David - 2019 Sir William Siemens Challenge winner

I applied for the Hackathon over the summer as I was looking for events that I could take part in that would make my CV stand out and show that I have the skills I say I do.

The brief was to make an electro-mechanical construct that moved or showed data that we were given from the Mindsphere.  We decided we would show the temperature and humidity on the trunk of a data tree using LED lights and the top of the tree spinning using ball bearings to make sure we met the electronic and mechanical requirements.

On the first day we made the Fusion 360 model finishing at 1am and then we started the second day at 8am.  I worked with Anouschka (the other EEE student in the team) with soldering and on one of the soldering leads I worked on there was a cold solder so for an hour nothing was working so we stripped everything back and I managed to fix it.  I was also involved in the wiring and did some of the programming to pass the data to make sure the speed was controlled according to the data changes.

For the presentation to sell the data tree to the judges we decided that each person would talk about a specific area that they had worked on so everyone had a chance to speak. It was a good experience as you get the chance to network with very high ranking Siemens officials,  you get to talk to mentors there and although it was very tiring it was a very enlightening experience. Even if you don't win it's a great investment of your time as you can add it to your CV.