Betty The Maze Baller and the Lifehack of Perseverence

Good evening fellow modern pioneers,

Today was freedom day in South Africa. This is a public holiday that commemorates the first post-apartheid elections held on this day in 1994. For many working on a public holiday is not a choice. The way things are here mean that for many the money is too important to give up.

I am privileged not to fall into this category and am grateful for my opportunity to study engineering. Not just engineering, but my favorite type of engineering: mechatronics.
This discipline combines electronic engineering with mechanical engineering practices. Mechatronics is pursued in order to create systems which are fast, efficient and human-indepenent.

Much like my experience with steemit, I am a redfish of engineering. However, today I feel as though my team and I have accomplished something meaningful. We have created Betty. Yes, I know parents think their kids are the chosen ones and I'm her parent, but boy isn't she a beaut?

Betty in All Her Glory

Betty is the brain child of five stressed out kids and over one hundred hours of work. For a large part of this project we were worried about getting done in time for our demonstration. Today we finally managed to get both of her axes working simultaneously.

Betty is a maze-solving machine operating with two DC motors using PID control. The two axes allow a user to remotely solve a ping-ping ball maze. This may seem like a child's game but what it exhibits is something far more valuable: Science and technology working in tandem to solve a problem.

Night Sky at Engineering

There are many times when it feels as if what you are doing will never reap rewards. You will often feel as though you work and work and work but never get anywhere. But sometimes... sometimes you get a glimpse of what the future has to hold. Hang in there and do what you were built to do:

Innovate