We managed!....even with 33% of our group not here!

To start this blogpost off...
Dear Nikki,
I hope you get well soon! Finals are coming up, just hang in there for one more week! :)
Love, Rachelle & Kenneth
But yes, as you can see, Nikki is sick and was absent during our class yesterday. On the other hand...this did not stop us from being productive! As Kenny explained in the previous blogpost, we used class time wisely and put up our signs. THIS, blogpost is going to be about our 2nd test run for the bus announcements that Rachelle and Kenny did Tuesday afternoon. Even though we only had two people, we were able to manage decently.

(I was the new Kenneth and listened in on the transportation radio):

We had a rough start though; we didn't know how to actually get the PA system to work in the beginning because we forgot to press "#". This delayed our announcements a little and we missed announcements for the first 3 buses. Secondly, Ms. Martin came back into her office halfway at about 3:45 and let us know that we need to be a bit more "lively". She was in a meeting with Mr. Blake for a possible new teacher and I think the bus announcements were a little disruptive to their meeting. There were also a few more combinations yesterday, which should've actually helped people who were catching those buses.
Although we had to face some difficulties, they were minor and we were able to push through! Can't wait to see what will happen this afternoon!

our project is off the wall!!! ...well actually our signs are ON the wall!

today in class we went on an excursion to the smith office (i swear we've been in there more than in the classroom this quarter). we went in firstly to have Ms. Martin approve our signs to be put up, and secondly to have Ms. Akiona work with us to rearrange the bulletin board so that we could fit our (crooked) bus line up along side all of the other information on the board. it took some work and intense creative thought but eventually we found a pattern that we could fit all of the necessary signage. 

this sign wasn't a part of our original project plan but we decided that it would be a nice addition for people to know the order in which their buses are to arrive. thats why our sign isnt really very fancy but it still gets the job done. we hope that lots of people will be able to view our sign and be helped by knowing when their bus will come in relation to the other buses.

First Test Trial (a great start)

Learning to work the PA system

Our sweet setup

Today was a good day; we managed to start our project trial right on time at 3:30. We had a quick crash course from Mrs. Martin ("Okay guys, press PAGE, then 1, then 19, then #") on how to work the PA system, then we switched on the walkie-talkie radio, listening to Mr. Cardenas remind the drivers to call out their route when they left for Konia. Although it took a couple of runs to get our announcements running smoothly (note to self: wait until the beeping over the PA system stops before you announce anything), we managed to get a system in working order by the time Mililani B/C was announced over the walkie-talkie. Rachelle documented our trial, noting what was helpful and what was not, and went outside to get feedback. Kenny helped me inside, listening carefully to the frequency and letting me know what buses were on their way. And I announced the buses over the PA system. We were quite successful, I think, because people asked later if the announcements were part of a physics project and a couple of people noted that the announcements came in loud and clear through the classrooms. The one hitch we had was that people at the bus stop itself were unable to hear the announcements as clearly because of the existing noise and the openness of the bus stop itself. Although that is an unfortunate and  discouraging turn, we still are helping people and still helping to fix a problem that needed to be solved, so we'll see at our next trial run (tomorrow). Here's to Day 2!

Counting down the days...

I'm starting to feel the stress... just a little.

With less than two weeks left, we are really in the "crunch zone." As Rachelle and Kenny have stated in previous posts, we have had many trials and tribulations in preparing and designing a solution to our problem. We've gone through Plan A-Z and we're still coming back for more. Although we may not be successful in the end, we are still going ahead with this project and we'll keep moving forward. Tomorrow we are supposed to meet with Mrs. Martin and learn how to work the PA system and test out the walkie-talkie relay system that we proposed to Mr. Cardenas last Thursday. I really hope this system works— we've already gone through so many ideas and proposals— but we'll see; I'm sure everything will work out. We're at the last leg of our mini-marathon and we're just clearing the home stretch. A lot of our problems were from logistics and even physics— in figuring out how to work the PA system, the walkie talkie system, and the reality of the difficulties of communication, we've learned so much that we would have never expected to learn before. I'm so happy that we're almost done and we've been working hard. Good job guys! :)

It's getting close to the end!

Sorry this is a late blogpost for Friday because I (Rachelle) was supposed to post this Friday. Mehd I'm so angry I even had everything set up and everything I just didn't post it to the blog :( oh wells, darn it, I'm so sorry! But on Friday Nikki and I weren't able to be in class because I had the AP U.S. History exam and Nikki had states for track. (Dear Nikki, I hope everything went well!! Let us know how it went:) So, as you can tell from the picture Kenny was left alone in class. We are very sorry Kenneth! But it wasn't a wasted class period even though 2/3 of our group was not present. The previous day we were able to make bus arrival signs to put on the Smith bulletin board, warning people the order of their buses. These were to be taken to the office today by Kenneth to get approval from Ms. Martin. I'm sure all went well and I can't wait to see how everything is going to work out this week!

We almost have deployment!!

(sorry this is late!!!!)

so yesterday we had yet another meeting with ms. martin, she made a call for us to mr. cardenas. we had a talk with him confirming what the people from island signal told him. he told us that we need to either put a box with a battery and speaker in the hallway somewhere or we would have to just run a speaker from the office to somewhere else in order to announce the buses. ms martin said that this was a cost that was unecessary because she didnt want to spend money on something that could possibly be in effect for only a couple of weeks. instead we have a new plan, on monday mr cardenas will have the bus drivers announce their passing of akahi over the radio. we were given a radio in order to listen in on this and then we will be able to relay this to the students via the PA system. if we are able to, we will continue this for the next week or so. this will be our official deployment of our project.

Never give up, never surrender!

Today during homeroom our group had another meeting with Mrs. Martin just to clear things up about what was going to be implemented, if something were to be implemented at all. As Kenny explained in the previous blogpost, we were hoping to go with the first option Mr. Cardenas offered, but after taking a second look at Mr. Cardernas' email, we all (Mrs. Martin and our group) came to the conclusion that implementing the radio by the due date, or even by the end of the year, would be nearly impossible. First off, the labor costs to have someone install this would go beyond our $100 budget. Secondly, to install things, work permits have to be sent in 2 weeks before the expected installation date. In two weeks let's see....it'll be summer! Haha, but in all serious-ness, today brought us to the end of the radio road. But! You know what? We're not gonna give up there! Just because what we planned for in our proposal and detailed design didn't work, doesn't mean we're not gonna either!

From this we've developed a new plan...a new PLAN A :) So, with this idea, we plan to manually make the bus announcements ourselves using our own man-power. It'll work because someone will be down at Paki letting the two other group members at the top which buses are coming up, and these two group members will make the announcements over the PA system themselves. Even though our first plan wasn't able to be followed through...we will NEVER give up and NEVER surrender!