Hi, my name is Luis and I am a sophomore at California State University Los Angeles. As of now, I am a pre-major in electrical engineering.
I have always been amazed and intrigued to know how things work. This is what has pushed me through all sorts of engineering related subjects. While I may be majoring in the electrical field of engineering, the truth is that any form of project involving the art of creation or rejuvenation is interesting to me.
One of my favorite projects in college has been the creation of a simple underwater ROV.
The purpose of the ROV was to apply concepts like buoyancy, density, and skills like soldering and wiring into real world application. The project began with an understanding of how the wiring would be designed to power and control the ROV. The remote consisted of simple switches and a premade control board that was assembled by each individual group.
At the time, we were given two options, either we created the ROV out of pvc tubing or we used our own materials. As a group consensus, it was agreed that using our own materials would give us the most control over the design and physical properties of the ROV. This also meant the that we had near complete control over the look of the ROV.
The finished product is "squid", a slim and incredibly hydrodynamic ROV. Given the nature of the project, "squid" was designed to prioritize speed above all else, including maneuverability at times.
In the end, my team placed first place for the short distance lap time of the ROV with a difference of 10 seconds from the rest.
Apart from the ROV project, I have engaged in other forms activities that mostly include maintenance or repair. One of those things has been my personal laptop. My laptop is a 2017 device that originally came with a hard drive, which ill assume was a cost cutting measure. Within a year or two, the computer began to get extremely slow and the area around the hard drive was constantly hot. This appeared to me as signs of hard drive failure with the only solution being replacing the hard drive.
To change the overall feeling of the system, I switched from the HDD to NVME solid state storage.
Before switching out the components, I made sure to take proper precautions by backing up and cloning all my data.
Given that the apparent flaws in my device were repairable, making the switch to solid state storage brought new life to my device that I originally did not imagine was possible. Originally my laptop would take up to two minutes to boot up. Now, its up and running within seconds.
Skills:
- soldering
- woodworking