Design Engineering
Showcase 2020

I improved skills in software development techniques in the areas of software architecture development, version control, release process management, issue tracking, software testing and collaboration with hardware engineering colleagues to solve hardware/software issues.

I carried out some mechanical design work for the camera enclosure. I learned to design with speed and fewer errors to prevent rework later down the line.Later I hand assembled prototypes, carrying out Printed Circuit Board assembly, inspection and testing. These were deployed to the customer.

During product testing, I carried out user interviews to get user feedback. I probed them about specific issues and observed their behaviour in relation to the company’s camera. Feedback was acted upon and improvements made to the camera.

My role as the Design Engineer was to develop a complete camera product from ground up that was light weight, portable, and works in harsh environments. It's compact, battery powered, weatherproof and connected to internet. I did everything from planning, development all the way to release of product. It was cross domain work in Mechanical design, Software, Electronics, Thermal Management and Design for user experience.

I worked closely with my colleagues to design the physical hardware in the camera using CAD software as well as in software development, in the Python and C programming language. I developed the codebase from ground up with some guidance. The code managed the battery, power consumption, user interface and camera control. Ensuring long term reliability and ruggedness was an important feature in the code and in the mechanical design of the camera. I had to optimise the code architecture to fit in all the code into a small microcontroller on the camera.

Software development Key stats:

• Closed 147 Issues
• 1283 commits (across 3 repositories)
• 7 releases

The company has been able to build and deploy the cameras at a very impressive speed, in less than 5 months of development. I could half the development time, sharing the load with the Technical Lead in the project. Due to the speed of development, and the fact that the company has a Minimum Viable Product(MVP), the company now has a first mover advantage in this market for bicycle mounted cameras. The user testing has been valuable in making improvements to the current design.

I thank God for giving me this internship, especially at the peak of the Coronavirus Crisis here in the United Kingdom. I also thank him for helping me develop as a Design Engineer, and especially for helping me solve some very challenging software bugs towards the end of my internship.

I thank Crispian Poon and Elizabeth Yu for hiring me, and for the excellent experience.