Hardware Accelerator 2017: Week 1
Curious what happens during the Rev summer Hardware Accelerator? Here’s a quick recap of Week 1. Be sure to join us on August 10th for Hardware Demo Day, where the teams will get to show off their prototypes.
The first week of the Hardware Accelerator is a skills camp. Teams got an introduction to the program from Assistant Director Xanthe Matychak, setting up learning goals and expectations. They also met Rev’s entrepreneurs in residence, who act as business mentors throughout the program.
Teams get to know each other by presenting their initial project ideas.
They then got an overview of the process for designing a product using development boards — a circuit board designed for learners that has pre-set capabilities. In this case, teams got to work with the Photon board, from Particle.
In Shik Lee, Adjunct Professor of Design at Tompkins Cortland Community College, came to give the teams a lesson in sketching and modeling. Using an exercise involving making paper lamps, the teams learned about taking an idea from 2D to 3D.
Hardware teams use a paper lamp exercise to learn about taking ideas from sketch to reality.
Finally, the teams got a lesson in digital fabrication. They trained on the various pieces of equipment in Rev’s purpose-built prototyping lab, learning to use one tool at a time for simple projects.
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