Summary

This past week was all about iteration, unexpected pivots, and seeing our prototypes come to life piece by piece. From finally milling our first custom PCB and polishing new egg shells, to adding preset camera movements and swapping boards for a more efficient design, it was a week packed with small wins and bigger lessons

Hey there, and welcome back to my blog! If you’re new here or need a quick refresher, you can catch up on all my earlier updates. This summer, I’m diving into two really exciting projects: one’s a smart egg prototype supporting conservation efforts for the Attwater Prairie Chicken, and the other a vertical inspection camera system to monitor microgreens in an indoor hydroponic farm. Both are fast-paced and hands-on, full of new challenges and plenty to learn.

This past week was all about iteration, unexpected pivots, and seeing our prototypes come to life piece by piece. From finally milling our first custom PCB and polishing new egg shells, to adding preset camera movements and swapping boards for a more efficient design, it was a week packed with small wins and bigger lessons.

Whether you’re here for the engineering deep dive, the design challenges, or the little life updates beyond the lab, I’m excited to share it all with you. So, let’s jump right in!

Egg Project Progress

We finally got the PCB from the Carvera mill machine! It felt like a huge step forward. But once we tested it, it still didn’t quite fit inside the egg shell. After trimming and slightly resizing the design, it finally fit neatly. During soldering, though, we discovered the traces were too close together — the solder kept bridging across lines, leading to short circuits. So, we redesigned the PCB again with wider traces to make soldering cleaner and more reliable. We also created a new 3D egg model with internal compartments to better stabilize the circuitry inside, and after printing, we polished the outer shell with the polisher machine to get a smoother, more realistic finish.

Since we need to make six eggs for our client, I focused on debugging PCB connections for two eggs this week. We also emailed Ric (our client) inviting him to visit and see how the eggs look at different polishing levels. Aside from the electronics and physical design work, we started testing how the substation (our Raspberry Pi) receives data from the PCB circuitry via Bluetooth and then sends that data to Firebase, which updates our website.

We successfully got the data stored in Firebase! It wasn’t fully decoded yet, but seeing the pipeline from hardware to database working felt like real progress. Finally, we started sketching ideas for the website UI, brainstorming features like adding an option for Rick to easily replace or add new eggs in the system, monitoring humidity and temperature, when a chicken sits on the egg during incubation periods and if the egg is being rotated during the process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspection Camera Prototype

At the start of the week, we had a client meeting, and Navid reminded us:

“When designing, don’t think about cost,  think about reliability.”

This week felt like one big step forward, not just in building, but also in rethinking what’s possible for our vertical camera system inside EARTI.

At the start of the week, we clarified some key design constraints with Navid and discovered we actually have about 7 inches of vertical space at the top, instead of being limited to a 3-inch circle. That meant more room to add servo motors for panning and sturdier mounts. Plus, humidity at the top turned out to be less of a problem than we thought, staying around 46–50% thanks to the fan. Later, we showed him our prototype, and he liked seeing the smooth vertical camera movement on the belt-driven system.

By the end of the week, we had a functional prototype combining vertical motion, camera streaming, and controls. We swapped the Raspberry Pi 4B for a lighter Pi Zero, and tested a new camera with an IR filter. On the software side, we set up an RTSP stream viewable on any device on the same Wi-Fi network, and built a Python web server so users can start or stop the stream when needed. We also created preset camera positions so it can move automatically to specific plant trays.

Beyond building, we worked on next steps: sketching a servo bracket for CAD, researching belt and bracket systems, and buying parts to scale the design to its actual size. We switched from Arduino to an ESP32 for better communication with the Pi, and started planning how to merge Bluetooth, streaming, and motor control into one system. Finally, we prepared to install the prototype into the real EARTI frame to spot blockers early and tested the Pi Zero 2 W to confirm it meets our needs.

Towards the end of the week, we were reminded about preparing a project poster and pitch for the upcoming OEDK conference, which was a great nudge to pick up our work pace and keep everything moving forward.

 

A little life outside the lab

Friday was July 4th, Independence Day in the USA, so it was a public holiday! I spent it shopping for a new phone at the Apple Store and Micro Center with a fellow intern, Rahma. Later, we grabbed food at McDonald’s and watched the fireworks from Hermann Park. It was such a lovely weekend break, and Sunday was my rest day to recharge and catch up on some academic commitments back home in Nigeria.

This week was a great reminder that engineering is a cycle of designing, testing, and refining, and it’s so rewarding to see each prototype get better, step by step. Grateful, as always, for my amazing teammates whose creativity and persistence make all these challenges exciting to tackle!

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

Eniola 🙂