Experience: 3 years Number of Projects Led: 2 (note that this doesn’t include leading for the sake of teaching) Email: Rachel@ChapResearch.com Graduated: 2016 LinkedIn: Rachel Gardner GitHub: rachel-1 (note that importing from SVN threw off my stats) Interests: entrepreneurship, sleeping, programming, engineering, Chinese Fun Fact: Rachel’s the lead inventor on a U.S. patent!
Summary
Rachel Gardner is a graduate of Westlake High School and one of the founding members of Chap Research as well as the team lead and programmer for the original project, the Chap Remote. Since the creation of the Chap Remote, she’s been trying to give other students the same opportunity, building up the infrastructure of Chap Research to accomplish this. With nearly four years of experience in FIRST Tech Challenge and FIRST Robotics Challenge as well as with Chap Research, she has worked with a variety of programming languages (C, C++, Java, LabView, PHP, mySQL), bread-boarding, soldering, 3-D printing, management, acting (in the ChapR commercial) etc. etc. She filled in all the little gaps on the team, managing everyone, while also doing marketing, manufacturing, software, mentoring etc. Though she had (very) very little spare time between being valedictorian and CEO, she liked playing video games, reading, going to movies and practicing Chinese. With all that being said, her proudest accomplishment was getting an average of over 7 hours of sleep (though having a patent at 16 is 2nd place)!
Project Contributions
A brief listing of involvement in various projects (outside of duties as a CEO). Click on the titles for links to the project pages themselves, and click on the pictures for more information on specific involvement.
A patented Bluetooth remote control for FIRST robots!
The web interface for keeping track of ChapR sales.
A web application to generate pairs of custom sprockets.
Software – Rachel developed the software for the device, working in the C/C++ of the Arduino environment in order to send/receive Bluetooth packets, change settings, utilize drivers etc.
Marketing – after reluctantly starring in the original ChapR commercial, Rachel also became the captain of the guerrilla marketing squad, creating flyers, business cards etc. and pitching at robotics competitions far and wide. She even wrote a large part of the content for thechapr.com, with the help of Ben and Coach Eric.
Customer Support & Documentation – working under the pseudonym of “The ChapR Team”, Rachel managed the email account thechapr@gmail.com, helping customers and managing orders. She also wrote the documentation for the use of the ChapR
Software – Using a blend of HTML, PHP, CSS, JavaScript and mySQL, Rachel designed the orders database with Coach Eric over the course of a summer.
Software – Beyond just teaching the web programming skills needed, Rachel also wrote the code to integrate the web form with the Linux server (which takes much more effort than it sounds).
The added functionality to run FRC robots with the ChapR.
A web application to help FRC teams manage their outreach.
An Arduino-based game presented at TEDx Labs.
Software – Rachel developed the cRIO and roboRIO compatibility of the device, writing a custom LabView VI to read Serial data and process packets on the cRIO, as well as a custom Linux daemon to read from the USB port and send packets on the roboRIO.
Software – Rachel worked to teach the database and web development skills she’s learned, by creating templates, teaching skills and guiding the new students on this project. In addition, she created a variety of low-level, behind-the-scenes functions to reduce the learning curve and workload of the project for the new students.
Software – Rachel worked to teach the students how to use the Arduino environment, as well as how to create flow diagrams to better plan their code. As part of this, she coded much of the low-level code and helped with debugging. Also, she’d often write the code, then delete it and walk the students through how to write it themselves.
Electronics – Rachel helped wire the perf-board used for the FruitSpiral electronics. As usual, she also taught the various skills involved.
