Today is the last day of the SP Open house Spinnovex 2008 final year project showcase. The day started off as a lazy but otherwise smooth morning prior the opening of the event. There was an air of fatigue hanging around the tent (given the late industry night the day before and considering it being our 6th consecutive day in the white tentage already) but otherwise also coupled with a sense of fulfilling victory being our last fruitful day for all our efforts put to date.
It was cold with lots of cold wet condensate falling on the outside over the night making the air rather still and musky in the tent, well till the air conditioning was turned on. The previous wet morning didn’t affect our outdoor air compressor to some extent and kept on delivering operating pressure through the early part of the day and became more stable later in the day as the weather started to warm up.
Thereafter, the crowds starting to pour in around the late morning. From there, the fun begins all over again with the crowds around our booth, prying eyes and impressive looks of amazement all written upon the looks on almost every visitor’s face who passed by our booth. Some are simply just fascinated to the extent of even finding hard to believe that we actually built this for our project, especially teaching staff and lecturers. Some professors and lecturers from NTU also came and chatted with us on the project, they too were amazed. Is such a project actually quite hard to come by now?
We also got our youngest guest for the whole event as well, maybe about 6-7 years old- He’s so small that even with the seat completely forward, he still can’t even reach the pedals!
But that didn’t stop us from giving him a ride after consent by his parents- Danson carried him on his lap and rode the simulator with the kid, controlling the pedals while the child steer, remarkably he was able to complete the whole course without even getting busted by the police in the game, something even some grown ups couldn’t do themselves! I’ve got a video of this kid riding our simulator in a video below, you can check it down there:
It’s still pleasing to know that each of us still get about 15-20 comments a day from strangers from the general public commending us about our project, even the principal was around to take alook at the projects for the day. Mine and Danson’s parents came yesterday, today, it’s Khowming’s parents turn to take the spotlight and we gave him some time off the booth so that he could show his parents around.
Some of my old track and field friends and alumni seniors were down in the afternoon, so I brought them around SP for lunch and at the same time, catch up on the exhibits around the area. The design studio exhibits are kinda cool, together with those in the T14 dreamhome where I could check out the skateboard game the EEE team our buddy CIE team worked with.
Besides some other interesting items such as the “half car” which makes everybody go huh? Met up with Darius in the EEE project area where he showed me his version of the “Cappobrewis” automated PLC toast and coffee maker, only that this one seems to have all it’s guts splattered all over the table.
Our team was amazed that our simulator prototype actually pulled through 3 full exhibition days of back-to-back operation with guest continuously in-and out without any major problems at all. Even if there was any, it was mainly an electrical problem which we were prepared for given the unstable current produced by our external turbo diesel generators powering the whole tent area. A quick 2-3 minute fix was all it needed to be back into business and serving the crowd again.
The closing of the 3 third day of Spinnovex marks also the closing of the whole week of ordeal, not to mention sore feet having to stand up and put up a good show and impression to every visitor fairly without displaying any form of fatigue, but it was rewarding in the end. And man was it- few lecturers came down and paid us a visit prior the ending of the exhibition and start of the closing ceremony (Spinnovex prize award presentation), many said they can’t reveal much but they reassured and told us that we “will be pleased” with the final results.
And there we have it, the Spinnovex gold award presented to us. Khowming parents were there, so I gave him the honor on my behalf as team leader to go up the stage and collect the prize. But don’t worry I was there too to take pictures of course! I think my team deserved the award more than I do and I am just glad I saw them throughout whole to this very day which I believe they will always remember at heart.
My heartfelt thanks going to my Teammates, Danson Han & Lee Khowming for being so corporative as committed team members, not to mention being tolerant of the demands of the short project timeline, project troubleshooting and me a persistent team leader. We are such a close knit group I guess it’s that which set it apart from other groups.
With that in hand, other few people to thank, in no particular order:
Mr Gary Lee, our Industrial Automation lecturer on his shared experiences in the pneumatics field.
Mdm Goh, our IA lab and pneumatics expert for sharing of experiences and loan of equipment.
Mr Ang The Machine development center TSO who helped us with our test cylinders and misc stickers.
Mr Chong, our project supervisor who not only saw us through the whole project and guiding us along the way, but also provided us invaluable feedback and his own shared experiences to make our project ultimately possible.
Mr Suhami, our project area TSO who went beyond his call of duty as a TSO- always lending a helping hand whenever he could. He even opened the labs and stayed with us over Saturdays and Sundays from morning till late specially for our projects.
Thats all folks for the exhibition report.
Multimedia animation video shown during the exhibition
Event and happenings video