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Author Topic: Jamon Being an Adult  (Read 14547 times)

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jamonwindeyer

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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #30 on: April 10, 2018, 08:50:39 pm »
+1
Ooh all these diagrams look fancy and I don't even know what it is lol (I looked at one of these diagrams for a construction site and I was so lost what the diagram was trying to say lmao). What exactly are you using to design these documentations?

Neither did I three months ago ;) It's a program called AutoCAD - Engineers use a lot of CAD (Computer Assisted Design) software. It's a broad range of tools that help you do things like produce technical diagrams, run simulations, and create to scale 3D models ;D

CAD is to engineers what Adobe is to film makers, photographers and designers ;D

Edit: You can download AutoCAD for free if you are a student and feel like mucking around with it!


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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #31 on: April 10, 2018, 08:54:42 pm »
0
Neither did I three months ago ;) It's a program called AutoCAD - Engineers use a lot of CAD (Computer Assisted Design) software. It's a broad range of tools that help you do things like produce technical diagrams, run simulations, and create to scale 3D models ;D

CAD is to engineers what Adobe is to film makers, photographers and designers ;D

Edit: You can download AutoCAD for free if you are a student and feel like mucking around with it!
Ooh looks like I found something to waste my time on in the holidays ;)

Is it compatible with IOS system?
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jamonwindeyer

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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #32 on: April 10, 2018, 08:58:14 pm »
+1
Ooh looks like I found something to waste my time on in the holidays ;)

Is it compatible with IOS system?

Aha you can get CAD stuff on iPads, yes!! And it's a good way to muck around with it ;D otherwise you can get it for free on Windows or Mac, here! :)

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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #33 on: April 14, 2018, 12:05:13 am »
+8
Week 12

Halfway through the internship! Gone crazy quick, actually ;D

With the project done, I've shifted into a very different style of work. Rather than a single project where all the deadlines are self mandated (no one else is really waiting on me, the client has deadlines but I work at my pace and in the order I choose), this week was about doing lots of smaller tasks for many people.

This is something I struggled with hardcore in my first placement. I think its a big difference between proper work and work in say, retail - In retail, your manager tells you what to do and that is that. This week, I made myself available to many people and so had lots of people asking me to help them out, independently. This means that, not only do I need to prioritise the tasks, I need to communicate properly with everyone to make sure they know how I'm travelling. If Person A's task is more important than Person B's, Person B needs to know that I'll be getting to their work later - Etc, etc.

In my first placement, I found it hard to juggle work and communicate this properly. I would be hesitant to take any additional work on top of the first given task, which is not how things work. This week, I feel I did a way better job arranging things and keeping everyone happy ;D

One of my colleagues has been conducting checks on a purchase order from a client. Basically, they are buying millions of dollars worth of equipment based on documents supplied to them, we need to make sure they actually need what they are buying based on the design they have. This involved lots of work in Excel, including (finally, after not touching it for agees) getting back into VBA, writing scripts to trawl through the thousands of instruments to look for matches and stuff. Definitely don't feel like doing that manually.

A little note - Any Engineers reading this wanting to improve their employability, learn Excel. Become a wizard with it, including Macros if you can. Seriously the most broadly useful piece of software ever. I've used it in every Engineering workplace environment I've been around, used it at university, hell, I use it for AN work.

The previous intern developed a booking system for electronic software licenses using some fancy features in Outlook. It was supposed to go live last year, but for whatever reason, didn't quite get there. Updated the documentation, ran some tests and got the system going ;D

I spent the remainder of my time becoming familiar with the design for the project I'll be helping with next - This one is much bigger. The design I was involved with previously was a few dozen drawings, this one is hundreds - We're designing a system to automate operation in a big smelter. Automation is good, it reduces human error and keeps personnel away from super hot temperatures and dangerous high voltages.

This design is intense, mostly because the voltages are just so high. A little fault somewhere and you can literally reduce your circuits (and anyone near them) to ash. There's lots of use of radio and fibre-optics to reduce the amount of actual electrical connections between zones, to reduce the change of a stray high voltage getting somewhere where it shouldn't.

Anyway, I spent a solid day and a half looking over the current design, wrapping my head around it, making notes for us to use when we start making changes next week to get things working automatically. It's really cool to be given time to just understand stuff - It felt weird though, I needed to remind myself that I was working even though I wasn't necessarily producing a deliverable ;D

Lots more to write about now that my work is more varied! :)


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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #34 on: April 21, 2018, 12:24:51 am »
+10
Week 13

Another really busy week!!

Last week I spent a heap of time reviewing a design for an aluminium smelter. Basically, they've got a big crane 'thing' that refills all the big pots of liquid metal. Right now this is done/controlled by an operator, but they want to make it automatic - Less chance of stuff getting missed, less chance of damage, etc etc.

The crane works using a bunch of switches (relays) that turn each other on and off in the right sequence to do things in the right order. No processing, no computer - Purely hardwired, which is amazing! For me, at least - The more experienced Engineers used to do everything like that, aha. Anyway, automation requires processing, so we need to take that design and add a controller. This involves finding the electrical signals we want to bring in as inputs, and those we want to control as outputs, and wiring them up.

To do that, we need drawings of exactly what we want - That's what I spent the first couple of days doing this week. Adding red pen to the existing drawings to indicate the changes we actually want, to be done more professionally/properly by a draftsperson later.

Second half of the week, new project! This one is working with a SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) System - Something I've actually worked on before, exciting! These systems are how pretty much any 'plant' monitors and controls their equipment from a central location. It's essentially a run time environment, with graphics/behaviour/roles/permissions/alarms/logging developed as needed, that runs on your machine and communicates with external processors and equipment.

What I was doing was helping set up some brand spanking new machines with the right configurations for an existing SCADA system. Had to get them to talk, so lots of changing firewall settings and IP addresses and such. Did lots of modifications to the SCADA to make it work nicely on the new hardware. Set up partitions for recovery environments and backups and such. The coolest thing for me though was actually modifying the registry to completely disable Windows for the user account - So, when you log in, you don't get a Desktop and Taskbar. You get the SCADA environment, and that's it. But like, you can't just do that - What if you need to update the machine or access a backup file? So in the SCADA system, behind a password, you need to add a backdoor that manually starts the relevant processes and lets you get into Windows if you need it. Messy stuff!

I felt really good at work this week - I think because I've actually got experience working with SCADA systems, I can be more to my boss than just a "yes man." I can actually challenge his thoughts and provide a different perspective. At one stage we were discussing something and I caught myself saying, "I don't think that's right mate, I think it's actually _________," and I sort of went on autopilot then because I was too busy thinking, "Wait, what am I doing." I'm actually at the point now where I can be a member of the team, and it sort of took me by surprise, because I haven't ever had the confidence in my own work to do that yet. Really cool ;D

Question for Computer Whizzes, if any happen to be reading
I have installed a piece of software that automatically generates backup images of my C Drive at regular intervals, and stores these on a spare disk. They have also provided a disc image that is supposed to be a recovery environment. I imagine the idea is I boot into this environment if the C Drive were ever to fail, and it would give me the functionality to restore my system. However, no matter what I try, I can't get the machine to boot into the environment, whether I've burned the recovery image onto a USB or a disc (will probably eventually be its own partition on the spare disk). I've no reason to think the image is faulty, and I've every reason to believe I've screwed up something because I don't do much of this sort of stuff - Anything I might have likely stuffed?



Haven't spoken about my home-life much lately, mostly because I've settled in to the new apartment and not much is happening. I'm majorly hating the lack of daylight atm though, has made it so hard to go for a run after work or generally do anything outside.

Think I'm due for a rental inspection soon, I'm sure my tenancy agreement said after three months and it has been longer. I'm not even concerned - I left this morning for a trip back home after work, and I looked back as I walked out and thought, "Wait, does anyone live here?" Honestly could probably clean up and leave the place with all my stuff within a couple of hours  ::)

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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #35 on: April 21, 2018, 12:36:36 am »
0
I felt really good at work this week - I think because I've actually got experience working with SCADA systems, I can be more to my boss than just a "yes man." I can actually challenge his thoughts and provide a different perspective. At one stage we were discussing something and I caught myself saying, "I don't think that's right mate, I think it's actually _________," and I sort of went on autopilot then because I was too busy thinking, "Wait, what am I doing." I'm actually at the point now where I can be a member of the team, and it sort of took me by surprise, because I haven't ever had the confidence in my own work to do that yet. Really cool ;D

Hello person who happens to be loitering around AN at obscene hours.
Haha must emphasise on the mate- the most Aussie thing I've ever heard (just read an article that Australian's aren't pronouncing Australia correctly anymore- very compelling news article from Sydney Morning Herald I lied it was ridiculous).

Haven't spoken about my home-life much lately, mostly because I've settled in to the new apartment and not much is happening. I'm majorly hating the lack of daylight atm though, has made it so hard to go for a run after work or generally do anything outside.
Yeahh, daylight savings is screwing up everything tbh, especially my cat since she asks for food one hour earlier than her usual time.
But I did see Asian dad meme pre-half yearlies of him being like: 'Daylight saving time: one extra hour for studying.' lol
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jamonwindeyer

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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #36 on: April 21, 2018, 12:43:08 am »
+4
Hello person who happens to be loitering around AN at obscene hours.
Haha must emphasise on the mate- the most Aussie thing I've ever heard

It's a very 'colloquial' work environment ;)

Quote
Yeahh, daylight savings is screwing up everything tbh, especially my cat since she asks for food one hour earlier than her usual time.
But I did see Asian dad meme pre-half yearlies of him being like: 'Daylight saving time: one extra hour for studying.' lol

That's such a good meme  :o

Ironically, daylight savings time is what is breaking the time synchronisation between the machines in the SCADA network I'm working on! It's fixed now (in theory), but apparently the version they currently have is all out of whack because of daylight savings :P


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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #37 on: April 25, 2018, 11:06:23 pm »
+11
Week 14 (Days 1-3)

Public holidays rule ;)

Have spent the first half of this week continuing my work on configuring the machines for the new SCADA system. This system will be implemented in a train station in New Zealand, pretty exciting! Not a whole lot has actually happened, primarily because my boss and I have been spending 90% of our time troubleshooting stuff rather than actually doing stuff. But we hit a milestone yesterday so work should move faster now - We're at the stage where we are doing lots of tests to make sure it actually works properly when it gets to site.

I've gained a new appreciation for Windows. These computers cannot fail (at least not for an extended period), they are responsible for safety systems and security monitoring and all other sorts of important things. So, the system has lots of in built redundancy, which is just a fancy way of saying that we've got extra bits in there purely to take over if other stuff fails. It serves no function unless something breaks. Part of this is a backup disc with images of the operating system which will automatically boot into a recovery mode if the main disc fails - Which means modifying settings in the BIOS (Basic Input/Output Settings) of the board behind the operating system itself.

Basically, although I use Mac for non-work stuff - I shudder to think how I'd go trying this crap on a Mac where Apple locks you out of everything. In Windows, you can pretty much access and change anything you want to. This is great - But also like, keeps you on your toes. Gotta pay attention when you know you could potentially wreck a machine with a few stray keystrokes!

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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #38 on: May 02, 2018, 10:43:04 pm »
+11
Week 14 (Days 4-5)

Bit late with this journal entry! Not much to report - Still working on configuring these SCADA machines.

Rant/Insight into Troubleshooting Process: Spent like two hours diagnosing why I couldn't get into the BIOS of one of the machines. I'd hold the F10/ESC or whatever key on startup like you were supposed to, it would make the beep like it was supposed to, then... Zilch. Blank screen. I was paranoid I'd deleted something important and that I'd need to re-download stuff from HP, etc.

I tried to stop assuming stuff. My supervisor was always super logical when he helped me troubleshoot. Stuff doesn't just happen.

So, why was just this machine doing it, not the others? What was different? All of the computers are identical and I'm trying to do the same thing. Faulty unit? Nah, brand new, what are the chances? Maybe I'll unplug all the extra networking cables to see if it is trying to remote boot or something. No, okay I'll plug them back in. What the hell is...

The monitor cable. Every other machine is a DVI cable. This is a HDMI connection. Swap it over - Yes! The HDMI drivers must be loaded as part of the Windows OS. So what I was doing was working, I just couldn't see it. Go figure.

Lesson for the Week: Nothing breaks/doesn't work for no reason. First step to fix something is to figure out why it broke ;D

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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #39 on: May 14, 2018, 12:29:06 am »
+13
Weeks 15-16

Decided to lump two weeks together for this entry because there's not a whole lot to discuss!! What's happened these last two weeks?

- Finished configuring the PCs for the SCADA network
- Finished the test sheets for the bench test. Since these computers are going into a system that is in charge of emergency evacuations, monitoring dangerous equipment (etc), it needs to be extensively tested. About 50 sheets full of checkmarks, essentially saying, "Yes I push this button and yes it does this thing."
- Wrote/edited a big chunky booklet detailing how everything on the machines works and how it has changed from previous versions

Interesting story - Had a PLC (programmable logic controller) power supply break in testing. A $20,000, literally designed to never break, piece of equipment - Broke. Lovely. It was super old (like, hasn't even been made in 15 years), but these things are designed to run a PLC forever. Boss said he's never seen one just randomly die like it did.

Two cool things about this. One, the company who loaned it to us had another one to loan us. Two, since they don't make it anymore, they don't want the broken one back - So I got to crack it open and check out the PCB on the inside, try to find the fault. I didn't (as if you could, it was a maze of connections), but it was really fascinating to get a look at. I've learned a lot about more complex PCB design at uni, but have never seen more than basic, small ones. Was cool to finally see something with more complexity ;D

I've seriously gotten lazy with going for runs, but I feel it's only partially my fault - It gets dark way too quickly! Instead, I've just been doing stuff in my apartment that I can. Super stupid circuit I came up with the other night because it was raining and dark and I was feeling so unproductive having not moved around a bit:

- Run upstairs
- 10 Push Ups
- Run downstairs
- 10 sit ups
- Repeat all that twenty times

Really should have anticipated this issue and bought some weights or something. Might make a trip to Kmart this week, find something to actually make exercising in this tiny apartment somewhat possible. I could also join a gym, but given I'm only here another two months, probably a bit late :P


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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #40 on: May 28, 2018, 11:22:49 pm »
+9
Weeks 17-18

Another two week update! This one was less of an active decision and more of a, "Crap, I haven't journaled yet," sory of thing ;)

So these two weeks have been spent working on another SCADA project. Same sort of stuff as before, but new project. This one is for a big aluminium smelter. They want to automate (partially, you always need some human input when dealing with huge vats of molten metal I guess, aha) the process of filling up their pots with the different raw materials. For this, we've grabbed signals from some key points in their electrical circuits that will tell us useful data - We then process this to send signals to other parts of the equipment. Essentially, we are taking what used to be a manual switch, and sticking a controller in there without adding too much additional circuitry. However, we still need to monitor the process, so this SCADA system will basically be displaying diagnostics for all 840 pots in their site, and other info too. All this also needs to get logged, and cross checked - Gets messy.

It has been an interesting project to sink my teeth into - Primarily because it's gotten me doing a tonne more programming. I've been writing a lot of Cicode, the programming language behind the SCADA software itself (which I've been told bares resemblance to Pascal as a language). It's mostly simple stuff in terms of programming concepts - Populating arrays, comparing values, etc. It's just that because it is with live data from the field, you've got to do all this conditioning and be really clever with how you handle it. Additionally, it's a unique situation because we are guaranteed to lose communication with our controllers in this project. They communicate via radio and sometimes they just get in the wrong spot. So, we need to be careful that we let the correct failures go without an issue, but still catch errors when they happen at the wrong time. Interesting stuff.

I've also done some stuff with SQL (which I've never touched, so really enjoyed that). Also doing a bit in VBA - Namely, writing some macros to automate the insertion of data into the SCADA software. I'm very glad this is possible - I didn't fancy entering the data for about 17,000 different tags by hand. Automation rules.

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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #41 on: June 06, 2018, 11:33:21 pm »
+13
Weeks 19 (In New Zealand!)

Exciting update this time!! Didn't want to mention it earlier because it was still in flux, but I spent this week (last week at time of writing) in New Zealand with my supervisor, commissioning/installing the new SCADA PCs I had been working on! This was a really cool chance to see my work actually end up as something used in the real world.

We spent Monday travelling and had meetings and simple setup on Tuesday. We'd shipped the PCs from our office so needed to make sure they hadn't been damaged in transit. We ran some checks on their network to make sure nothing would clash with our new PCs when they were switched on. Took backups of their existing system, just in case.

Wednesday morning, up at 3am (1am Sydney time, erghhh...) to be at the train station to swap over to the new PCs before the station opens. Can't swap over with people there, just in case something weird happens. Like, we were changing the PCs that interface with the stations control systems, not the controllers themselves. So realistically, even with no PCs at all, station would run fine. But have to be safe - So we worked from 4am to get the station ready for a 5:30 open.

Thankfully, it all went really smoothly. Seeing green lights starting to pop up on our screens was a huge rush of relief.

Thus began the testing. We did about 8 hours of it on Wednesday, then a bit more on Thursday. Have to satisfy the client, and ourselves, that the system works perfectly. Especially important here, because if something goes wrong, it's an international trip to get over there to help.

Thursday night/Friday morning was emergency tests (that is, testing our systems capability in emergency scenarios). This one was done late at night (tests started at midnight). We needed to tell the Emergency services about it, just in case we accidentally called them during our simulations (the system is designed to call automatically, but we unplugged that connection before we started). Again, all went really smoothly - Managed to be back in the hotel room and asleep by about 3am. Friday was lots of small little fixes. Pop ups appearing in the wrong spot, getting their printer working on our new network (way more complicated than it should have been, go figure, the thing that takes the most time is a bloody HP printer lol).

All in all, it was a really incredible experience. It taught me a lot about how Engineers work with operators, the people who actually use their designs and equipment. Really, they are the experts. For example, at one stage I was disabling some alarms and it was taking ages to look each one up in the database. My supervisor suggested, "Just ask ______ (operator)". She knew exactly what I needed straight away - This tiny little detail of this huge system and she just knew it, like that. Ultimately, the people who use your systems are the ones who know it best - Which makes them hugely valuable when you are installing and (particularly) troubleshooting. You can't look 'down' on the people you are designing for, they probably know your stuff better than you do :)

Exhausting week - Crashed for 12 hours on Saturday night. We're at the tail end of the placement now though - 5 weeks left! It's flown by!

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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #42 on: June 12, 2018, 11:51:05 pm »
+8
Week 20

A much shorter and less exciting update than last week.

We're in the awkward spot now where I don't have long enough left to start a new proper project, but five weeks is still enough time for me to be decently useful. Thankfully, I've found a new project!

First though, I did some tidy up work on the SCADA System we installed in New Zealand last week (paperwork and such), and did some additional configuration for the other SCADA network I touched up in the meantime. That second SCADA system is now done as well, and I helped demo it to the client on the Friday (well, I was there to make sure it didn't break ;)).

The new project has me doing some programming in Visual Basic to develop some new business management systems. Essentially, the accounting/financial software package that the company uses is pretty... Bad. My supervisor said something to the effect of, "If we designed this we'd be out of a job really quick."

So essentially, the approach is to minimise the time we spend using this package. Record the data in there and do the bits it needs to do, then export the data for viewing and actually working with it. I'm designing that - Mostly just a series of Excel sheets with some nifty little VBA macros to do some parsing and filtering. A little bit of work in Visual Studio to develop an actual interface. This is stuff I'm reasonably comfortable with, having done a fair bit of it at previous placements and at uni, but definitely a cool design challenge nonetheless!

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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #43 on: June 19, 2018, 11:30:57 pm »
+9
Week 21

Work continues on these new business management systems. I'm working more closely with a colleague now (a UNSW grad, actually!) and we're starting to make things a bit more sophisticated, getting rid of some bugs, tidying up the actual front end interface rather than the back-end functionality. The tool I've designed is for financial reporting and forecasting; the next step is to have that interface with a bid management system.

Not a whole lot to talk about really, think I'll be a bit of a code monkey these last few weeks, which is certainly fine by me ;)

Starting to do little bits of pack up at my apartment. I've been counting the food I have and only buying enough to get me through exactly to the end of my placement. I've got like half a tub of ground coffee and way too many cans of baked beans, though. Down to my last packet of razorblades, so that should time just about right. Wow, I'm really boring hey  8)

Kind of crazy that it's all wrapping up to be honest - It's gone really quick!

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Re: Jamon Being an Adult
« Reply #44 on: June 26, 2018, 10:08:42 pm »
+10
Week 22

(sorry in advance for the short update)

So much code, so much wow.

Essentially sums up my week! Have done lots of coding and still have lots of coding to do before I finish up in two weeks time. With so little time left, I have been extra mindful (and I like to think I'm mindful of this anyway) of writing really maintainable, easy-to-understand code so that it can be taken over by someone else if it needs to be. That said, my aim is to be finished before I leave!!

Right now I'm working with:

- A VB.Net application
- An Access database
- Various spreadsheets each with macros designed to interface with the database and the application

So lots of juggling balls, developing each in parallel because they are all fairly dependent on each other. Enjoying myself immensely! :)