior year. Parker-Hannifin's Chainless Challenge is an option our university has had since the start of the competition. In a condensed summary, the Chainless Challenge (CC) is a competition between schools to design and manufacture a bicycle that isn't driven via chains. Typically this is done through hydraulic pumps and motors since Parker is a major hydraulics supplier and developer. 

During a period of 7 months our team of 7 will develop a completely new design for our bicycle. We quickly learned that would be the only team to develop our own pumps and motors. Our team of 7 split into two groups. My group would develop a fixed displacement radial pump, while the other group developed a variable displacement hydraulic motor. 

Tech Projects - Raspberry Pi

During the year, I purchased a Raspberry Pi for fun. The biggest thing I've been doing with it has been using it as a media player with RaspBMC. It was remarkably awesome, able to play my Wall-E bluray rip with no problems. It's currently being used with the RetroPi rom currently on it. I haven't had as much success with it, since I'm currently having problems with the video sizes.

Graduation!

As of May, I have officially graduated from Cleveland State University's Fenn College of Engineering, and received a full time job offer in the process. I am no currently focusing on passing my FE exam, and on track to getting my PE License. 


That's all for now! Look for more in the future (maybe).