Flavorful Borderline Racist Video

So... I'm taking an awesome class called 4.301 - Intro to Visual Arts. And for our first assignment in this class we did a video project. At the start I was not sure of what I wanted to do with my video but with help from my friends and some random inspiration that happens very late at night I decided to do something ridiculous (surprise surprise!)

The video is pretty self explanatory:

So... yeah not self explanatory at all ajaj! The assignment for this video was to think of the theme "Shaping Time" and alto to think about "circuits and systems". I decided to change the name to "Shopping Time" and then to use the supermarket at the system to study, i found the supermarket an interesting system because so many different cultures combine in a small very efficient space. I dressed up with a huge clock to relate to the "shaping time" theme (contrary to public opinion I did not want to emulate flavor flav, actually i did not know who he was when i decided on my outfit). The music was one of my favorite parts because it allowed me to present the different cultures and circumstances via audio and sound.

My prof. really liked the video and even called it "borderline racist", which I am not sure if it is a compliment or not.

Hematocrit Centrifuge

hey!

I am sure many of you guys have heard of D-Lab... but just in case I'll explain: D-Lab is a group at MIT that designs solutions to problems in the third world, they try to alleviate poverty and improve people's quality of life thought Design, Dialogue and Dissemination (thus the D in D-Lab).

I took D-Lab Design this semester and out team designed a Hematocrit Centrifuge! A H. Centrifuge is a key tool in diagnosing anemia, you basically spin blood for 5 min and then look at the proportion of red to clear solution (red blood cells to plasma) and from this you can diagnose anemia (a normal human has 40-45% red stuff). Given that most people with anemia live in the developing world, they need rapid ways to diagnose it however industry grade centrifuges cost more than a $1000 and require electricity which is a no-no for a lot of rural clinics out there.

Thus our team designed a centrifuge that could be built for around $40-100 using a power drill transmission. We took apart a drill and used the gear box to provide a good gear reduction for the spinning of blood. Here is a picture of the final design:

Our design has a footprint of about 1' by 1' by < 2', which is a big reduction from our Nigerian Community partner's bike centrifuge. My favorite feature of the centrifuge is that we put in a loose nut in the handle that rattles around when it goes too slow but when the speed is fast enough the centrifugal acceleration overcomes gravity and the nut sticks to the outside. This is how we make sure we are spinning the blood fast enough. Here is some of the math:

wooo! 2.003 in action!

I had my blood drawn at a clinic and then we spun the blood and got pretty good results! We even spun some diluted blood (to simulate anemic conditions):

woooo! I am not anemic!

My group is continuing our communications with Dr. Awojobi (an awesome doctor/designer in Nigeria) to flesh out details on a new design of a centrifuge based on a hand drill. So far he has sent us this picture of his progress so far:

exciting prototype!

Hopefully he can implement this new design successfully in Nigeria and disseminate it around the world! Meanwhile I will try and see if people back home in El Salvador have an interest in the hand crank centrifuge we built! I'll keep you guys posted! Here is a video of us testing out the centrifuge (a big shout out to my awesome teammates (Melvin Salinas, Kwami "The King" Williams, Daisy Chang and Kevin Kung)

(a shout out for my other roomie and lil bro David who I just learned also has a blog!)

UPDATE: 16 May 2012

Dr Awojobi (our partner from Nigeria) just emailed us saying that he has successfully implemented hand drills into his prototype and came up with a model that is about a third of the size of the prototype he has been using for 11 years and costs half as much! Here is a pic:

It is really exciting to see that what we worked on during the semester has had real impact on a someones life!

Stepper Scanner Control

If you know me at MIT, your probably know that I really enjoy controls and mechatronics. Even though my degree says "Mechanical and Ocean Engineering" I have done most of not all my requirements studying control theory and practical applications of control.

This blog post is about the controller design for a lithographic stepper. A "stepper" is a essentially a read head that moves in steps on a silicon wafer while the wafer is exposed to UV radiation. The catch is that the error in position during the half second of UV curing is on the order of tens of nanometers. For my digital controls class, we had to come up with a design for the controller structure.

Although we did not have the opportunity to implement the controller in real hardware, our professor included a lot of non-linearities and real world problems and parameters (he even brought in an old stepper to class) which made the problem incredibly interesting.

Here is a picture of the model for the stepper.

yep... its pretty convoluted! but luckily the professor helped us derive the state space model in class and thus we could focus on the control design of the stage.

We used completely classical control techniques (screw LQR and Kalman filters!) including decoupling and trajectory generations to get optimal performance. Most of the analysis was done is simulink, here is a screenshot of the final simulink model!

The final controller took over 36hrs of work to figure out but it worked great (in theory!) and I learned a great ton about design in controllers and how to be able to compensate for disturbances, noise, saturations and more of those great things that pop up in the real world. 

This was an awesome project to do and hopefully a good intro to my maybe job this summer at ASML!

Thanks to Prof. Trumper and all my controlfreak buddies for the collaboration during 2.171!

Re-Induction of Blog Motion!

Hey guys!
  I have recently (yesterday) decided to restart this blog!

 After being inspired by my awesome roomie Vicky Rodriguez I have decided to revamp my blog and make it a maker blog!

 I'll be posting about stuff I have made/taken apart for classes, for fun, or just random ideas that I have! Please feel free to submit any ideas or comments and I'll definitely take into account your feedback!

For this re-induction post I have decided to talk about a simple Induction Motor me and my roommates made at 2am in September 2011 because we were bored.

Here is a video of the motor running!



 I have recently been really interested in induction motors, ever since I found out about them I cant stop thinking of possibilites to use them (of course, them being such an "old" technology most of their uses have been figured out).

 A induction motor works on the principle of electromagnetic induction (surprise, surprise!), AC is pumped into the stator coils which induces a current in the rotor (a lid in my motor) and this induced current tries to catch up to the changing magnetic field in the stators. Thus we get motion without no mechanical connection whatsoever!

 The motor is classified as a split phase motor, this is because I used one voltage source (a 9V RMS 60Hz sinusoid) and then hooked up one stator coil in series with 220uF a capacitor to create a phase shift which gives the motor self starting capabilities.

 Credits to Nikola Tesla, the real life Tony Stark who invented the induction motor (as well as a myriad of other devices!)

 Thanks for reading guys and please stay tuned to the blog! I'll to try update the website very regularly and document what I do!

Delft and the illegal bbq

Dear readers

Last saturday was a pretty packed and awesome day. We had planned to go sailing in Kaag again, however it seemed the weather was not cooperating with us, nevertheless we gave sailing a chance and departed to Kaag at about 1100, we got there and hopped on the 40 sec ferry again.

In the sailing club conditions for sailing were amazing! It was sunny and we had constant 16-17 knot winds with gusts up to 20-22. Handling the main sheet was a real workout. I think the most interesting new thing we saw was a pizza boat floating in the middle of the lake system, sort of like a drive-in (sail-in) pizza restaurant.





After Kaag, we decided to go to Delft to get some beers and walk around the city centre. We went into an Albert Heijn (the Dutch equivalent of Shaw's) and one of my coworkers spotted a "disposable bbq" (it is basically a tray with charcoal and wood…super convenient!) So we decided to do a bbq in the middle of the street, we knew it was probably not permitted but we figured we should give it a chance.

We found a nice cozy spot near the central city square and started the fire. We had some burgers (btw dutch hamburger meat sucks) and some sausages and we started off some drumsticks. People in the street kept staring at us and smiling and old woman actually came close and told us that our bbq was an amazing idea.




After about 45min of bbq this police car drove by and stopped. They stayed their for about a minute and then drove off, we thought he was going to come stop our fun but apparently not (that's what we thought). Then about 10 minutes later this bum stops by and starts talking to us. This guy was a hyperactive bum and very sketchy looking (ripped clothes and a drugged look on his face). He also told us what we were doing is "PEEEERRRRRFECT" and we offered him a sausage so he would leave, he said we were "blessed" after that he posed for the camera and then we offered him a beer and then he finally left.




Then another 10 min later the cops show up again and this time they take no prisoners (ok… that probably sounded too dramatic) but yeah… they stopped by and told us a bbq in the street was not permitted and we should stop. They let us go with a warning only after we put off the bbq with dirty canal water. After that the cops left and we walked around the city centre. We found some cool swings as well as other nice stuff. After that we headed back home and went to bed because the next day we were going to AMSTERDAM!

Bruxelles!

hey my avid readers!

I deeply apologize for my lack of blog posts over the last week. Stuff is getting busy here in Rotterdam plus I have finally started travelling around! (exciting!)

As I stated in the last chapter of my adventure, after spending a beautiful and windy Saturday sailing in Kaag, me and my friend Francois decided to visit brussels! We woke up early and got to the station, some agent told us something misleading and we ended up taking a train to Paris (ooops...) the condutor was kinda pissed and charged us extra, however luckily the train had a stop in Brussels and actually got us there a little faster.

We started off Brussels looking for the "Grand Place" (pronounced in French) this is a little square in the middle of the old town of belgium, its super nice and has lots of very nice buildings! Some pics:





After walking around for a little bit, we looked for "delices et caprices" this is a beer tasting shop that my friend recommended, we went there but unfortunately it was closed (and remained closed for the rest of the day). Then we took a long walk to this small plaza near the EU Parliament, there we had the "best fries in the world" and a mitraillette (means machine gun), it was basically a subway with lots of fries and the meat and sauce you want. I got Pita and "mosterd" , it was pretty good! We also had some beer that we got in the supermarker, we got a beer called "La Chouffe" this is a pretty famous beer, not famous in the way Heineken, Sam Adams and Guinness are famous but its famous for being a really good quality Belgian beer. It had a soft sweet taste and it was a good beer for a sunny day. After that we went back to the city centre and had some more beers.

We went to the Delirium bar, this bar is pretty famous and actually holds the Guinness World record of beer variety, they have 2004 different beers available. We tried many different beers including a mango beer, mango beer was actually very good but did not taste like beer at all! However my favorite beer was "triple karmelite", after tasting this beer all other beers you have in Holland taste like water! A cool thing they had in the bar was that tourists sign bills (bank notes) from their native country and stick them to the wall. I saw bills from Argentina, Costa Rica, Brazil and a lot of American dollars, also curiously we saw a lot of bills from Boston. Many of them were marked "go red sox", here are some pics:





Its funny how in Brussels they are obsessed with "manneken pis" also know as "the statue of the little boy peeing", all over the city you see souvenirs, decorations and all sorts of stuff modelled after this famous statue, just before leaving Brussels, we were lucky that we ran into the original "manneken pis"! It is a very small statue (only 61cm, 24in high)! Here are some pics of the all the manneken paraphernalia:






Yep, so thats all I have to say on my day in Belgium! I'll leave you guys with some pictures of funny stuff we saw in Brussels!








In case you dont get it: the picture of the chalkboard was of a restaurant with live music, they said they had espectaculos en vivo" but the way they divided the world "espectaculos" made it seem it said "culos en vivo".

Valk and the Ketchup Bicycle

Hey guys!

Sorry for not updating since wednesday, but today's entry will have lots of pictures and lots of stuff to make up for my brief absence!

Thursday and Friday were really good days at work, these last couple of days I have been more dedicated to the naval architecture of the project so I have been learning lots and lots of naval arch. and looking up many many boats to inspire the Protei design. But what made these days awesome was that we started playing football after work! One of the guys that just arrived to the place is also a football fan so we organized little 2 on 2 or 2 on 3 games in a little space outside our workspace. Playing football was amazing! I felt so alive after the games and playing with your coworkers is a great motivator!

However what made my week was today! Today we went to the island of Kaag to a sailing club there and took some boats out!

Let me give you a narrative about the day. So my day started at 3am when I woke up to watch Argentina-Bolivia (result was 1-1), I was super disappointed and I can't remember seeing Argentina play that bad in a while, hopefully the coach fixes up the team for the next couple of games. At 5am i took a 3 hour nap and then at 8am we took the sketchy white van to Kaag. The funny thing about Kaag is that the only access to the island is this "ferry" which you drive your car on and it moves you like 7 meters to the island, its super ridiculous that there is no bridge! (they also charge for the ferry ride, so that might explain why they don't build a bridge!) Here some pictures of the "ferry".





After the ferry we went into Kaag, this is a super cute island where the roads are super narrow and it resembles the whitest of the white suburbs you can imagine. I'm sure they were worried when they saw me walking on their streets. These are some pics of the island:







After some introductions to the friendly club staff they gave us two boats to go out sailing. What was super funny was that the manager gave us these 6m boats without even checking if we could sail or anything, (this would never happen at MIT). We rigged up our "valks" (means falcon in dutch), I skippered one of the boats and had a crew of two, while the other four took the other valk. We set off for adventure!

Remember that map of Kaag I showed at the start of the post? Do you see all that water? ALL that water is space where we can sail, they don't constrain us to any single region and there is so much to explore in this canal-lake system! We got used to the boat pretty fast and we starting going in the canals and enjoying the landscapes full of windmills. One of my favorite part when we sailed was when we went into this "residential canal" where people live in floating houses! They have docks in their back yard and we would pass with the boat and we could see them having dinner inside and they would wave at us, it was so cool! We even saw some cows in this mini-farm right next to the water. After exiting the canal we had some fun with wing-on-wing sailing. We also had some fun looking at the people on the other boat, one of them actually jumped into the river to retrieve his cap. In total we sailed about 5-6 hours (with a small lunch break in the middle). It was so amaaaaaazing!

Also we got super lucky with the sailing club, the club is sponsoring our project so they are letting us sail for free on saturdays as well as test our prototypes with their help. The club itself is super nice! They have an amazing lobby, dining room, terrace, even a game room with ping pong. Also the people that work there are super cool! It is a family owned business so that makes it even more special!

Here are some pics of sailing! Look at my facebook for all the pics of Kaag!







A surreal thing about sailing in Kaag is that the water is actually at a higher level than the countryside! Its so weird to look at! Here are some pics that try to show it (they don't do it justice though).






And at the end of the day I spotted this! A heinz ketchup bicycle!





Today was probably the best day I have had in the Netherlands so far... I think I finally found a place here that I would love to live in! Imagine having a canal in your backyard! And tomorrow I am going to BRUSSELS!!! Time to drink some good quality beer (im tired of Heineken...) and of course some belgian chocolate!