YAME (yet another musing on engineering)

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The discussion centers on the value of engineering projects for personal development and portfolio enhancement. The original poster reflects on their experience building gadgets and considers creating a hexapod but questions its necessity and contribution to the field. They emphasize the importance of making projects that are not only educational but also useful in real life. A suggestion is made to focus on projects that solve practical problems, like a solar tracker, to maximize learning and utility. Ultimately, the conversation encourages creating meaningful and functional engineering projects.
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I'm studying engineering. In order to pad my resume, and improve my portfolio, I try to make various doo-hickeys, widgets, and gadgets.
I grew up building from simple soldering kits (radio, line follower, i call it "legos with soldering"), and now I'm playing around with more open ended stuff.
I got an arduino, and made a countdown timer. And I'm ready to do more.
As I was looking at various hexapods online, I concluded I need 18 servos (6 legs, 3 points of articulation each)
That cost will add up!
So then I thought- "why?"

why should i make a hexapod?
it's already been done.
Will I be contributing something worthwhile to the world?
Besides practice in drafting, wiring, software, etc, what is there?
And if that's all there is, is it worth it?

Just something I've been kicking around. I've got some servos to order!
 
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jehan60188 said:
I'm studying engineering. In order to pad my resume, and improve my portfolio, I try to make various doo-hickeys, widgets, and gadgets.
I grew up building from simple soldering kits (radio, line follower, i call it "legos with soldering"), and now I'm playing around with more open ended stuff.
I got an arduino, and made a countdown timer. And I'm ready to do more.
As I was looking at various hexapods online, I concluded I need 18 servos (6 legs, 3 points of articulation each)
That cost will add up!
So then I thought- "why?"

why should i make a hexapod?
it's already been done.
Will I be contributing something worthwhile to the world?
Besides practice in drafting, wiring, software, etc, what is there?
And if that's all there is, is it worth it?

Just something I've been kicking around. I've got some servos to order!

So that's really the point. Make things that are useful and fun for you. If you make a little robot, make it so that it can vacuum your place or something. The projects that you design and build to learn should also be useful for you in real life, if possible, IMO.
 
Thirty-four years ago I had a few primitive silicon solar cells. I wanted them to follow the sun all day long to gather the most energy possible. So I built a simple solar tracker (powered by the cells). The point is the same berkeman makes above: make something useful, something that solves a problem.
 
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