Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “National Maker Faire: Building the Bronx Scooter”.
I’M Dale Dougherty we’re here at national Maker Faire and I have a group of students, some from Olin College, some from a school in the Bronx and Karen counties, kind of put this together and shepherded it, and we have a friend from autodesk here and somehow. This is all going to come together because it’s a great collaboration of different kinds of people, different skills, each providing something to make something new and, in this case, a new company. So Karen toast, how did this get started? It started as a school program in the bronx new york and what’s cool p.s 107, miss ham shout out to miss ham, the principal and a year and a half ago we incorporated a for-profit company that sakina age, 13 and de Shayla I own a piece of As well as other children in the Bronx who have been creating inventions like the energy scooter that we’re bringing to market with the help of Erika Erika, yes, so autodesk works in collaboration with Olin and this summer, we’re working to get our product out to market. So they brought in some awesome engineering, students, mechanical robotics, Erica’s, an electrical engineer and we are driving towards having a product ready for market in August 3d, printed going to appear nine in San Francisco to do a lot of machine shop work, it’s awesome! So I want you to tell me what this is and and and let’s, let’s just focus on the thing you made. This is an energy school today when you ride gears spin producing energy to charge your phone okay, oh it charges your phone yeah.
So it’s building up battery power. Is it? Is there a battery there or just a generator? It is a portable charger inside that you connect a USB and you connect a charger and the charges, your phone right now you have the idea that it start off. Looking like this um, well, yes, it actually is. This is our first prototype like the first thing, we did, we use a hand crank generator. We actually took it apart, a hand, crank generator.
We took it apart. We connected it to ooh an axle with a bike chain, they’re connected to three gears and some wires that holds that’s like the current is flowing through those wires into the plug, that’s generating the electricity good, and so this is like carbon fiber or something or yeah. 3D printer yeah tell us how you help, so I was very supportive with training them on how to use fusion 360 through skype.
They came in with little background in reference to cad knowledge, and i was able to help them learn how to use fusion to design and we iterated from phase 1 and 2, something of a more smaller was that hard to learn this? Well, I decide. Oh, how was it to learn CAD um? Well, it was actually pretty hard in the beginning, but it got really easier. I mean having her helping me and then like just kept practicing. We kept practicing every weekend over skype and it just became the easiest thing in the world. I guess great, so you developed a whole new capability, not just a product. You develop a new way to do things right, yes, and let’s get check in with our olin college students.
I don’t think we caught your name Leon Eli and what kind of where you at all and what’s what a what kind of engineering? What am i doing? I’M eight: do I hold this? Ok, I’m going to be a junior at Olin, studying robotics engineering, i’m also very fascinated in user experience and human centered design. So working that into this project has been starting to work on that and so you’ve consulted with our two inventors here to help them refine their their work. This is true, yes, good Lindsay who’s over there and I have spent some time just catching them up.
Why we made the decisions we did for instance, why are we using this particular circuit instead of another one? Why is a particular motor being used over another one good and Lindsay you guys came down today from Boston just for just for the day right yeah. It was an 11 hour bus bus ride, though he took to get here on, but it’s a great experience getting to meet the girls in person for the first time, showing them what we’ve designed and like showing them like what our process was is a great experience For all of us using skype to talk previously skype and google hangouts for a bit yeah – and it was it’s a really good, but but in that kind of interesting you can pull in expertise from almost anywhere people. That may not have been able to come to the school in the Bronx can be accessible online and you guys can pick up new skills.
So what happens next, whether you mean well you’re gon na make them right. Yeah they’re gon na be limited at this show and want, and then um we’re just gon na show this piece alone for life. We can connect it, so I co skateboard right 0 x, equal whatever do you have any friends that are interested in this yeah? All of our friends were all part of a team of kids that break together in different schools. That’S good! Well, I’m really happy to have you here Karen and this all-female team of engineers, inventors and helpers.
Thank you for being here. National Maker Faire, .