The Heads on Fire Community

My four weeks spent here at the Fablab have been a fun and challenging learning experience. I have learned many new things since I’ve been here including using the various equipment as well as learning new things about the computer that I thought I already knew so much about. I learned how to use a vinyl cutter, which cuts out and makes stickers.

Today we are getting ready for Congresswoman Susan Davis to visit us at the FabLab. This is a big day for the Lab so that means we have to have it be at its best and be on our best behavior to impress Susan Davis. Some one from each of the teams will be presenting the different projects that we have done so far including the Drawdio, LED's, Mission Trails GPS mapping, and the Whales on Fire structure that Jake, kristna, Trang, and Tresor. So far only part of the Whales on Fire structure is complete and there is still more cutting and sanding to be done.

GPS photo tagging, also known as geotagging, is the process of embedding a digital photo with latitude, longitude and even altitude data.

­When people talk about "a GPS," they usually mean a GPS receiver. GPS is actually a constellation of 27 Earth-orbiting satellites (24 in operation and three extras in case one fails).

This is team 2, with Katie, Mike, Leanea, Ashley, Niroth, David, Trang, Christian, and myself. I am not in the picure below because i acually took it, aswell as the other ones that were geotagged on the trail.

The trail we started with was called the visitor center loop trail. 

we started off the day at the Mission Trails visitor center and took a tour of the building while learning about the purpose of the regional park and all of the endangered species of plants and wild life. We first split up into two teams,  esteban and shani's team and katie and mike's team which i was in. we spent our time GPS mapping and geotagging the trails that we hiked. after that we returned to the visitor center and all of the data from the hikes was collected and posted onto the internet.

GPS stands for Global Positioning System. GPS uses a constellation of between 24 and 32 satellites that orbit around the earth that send signals to GPS receivers that tell the exact location, time and speed of an object. For example GPS navigation systems in cars give you directions to where you want to go.

  The Drawdio was invented by Jay Silver and as the name suggests, you can use the Drawdio to draw while creating sound (audio).

The Drawdio circut is made from fifteen parts including a circuit board, capacitors, ceramic capacitors, resistors, transistors, a timer chip, a speaker, copper foil tape, a thumbtack, wire, and of course, a pencil.