About the Course

1P13 is a two-term course that I took during my first year of engineering at McMaster University. As well as attending labs and lectures, students were allotted weekly “design studio” sessions where we worked on a total of four projects throughout the year. These projects were definitely one of my highlights for the school year as I worked with many different colleagues throughout the year and created real prototypes and designs with 3D Printers, Raspberry Pi’s, and more!

Design Projects:

P1 - Renewable Technology Challenge

P2 - Design an Automated Sterilization System

P3 - Revenge of the Recycling System

P4 - Power in Community

Note: Design Projects were done in Groups of four. All of the projects mentioned on this page were done in collaboration with other individuals who played an equally enormous role on the final reports and lab reports!

Image of Quanser Labs interface - Testing our Project for P3 involved setting up a robotic arm, tray, and robotic mover. RGB sensors on the robotic movers were used to detect the colour of bins.

Course Timeline

Design Project Format

• Teams of 4-5 students were formed at the beginning of each of the four projects, labelled P1, P2, P3 and P4 respectively. An initial “Milestone 0” document was submitted during the first design studio following the formation of the teams to decide on roles for each of the individuals. These roles include:
  • Manager: Responsible for ensuring cooperation among team members and facilitating discussion
  • Administrator: In charge of document creation (through the use of Gantt Charts), formatting, and submission (including managing deadlines and team drives)
  • Coordinator: Record meeting minutes, check attendance, and address items discussed during prior meetings/design studios
  • Subject Matter Expert: Creating a database of all resources and data sources used during the project and ensuring reliability and usability of collected documents.
• Each week normally sees the completion of a “Milestone” Submission, which is intended to guide students towards a pathway for required prototyping and research.
• Teams usually hold several meetings outside of designated design studio sessions to work on deliverables and designs required for the final project submission. This was facilitated thorough Microsoft Teams and email.
• Final Deliverables for the Design Projects include a report, a presentation, and an interview. Final reports typically contain an executive summary, a paragraph on findings and research, a justification of the approach, a detailed description of the final design, and the shortcomings of the prototype.

Quanser Interactive Labs 2022-02-18 13-47-07.mp4

A video of a Quanser Labs Simulation for P3

Autodesk Inventor Professional 2022 2022-04-07 22-29-14_Trim (4).mp4

A simulation of the device made during our P4 project. The movement was intended to demonstrate how a knife could be placed in the device and be moved in all 6 degrees of freedom.

Technical Requirements

The 1P13 Labs and Lectures taught us several skills that were necessary for the completion of the Design Projects.

Autodesk Inventor

This was our primary CAD software used to design 3D models and prototypes. A standard procedure was followed when creating the CAD files (.ipt & .stl) to ensure that all components were standardized in the event that items needed to be 3D Printed or Laser cut. DWG files were used for the purposes of drawing out the parts for laser cutting and for outlining necessary measurements. Limitations: Only available for Windows, use a proprietary file format, did not sync with cloud applications

Python and Jupyter Notebook

This was our primary way of accessing data files through code and manipulating the Raspberry Pi’s used for the various robotics devices required in the course (see QuanserLabs). Python was taught at introductory level, but most implementations were designed for the custom scenario by the teams. Jupyter Notebook was the main IDE of choice used to debug code and run tests. Other IDE’s like VS Code was used to run python code on the Raspberry Pi’s.

Microsoft Teams and Office 365

Microsoft Office Suite was used to maintain documents, create presentations, and communicate with teams throughout all of the Projects. Teams was used due to its dual functionality as a shared drive and a chat medium for the student groups.

Raspberry Pi’s and QuanserLabs

QuanserLabs’ Robotic Equipment was used for some of the projects that involved containers that move in a horizontal plane (such as transportation vehicles) and multi-segment arms (such as the organization of containers). These robots were primarily powered by Raspberry Pi’s, which ran Python Code to interface with the arm and wheel machinery directly. The Raspberry Pi’s were interfaced using VNC Viewer and SSH tools to upload and run Python Files.