We Don't Ship Elephants
Format
SOECS Senior Project Demonstration
Faculty Mentor Name
Cherian Matthews
Abstract/Artist Statement
The purpose of our design was to build a digital weighing machine capable of transporting data onto a computer and displaying the price of shipping of that object based on its weight. The project was divided into two categories, the actual digital weighing scale, which was done by reverse-engineering a given scale purchased from a local retailer, and the transportation of data onto a computer. In preparing this abstract an unusable signal of roughly I millivolt from the digital weighing machine was successfully amplified to 1 volt which was well within the range of acceptable voltages that our micro-controller can process. In addition to successfully sending this signal to our micro-controller, we also managed to display the weight on an LCD screen. We expect to give our audience members a demonstration of our project which would consist of asking people to come up and place objects to be weighed and give them a readout, using the LCD screen, of the cost of shipping this object based on a fixed cost table. The main motivating process of this project was to appreciate the concept of reversed'engineering. This aspect is a very powerful tool to have, especially in the military. When an enemy plane falls under the hands of allied forces, one can reverse engineer the plane to fmd its weaknesses and build towers/planes which are ready to attack it. Or more realistically speaking, you can reverse-engineer a company's product and steal their secret recipe, assuming of course you have no moral or ethical values.
Location
School of Engineering & Computer Science
Start Date
3-5-2008 2:00 PM
End Date
3-5-2008 3:30 PM
We Don't Ship Elephants
School of Engineering & Computer Science
The purpose of our design was to build a digital weighing machine capable of transporting data onto a computer and displaying the price of shipping of that object based on its weight. The project was divided into two categories, the actual digital weighing scale, which was done by reverse-engineering a given scale purchased from a local retailer, and the transportation of data onto a computer. In preparing this abstract an unusable signal of roughly I millivolt from the digital weighing machine was successfully amplified to 1 volt which was well within the range of acceptable voltages that our micro-controller can process. In addition to successfully sending this signal to our micro-controller, we also managed to display the weight on an LCD screen. We expect to give our audience members a demonstration of our project which would consist of asking people to come up and place objects to be weighed and give them a readout, using the LCD screen, of the cost of shipping this object based on a fixed cost table. The main motivating process of this project was to appreciate the concept of reversed'engineering. This aspect is a very powerful tool to have, especially in the military. When an enemy plane falls under the hands of allied forces, one can reverse engineer the plane to fmd its weaknesses and build towers/planes which are ready to attack it. Or more realistically speaking, you can reverse-engineer a company's product and steal their secret recipe, assuming of course you have no moral or ethical values.