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Hack Chat Transcript, Part 1

A event log for Austere Engineering Hack Chat

When disaster strikes, engineers strike back

lutetiumLutetium 01/22/2020 at 21:090 Comments

Dan Maloney11:59 AM
Hi all -- we'll get started with the Hack Chat in a few minutes. Haven't seen @Laurel Cummings log in yet.

Laurel Cummings joined  the room.12:00 PM

anfractuosity12:00 PM
:)

de∫hipu12:00 PM
speak of the devil

Dan Maloney12:00 PM
I stand corrected!

Laurel Cummings12:00 PM
Aha!

Laurel Cummings12:00 PM
Hello everyone!

Dan Maloney12:00 PM
Hi Laurel, welcome aboard, and thanks everyone for coming today.

Morning.Star12:01 PM
Hey Laurel :-)

wkpsahl joined  the room.12:01 PM

Dan Maloney12:01 PM
Laurel is here to talk about her experiences engineering solutions under less-than-ideal circumstances. Can you tell us a little about your background Laurel?

Lazer.Coh3n12:01 PM
hi Laurel

Laurel Cummings12:02 PM
Yeah! Firstly thanks so much for hosting this, Dan and Hackaday, and for inviting me to talk about the work I get to do!

morgan joined  the room.12:02 PM

Laurel Cummings12:03 PM
My background is in electrical engineering, but I've been heavily involved in makerspaces and the maker movement as a whole for about 8 years now.

Morning.Star12:03 PM
Lol. Hey Morgan :-)

Laurel Cummings12:04 PM
When you're in these spaces, you get exposed to a lot of different and weird skillsets and learning opportunities, so most of my experience at this point has come from always being willing to go through those kinds of short courses, trying to help out in strange and varied projects, and collecting skills like you would quarters!

Laurel Cummings12:05 PM
I really enjoy hardware work and do most of my work in Arduino and C, and on the side, I do some prop making and electronic music making. :)

Dan Maloney12:07 PM
Can you tell us a little more about the outfit you work for? I struggled with how to describe it, settling for a consulting and technology development firm. Did I come close?

Dave Zirkle joined  the room.12:07 PM

Laurel Cummings12:07 PM
Haha, it is a hard place to describe succinctly!

Laurel Cummings12:09 PM
So Building Momentum is the company I work for, and our primary business is in the problem solving training field. A large portion of our work is done with the US military, in training active duty military members in a weeklong program called Innovation Bootcamp.

Laurel Cummings12:10 PM
We teach them 3D printing, laser cutting, MIG welding, electronics, soldering, Arduino, Raspberry Pis, P2P communications, IP cameras, solar power... just about as much as we can cram in their heads, honestly!

Tarek Loubani joined  the room.12:11 PM

Laurel Cummings12:12 PM
The true objective of this training is to really teach these folks that failure is okay, and is not only acceptable but expected! You're never going to hit the best solution to a problem on the first attempt, and iteration is a vital part of the problem-solving work flow.

Lazer.Coh3n12:12 PM
what does the US Military have to do with Arduino and raspberry pi?

i mean why is it usefull to the military?

Morning.Star12:12 PM
/me leaves

Dan Maloney12:12 PM
And do you do those bootcamps in their world? Like on bases and forward deployments and such?

Laurel Cummings12:13 PM
Yeah, we go to their bases, and usually have to make a fully functional workshop in about a day's time, which is usually a tall task.

Laurel Cummings12:13 PM
It can be really difficult to forsee every possible tool, compotent, and technology you'll need to solve at least 95% of the problems that come into that workshop.

Laurel Cummings12:14 PM
And that's where our work with the military really starts to tie in with the disaster response side of things, because it's those resource-deprived environments that we've practiced- and gotten good at- working inside of in both disasters and the battlefield.

Dan Maloney12:16 PM
It's funny - we're so used to thinking of the military as "$1000 toilet seats" that we forget the day-to-day stuff is resource limited.

Laurel Cummings12:16 PM
Lazer, the military is a hugely diverse place, despite the projected image of a united front. You have people involved who may have a PHD in the sciences, to 19 year olds lads who have been playing with 3D printers in high school.

anfractuosity12:17 PM
disaster response sounds really interesting, are you using radio comms for that, if so i'd be interested what type of RF stuff you're using

Laurel Cummings12:17 PM
Yeah, exactly! So the thing is that it takes months and years to get those $1000 toliet seats, and by the time the seat gets to the battlefield, either the problem is gone, or someone duct-taped together a solution

Laurel Cummings12:18 PM
So our training is really about empowering the lower ranking people to find their own solutions, even if it's with just a beginner's Arduino kit and a USB powered soldering iron, haha.

Nicolas Tremblay12:18 PM
How important is duct tape in the field?

Dan Maloney12:18 PM
I did a story on a USMC unit that now routinely 3D-prints parts for F-35s:

Dan Maloney12:18 PM

https://hackaday.com/2018/08/23/marines-3d-print-part-to-repair-multi-million-dollar-fighter/

HACKADAY DAN MALONEY

Marines 3D-Print Part To Repair Multi-Million Dollar Fighter

The good news: all you need to complete the repair you're working on is one small part. The bad news: it's only available in a larger, expensive assembly. The worst news: shipping time is forever. We've all been there, and it's a hard pill to swallow for the DIYer.

Read this on Hackaday

Laurel Cummings12:18 PM
Duct-tape is a way of life, lol!

Nicolas Tremblay12:19 PM
it's the Red Green way

Laurel Cummings12:19 PM
Yeah, that is actually a big anecdote we use in trying to tell military brass why 3D printers can help.

Morning.Star12:19 PM
So engineer a response to the battlefield itself.

Now i really am off before I spoil a hackchat. We all have a right to a voice, but this doesnt represent mine. Laters guys, take care :-)

Laurel Cummings12:21 PM
With the disaster response RF stuff, we aren't really setting up brand new infrastructure in these areas, and we're usually in teams of 4 or less, and staying together the whole time for safety. RF setups aren't usually a big part of our kit yet.

Laurel Cummings12:22 PM
I have a lot of fondness for Xbee radios personally, though, when I need to make a long range remote sensing project quickly, being able to swap transceivers with different antennas that easily is really nice!

Dan Maloney12:23 PM
What's more important for RF in those kinds of situations? Range? Bandwidth? Something else?

Laurel Cummings12:23 PM
I'm sorry to see you head out, Morning.Star, but I understand the connotations around this kind of work. I like to think that by showing Marines they can build an arduino sensor, instead of having to stand at an output with a weapon, it might help move us to more peaceful resolutions in a lot of areas of the world, not just hot zones.

Laurel Cummings12:24 PM
The most important thing is flexibility!

Lazer.Coh3n12:24 PM
wow this is very interesting

i have to go now so thank you Laurel

good bye guys

Laurel Cummings12:24 PM
When I'm packing up to go to a disaster, it usually is a carry on and a single checked duffle, so I have to have as many multi-purpose tools and components as possible

anfractuosity12:25 PM
cheers, i guess xbee modules would be used for small textual type messages?

Laurel Cummings12:25 PM
See you around!

Laurel Cummings12:26 PM
Yeah, we're usually only needing to send either a boolean type message or just super small 256 bit messages, to give rough estimates

Laurel Cummings12:27 PM
My approach is usually having to ask myself "what's the bare minimum amount of info I need from this field unit?" because I don't have much time to optimize both battery life and TX protocols

Dan Maloney12:27 PM
Are you ever in a position with these disaster-relief operations where you could have a shipping container sent with everything you need? I'd imagine they'd make great temporary workshops.

Laurel Cummings12:28 PM
Learning how to honestly build to the objective of "the bare minimimum" has required un-learning a lot of assumptions from every other experience I've ever had in engineering, haha

Laurel Cummings12:28 PM
So! We're actually building out one right now for a client for just that scenario! This works when you're reacting on a timescale of "6 months of disaster response"

Laurel Cummings12:29 PM
but we're usually one of the first teams on the ground, in the "6 DAYS of disaster response" so we don't get the luxur, of having a container sent out to these places, unfortunately.

Laurel Cummings12:30 PM
And if a container can get delivered to a disaster, say like the Bahamas, it's usually better off being full of first aid, food, water, etc, rather than 3D printers and RPis, haha

Dan Maloney12:31 PM
Interesting. I wonder if the solutions that roadies come up with for their austere engineering needs would work for that timescale. They generally have road cases kitted out as portable workshops to fix amps, lighting, instruments, etc.

Nicolas Tremblay12:32 PM
What is the bare minimum you always bring?

Dan Maloney12:32 PM
I used to work local crew at a concert venue, so I saw a lot of road crews come through. Very rarely were they not able to repair something with what they had on hand for tools and parts.

Laurel Cummings12:32 PM
Yeah! I had no idea they also traveled with their own workshops, but that could be interesting to look up after this!

Laurel Cummings12:33 PM
Nicolas, our unofficial company motto is that all we need when we touch down is a knife, a multi-tool, and a phone- no service required.

Nicolas Tremblay12:34 PM
ok, then what would you add to this barebone

Laurel Cummings12:34 PM
I do love me an Arduino + sensors kit, haha.

Dave Zirkle12:35 PM
@Nicolas Tremblay also interested

Laurel Cummings12:36 PM
There are a lot of problems you can solve with a well-programmed microcontroller and some sensors, that usually require a person to otherwise take care of it

Laurel Cummings12:36 PM
For example, in North Carolina during/after Hurricane Florence, there was a lot of risk of sudden bridge washout

Laurel Cummings12:37 PM
Most towns had a policy of assigning four cops to one bridge to make sure no one tries to drive over it unless absolutely necessary and to keep an eye on the river to see if any large debris or sudden floods come rushing down to hit the bridge(s). This would also work as a warning system for other communities further down that same river.

Laurel Cummings12:39 PM
One solution we proposed while we were down there was devolving a small network of bridge wash-out sensors, that either detected unusually high waters nearing the underpass of a bridge, or detecting a large tree or car washing down the river. This is what I mean by I need small, shorter range RF solutions, that I can change quickly.

Laurel Cummings12:40 PM
I already know a limitation of such a system will be range of the RF, but if I can reduce the number of first responders watching say three bridges, to just one person watching a read-out, those other folks are now freed up to go do one of the other 10000 things you need to be doing after a disaster.

Dan Maloney12:40 PM
That seems like a situation where local officials would hesitate to embrace your solution, because it isn't off-the-shelf. Do you find that to be a problem?

Laurel Cummings12:41 PM
That is usually a problem leading right up until the disaster, and then once again about 3 weeks after the disaster, once things return to stabilized.

Laurel Cummings12:42 PM
And to be transparent, most of the projects and solutions we make and offer aren't permanent solutions. They're meant to be triage, in a way, because that's usually all you can afford to do in those really early stages of a disaster.

Laurel Cummings12:43 PM
That's the other hard lesson I had to learn/unlearn as an engineer getting into this work- sometimes you don't want to build the best version of your project because it doesn't need to work for more than two days. Code optimization seems silly when this will most likely see a trashcan in a week, haha.

Dan Maloney12:44 PM
I think that was the big lesson I learned from your Supercon talk - deliver something - anything - within 24 hours of getting there.

Dan Maloney12:45 PM
Seems like that's good advice even under non-austere situations

zeeleez12:45 PM
hi all, i have got a sense hat for raspberry, i want to use it but it keep give me an error: it can't find the Hat. Don't know why, it was not broken!

Nicolas Tremblay12:45 PM
Intellectually, this looks like work that I would love to do. IRL I know I wouldn't be able to operate effectively in those kinds of situations.

Laurel Cummings12:46 PM
It is very much something you practice!

Laurel Cummings12:46 PM
I was just about to say that the 24 hour problem-to-solution challenge is a good thing for anyone to try at home, even just for fun!

Laurel Cummings12:47 PM
It can really help illuminate where you can optimize your personal prototyping process, and hey, you might surprise yourself with how well you do under these conditions.

zeeleez12:47 PM
i think i committed part of the nasa raspberry hack by thinking too much

Laurel Cummings12:48 PM
Along those lines, a lot of the people I work with are actually technical theatre people.

Dave Zirkle12:48 PM
Was a judge at an event where students built some solutions with random items. Programmers also came. A low tech solution won out of 6 groups, one programmer group got very upset about that.

Dan Maloney12:48 PM
Exactly! I always come up with these grand ideas for builds and spend weeks mulling them over and making them perfect on paper. Maybe if I just try to get anything working within 24 hours of having the idea I'll be better off and actually do something other than make paper.

Laurel Cummings12:49 PM
They're really good at seeing a problem, and immediately seeing the shortest path to a functional solution. When you have a background in having to fix something in the 30 seconds between set changes, and it turns out, that trains you really well for disaster response and rapid prototyping, haha.

Nicolas Tremblay12:50 PM
It's really something I should try out, once I finally finish setting my station. I haven't had access to any of my workshop in over a year.

Laurel Cummings12:50 PM
Dave, that's a great point! I see that a lot too, where groups who aren't steeped in technology see the shortest, most efficient solution much faster than other people who may spend all day at an oscilloscope, like myself. :)

Laurel Cummings12:51 PM
Maybe that can be your challenge! Don't set up your station until you start your 24 hours, see what you really need in your workshop to solve that one problem, and see if you can afford less.

zeeleez12:51 PM
I'm looking for collaboration over the internet, can do 3D and the graphics... need coders

Laurel Cummings12:51 PM
I guess I'm advocating for a Marie Kondo-ing of our work stations, component bins, and prototyping processes, haha.

Laurel Cummings12:52 PM
Like, just on the topic of instrumentation, I never take that into the field with me.

Nicolas Tremblay12:53 PM
I'm already condensing most of my equipment, the problem is that my workshop looks more like a disaster area than anything else. i don't even have a flat surface to use.

Laurel Cummings12:53 PM
If I need to break out an oscilloscope to fix something or solve a problem, my solution is too complex to likely work well. It's no use if I have to spend 20 hours making a floating wireless water height measuring device if a string and a floating can would also work.

Nicolas Tremblay12:54 PM
Gotta love renovations because of a new baby

Laurel Cummings12:54 PM
That does sound stressful, haha.

Laurel Cummings12:54 PM
I do have a question for the folks here, though.

Laurel Cummings12:55 PM
Would you all be interested in hearing and taking a stab at the problems we bring back from disasters?

Nicolas Tremblay12:55 PM
I'm game

Laurel Cummings12:55 PM
We usually find at least 10 to 20 good problems, with rough ideas of how to solve them, but we're still only a 10 person team, and can't always get to them all.

Morning.Star12:56 PM
When your bosses stop causing disasters give me a call. Sorry, but thats how this is. :-)

Laurel Cummings12:57 PM
For example, we had a problem in the Bahamas where someone had a 10 feet deep water well, but it ran off the power grid, which was annihilated by the hurricane. We weren't able to help that family with that problem at the time, but I know in my gut that a solution is out there for them.

Nicolas Tremblay12:58 PM
use a dc motor as an ad-hoc hand generator

Laurel Cummings12:58 PM
We tried a few things, like sailboat bilge pumps on batteries, but at the end of the day, we just didn't have enough fluid dynamics knowledge on hand to overcome 10 feet.

Laurel Cummings12:59 PM
In those scenarios, I think it'd be great to work with the Hackaday community to try and crowdsource knowledge/experience/ideas to solve those kinds of problems. Y'all already have ideas!

Nicolas Tremblay1:00 PM
You had to build a new pump, not just repower the old one? 10' is a lot of head. You could go with a jet pump, but almost impossible to do in the field.

Dan Maloney1:01 PM
I like the idea of thinking through those problems after the fact. Not sure what the right way to do it would be, though. Maybe just post the challenge here and see who bites?

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