My Life

29. Arduino Project

We got into the finals, even though we didn't win in the end.

It was a plant self waterer.

At first, it was about automotive but that was far too complicated and thus we changed it into agriculture.

Unsurprisingly, Chaol did not join much during the process of making it.

The pump was successfully made at around 1am. But when I tested it, it was not powerful enough to pump the water out.

So that's a failure right there. And then while I was texting our senior, BOOM!!! went the adaptor

Stars were in front of me and I felt like I was fainting but I struggled to remain conscious and told our senior about it. Then, I went to check whether the board circuit still worked.

It didn't. So the senior asked me to connect the board circuit with the usb port of a laptop. I did, and there was electricity, but it didn't work. It was as if I needed to reprogram it. I tried and tried but there was always an error trying to stop it from uploading. I gave up and went to sleep at 1.40am.

I woke up at 3am, and tried again but nothing happened. The circuit was probably broken after the explosion. I had to accept that... and I cried again. Yeah I was crying at around 1am cause I was scared the thing will never work. This time, I was crying because it is confirmed that it would never work. The only thing left to do was the presentation, which I absolutely have no idea how to do without being able to show them.

I went to school to meet them at six, deciding to do our best in presenting. I wasn't going to tell them what happened so they could present properly. I asked Nicholas to bring his laptop for the powerpoint needed for our presentation. When he came, it was already 6.30am. Then another teammate came with a spare board circuit at 6.45am.

BAM came the idea of trying to reprogram the board circuit using Chaol'scomputer. And we hurried and did it. AND IT FREAKING WORKED. Except for the LED which was not that important and the pump that has not enough power to pump water, which was the MAJOR FLAW

I decided to leave it like that because the registration starts at 7 till 8am at Malaya Science University. So be it. We'll just present the thing and that's all.

When the Moisture sensor detects moisture, it will stop the pump from pumping water out, and when the moisture sensor thinks its dry, it will start the pump for it to pump water out to water the soil.

Now the pump runs ok but the pump is not able to pump water out.

So when the Moisture Sensor detects moisture, it will stop the engine of the pump and when it does not, it will start the engine. I decided to just show them that the engine works, at least, even if it couldn't pump water right now, it has the potential because it meant that the coding worked

So we presented it, but the presentation sucked in our opinion.

My teammate said that I shouldn't have told the judge about unrelated stuff such as the explosion and my finger that was a bit burned. But for me, that was one way to explain why the pump doesn't work, and it meant that we did the trials and testing for it instead of just being clueless about the whole thing, because there needed to be a real reason about why the pump isn't working, instead of the excuse that we had no time. Explosions are a better reason than saying we did it last minute, although the latter part was the real reason.

I didn't argue, although I was a little frustrated.
And no, we didn't expect anything.

When the list of the 8 teams chosen for final round was given, my team was the first team announced.

I was like... Are you serious or just joking.. the pump didn't even work!! Then I broke down in tears.

We didn't make it in the final round though. The two other presentors got nervous.

Chaol and Ammar

It was top 8 selected from at least 64 groups, at least.

All through the competition, Chaol kept talking to me. It was almost as if we were always friends and nothing ever happened between us.

At times, I looked at him with wonder when he spoke to me and forgot to reply him.

The Friday a week before the competition, I went to Chaols's classroom as his teacher wasn't there.

He was also damn alright with talking with me, it was as if we never went through anything,

Not that I don't want this, but afterwards, he became the quiet creature he was, yet again.