This project was important to everyone at my workplace because it lets employees check the status of the 3D printer instead of having to walk across the campus. This is a great help because people here had to walk across the campus just to check its status and most of the time it's already in use for awhile. This project makes it so that employees now won't have to take so much time out of their day to just to check on the printer and start a print job. Also with the webcam pointing at the printer if someone has returned to their office that has started a print job then they are able to check the progress of it on the webcam and be able to tell if it had failed or if it's done.
The process for getting this to work was quite long. First I had to flash the SD card with the Octopi software that the Raspberry Pi can load. Then once that was complete then after doing some configuring of the Pi I was able to connect it to the 3D printer. Once that was completed I had to connect it to the network, connect to the Pi itself thought a webbroswer and then I was able to use the octopi.
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This internship has been very valuable to me for sparking new interests in possible future careers. Over the course of this month I have discovered both new possible careers I can pursue and experienced different types of workplaces. All of which fall under or close to the engineering field, which is what I want to pursue in addition to being a pilot. I'm not quite sure what exact field of engineering I want to study at this point. My internship gave me the experience of engineering fields like: electrical design and some software. I think since my internship I feel that electrical engineering would be my best fit in the future. I really enjoyed troubleshooting a 3D printer that developed a short.
I worked with both long time employees and brand new college interns. Working with both of them gave me good ideas of how to work in an corporate environment. What's nice is that your hours are a little flexible so you get to decide on when you show up to work and when you leave and when you go to lunch. Sometimes it depends on what other parts of the country or world your teaming up with or working with. You might have to adjust to working with coworkers working in other countries and other time zones. You can take breaks when ever you want so there is much more freedom here compared to school. It's very different from attending high school with everything being on a set daily schedule. When having to collaborate with others you have to set up times and dates that work for everyone. It is nice when you ask someone to help or meet with you they will most likely do it because they're all on the same team. These were definitely things I had to prepare for when starting my internship. One of my main projects was to add the ability to wireless connect to the maker labs 3D printer so workers here can monitor the status the printer from their office. This is nice because most people who want to do this would normally have to walk across the campus just to find out that most of the time the printer is in use. Also, there will be a webcam pointing at the print bed that will view in detail the status of the current print. Anyone who has started a print and has returned to their office can check in on it to know if both when the job is done and if there were any errors in the print. At this point of time the project is not done. The reason being is that the security is very strict and worried about having our 3D printer being able to be controle and viewed on the network. They are afraid that hackers from outside the network will try to break in and either get sensitive information and/or make the printer do harmful things to it self like for example: set the temperature of the extruder to a dangerous height and start a fire or print a useless large object just to waste our supply of 3D filament. This internship has been very meaningful to me and my future because this is most likely what my field of study is going to be. Being able to work in such a open space with such flexible hours is a totally different experience from high school. In high school I feel that we are somewhat controlled by the staff, our precise hours and class times. Here I feel that I am much more independent in the sense, they have faith in me that my work will be completed on time and my lunch and hours can be more flexible. It makes me feel very excited and a little relaxed when thinking of my future. What I saw in all my co-workers was dedication. Everyone wanted to get their work done efficiently and with quality and good results. Coming from a school where group projects are everywhere and most of the time you will get one or two membermers that don't do as much as the other. It was nice seeing that in a professional workplace that also conducts work in group projects that everyone gives one hundred percent to get their share of the work done fast. That is a model that I strive to be when I get into my future career. I am looking forward to finding work that I am interested in, be knowledgeable with the job and will be proud of my work, How my internship influences my direction in life is to find a job that I will enjoy going to everyday. Even if it's a job that doesn't pay top dollar as long as I can be independent and support myself I will feel in have succeeded. I have enjoyed working here at my internship. It has shown me how important enjoying your job is. Working here where some of the work here is a bit challenging I know I will struggle but I still enjoy the challenge. I could easily see myself applying here after college. I've met with other employees here and have learned that many of them have had many other jobs for how young they are. The reason why they do this is to find the perfect job and in areas that they could see themselves working for the rest of their lives. During this internship I have surprised myself in the fact that I haven't had to advocate for myself as much as I thought I would have had to. For the main and side work I haven't had to advocate at all. I think the reason being is because I'm able to figure out the tasks on my own. But that doesn't entirely mean that I haven't had to advocate for myself. The majority of my advocation I've had to do is in regards to my I.T. security privileges. One of the main hurdles I've been having is getting myself a loner computer and an internal email for my internship. This way I would be able to safely use the internet and contact my mentors and co-workers. Because I am a high school student (which is very rare here at my internship) the process of getting me these have been different than opposed to a normal employee/intern. With the help of my mentor, I have been able to get my lonar MacBook for the rest of my stay here. Once I got my MacBook I had a few glitches on my internal account. For example I was not able to change my password from the default password which is a very serious security risk due to almost every employee knowing that default password (because it’s everyone's first/default password). Another glitch was when I was not able to connect into my internships V.P.N (Virtual Private Network). This is fine if I’m on campus and using the internet connection because they already have countless sets of security measures and firewalls so my work isn't hacked or intercepted. But I do need to be on the V.P.N. when I am working on work from home due to my internet connection not having the proper security and firewall protection. So I advocated for myself to my IT representative and had her help me set up my V.P.N. connection so I can work from home safely.
Funny enough I did not know the “How to be an intern everyone remembers” document existed until reading this assignment. But I have been following these tips in the document because all of them and even more tips were taught to me on my first week of internship through a process that every new employee and intern goes through called ‘Onboarding’. Onboarding is a presentation of all the things you must know about my workplace including: security, badge use, tip on how to work with co-workers and work etiquette. So everything that the “How to be an intern everyone remembers” document lists I have been doing since day one because of this Onboarding. And for me it’s working out very well besides the part of writing down notes. Some people will be talking to fast for me to write down important information. What I do is ask them to repeat what they said and then I’m able to write down the important information. My main project for the rest of my time here at my internship is very important stuff. Trying to explain it without giving out too many sensitive details is going to be tricky.
What they are is prototype units that are going to be used in demos for companies who want fast internet speeds while using a V.P.N. (Virtual Private Network). A V.P.N. allows companies to hide their sensitive information while its traveling across the internet by traveling through private network (paths, highways, tunnels, however you want to call it). This make it harder for hackers to find it and intercept it. Even if they do somehow find it, the hardware I’m using encrypts the data before sending it out though the internet so the information will be impossible to read. What I am doing with this is reconfiguring the prototype hardware to be able to do this task so they can be shown to potential enterprise customers. The prototype hardware were used for a previous project and now all of them need to be reconfigured. There are around 14 of these prototypes that need to be converted. As of right now I have completed two of them and have tested them, which is the second part of my project. Setting up the demo itself for the potential customers will involve creating a clean looking UI (User interface). The UI will show the speed graph of how fast there internet speed is without the demo unit and a speed graph of the internet speed with the demo. This will show them that with ‘accelerator’ their internet speeds and bandwidth is greatly improved. The skills I am going to need to accomplish this is my experience with the Linux/unix operating system. More spicalfy the terminal command line. I used to do a lot of this back in my middle school days and being able to uses these skills again are pretty cool. Another skill I’m going to need to use is coding in Python. I’m not going into the details of what I might need to write. I will need support for this because my knowledge in Python is very limited. I will be working alongside a college intern who has much more experience than I do in Python so we will be working with him on this. Why did you want to work here?
I've known about this through the school and outreach. I like how their trying to support and outreach to communities. Do you consider this career satisfying? I do, I like working with creators and I like working with other people that enjoy the same type of engineering I do. Is there anything you wish you'd realized about the world of work when you were my age? Networking is key. Its a great way to develop new ideas with others. My first day at my internship was pretty exciting. The first thing I had to do was go over to building #1 to get my work badge. So the majority of the morning was getting that done. Once I got that I was able to head over to building #10 across the street where I my new work area is. With my new badge I am able to swipe it over the padlocks over locked doors to unlock them and I won’t have to go through security like I've had to do in the past.
My work area is the Innovation lab on the second floor. It is in a lot of ways similar to a makerspace lab at my school but has a few differences. What strikes me the most here is how new the tech and IOT (Internet of things) are. Everything here is very modern and probably around a decade more advanced than at my school. It’s pretty cool being able to work with all these items as part of my internship. What struck me the most about my co-workers is how supportive and easy going they are. They want things to get done but also make sure that every other factor is good. For example: They want to make sure that the person getting the task does not have other things to do at the time so they won’t get over stressed. If something doesn’t go the way we expected, nobody starts pointing fingers but starts working on a plain B. It’s nice knowing that going in which removes a lot of stress for me. For my job that I am doing is maintaining and organizing the lab. But what strikes me the most is that people from other departments will come in and ask me to do much more advanced work. Then when I'm done I will go back to the other work of the Innovation lab. I was having a conversation with my mentor and she explained that no matter what position you have in this company you will always get advanced work and light work. Everyone will get work that they can get done easy and other work that they will have difficulty with. I'm really excited because in the next week I will start to work on a few projects with college interns. I'm not sure exactly what we might work on but I might have a few ideas. That is also what I am concerned about. I am concerned that the work I will be starting next week will be too advanced for me and I will not be able to finish it properly. I walked into the side door of the building #10, even when I should have taken the front door. I get scanned in by another employee using their badge. I went up stairs past where I would be working for internship and into the roast house. There I got some coffee and snacks and made my way over to my work space to meet my mentor. There we discussed what I would be doing over the course of internship. First she told me what different types of software I would be using.
The software she wants me to know is: -Webex meetings -Screen sharing with Lync and other tools -Outlook meeting scheduling -Hipchat and Jabber -Wiki Then we discussed the potential main project and the side project that I and the other interns would be doing. For the main project I will most likely make a Rube Goldberg Machine that would spain across the different buildings thought the internet. It’s a ruff idea, not many details are set yet because the security division is giving us trouble. After that she told me the things that I would handle in the workspace to make it nicer like for example: -label internet of things (IOT) -make instructions for IOT -make video instructions for IOT -3D print for co-workers -clean up the ariea When I spent my time there I noticed what other workers stance on dress code and work hours. The times are very flexible where anyone can show very early in the morning or could come in later. Lunch seemed to be flexible as long as you made up any missed hours if needed. Dress code seemed very casual or relaxed business. |