Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1104607
APRIL 2019 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 13 ers to breakout boards, design gear ratios and drive trains, and using manufacturing tech- niques for different materials and SparkFun's ESP32 microcontroller." Kirsi Kuutti summed it up by saying, "Make- Harvard was a hurricane of development. We free-handed a drive-train, salad-tossed a sen- sor interface, and fashioned a web app." Kuut- ti continued, "Fueled by sugary drinks and excitement to try new tech, we developed a prototype of a leak detecting pipeline robot. We found the Adafruit ESP8266 Huzzah break- out board was perfect for what we were try- ing to accomplish within this 24-hour window, and Sunstone Circuits was supportive with questions we had. It was a blast to work under pressure and create something awesome in a short amount of time." Though Sunstone Circuits intended to award only a first-place prize, we awarded a second- place prize in our documentation competition to Sam Roquitte and Maxwell Stigman from Georgia Institute of Technology for their eL safety-enhancing adaptive lighting system for electric skateboards (Figure 4). We were im- on complex platforms and different program- ming languages to hardware engineering of all kinds. It was truly amazing to see what these teams could do in a short amount of time. The myriad of skills on display ranged from concept design to advanced coding with real- world platforms, such as AWS. Some projects featured mobile apps and websites. Further, we saw real 3D objects designed, printed, and in- tegrated into projects with documentation that would make most corporate projects envious. Judging for this event is tough because there were so many great ideas and prototypes that deserved recognition; it was nearly impossible to choose just one to award. Around 100 stu- dents comprising 20 teams competed in our category. In the end, the first-place winner for Sunstone's documentation competition was a robot pipe crawler designed by Team 42+2 comprised of Rajvi Shah, Dawson Rosell, Des- mond O'Connor, and Kirsi Kuutti. Designed to crawl along pipes and detect cracks or other faults in the material, their prototype went through several iterations over the course of the event before the final version was submit- ted for judging. Team member Rosell said, "MakeHar- vard was an incredible experience. I got to work with people I had never met be- fore, learn how to work with programs and boards I've never used before, and spend 24 hours problem-solving!" He continued, "This event presented me with an opportunity to think outside of the box and make the most of the lim- ited materials we had to work with." Team member Shah further added, "The Sunstone documentation challenge pushed us to our limits." He continued, "It made us solve a real-world problem by helping the industrial sector. Harvard University, our robot, and the Sunstone challenge were all about innovation and persistence, helping us make our pas- sion into a possibility." Comments from Team 42+2 included, "At this hackathon, we learned new techniques during this challenge: how to program a web server on a microcontroller, solder pin head- Figure 4: Sunstone's second-place winners Sam Roquitte (top) and Maxwell Stigman (bottom).