The OctoPi was a fun project because it was so different from everything else I was working on. Also, it forced me to finally start learning python. The OctoPi is a stack of 8 Raspberry Pi’s being used to controller 8 cameras recording at 100 fps. The Raspberry Pi’s and recording were both set up prior to me joining. I was brought in to make it so that all 8 cameras would start recording with a single press of a button so that the operator wouldn’t need to manually start the script on each Pi. I accomplished this by writing a script on the top Pi that waited for a button press then sent a signal to all other Pi’s. All the other Pi’s had scripts that simply waited for the signal from the top Pi. To make sure that all the recordings were synched both scripts then waited for a signal from the system being recorded. Finally, I had to setup a Raspberry Pi shell script that would run my python scripts on startup. I was also responsible for all the wiring required for the button and various signals.
The custom trays project was the project I worked on for the longest while at Novartis. The trays were needed to maximize the used space in a set of new chemical storage shelves. There were 6 different tray sizes and they needed approx. 100 of each. This quantity was above my group’s capabilities but lower than a standard big batch manufacturing project. The awkward quantity made getting the trays made surprisingly difficult. The different designs shown below highlight my iterative process as I quoted the trays for various manufacturing techniques. The first three are for laser cutting, and the last three are for injection molding, thermoforming, and sheet metal respectively. Through this process I was able to work an original quote of $100,000 down to $24,000.
In addition to the three projects highlighted above I worked on a variety of smaller projects while at Novartis, a selection of these projects is shown below. Starting from the top left: the first two are custom racks for holding things in place on an auto pipettor; the third is a custom mount for a barcode scanner; the fourth is a trash chute for dumping pipette tips; the last two are the closed and open configurations of a wax mold.
