Learning about the routine of a software developer and having the possibility to work on an own project: this is the summary of the experience of Jakob, a young pupil who did his school internship at Viaboxx, from January the 13th to 31th this year. Below, he tells us a little more about these days:
In January 2020, I did a school internship at Viaboxx GmbH. During my three weeks of internship, I mainly worked with Arduino. Moreover, I took a closer look at the job of a software developer.
During the first week, I started to get familiar with Arduino, different sensors and actuators.
Afterward, I chose my own project. My goal was to build an autonomously driving car with Arduino. For that the following parts were needed:
– 2 DC motors, which can spin in two directions
– 3 wheels (2 are connected to the motors and 1 for stabilization)
– 1 distance sensor, which can be rotated with
– 1 Servo motor
– 1 Arduino
The two DC motors are used to let each wheel drive forward and backward. That way the car can move forward, backward and spin left and right. The distance sensor and the Servo motor are used to scan the area and tell the car in which direction it needs to move.
The software checks how much distance is between the car and the obstacle ahead of the car. If there is more than 30 cm of distance the car drives forward, if there is less than 20 cm of distance the car drives backward and if it is within that area it stops. After that, it checks the distance in the surrounding area to calculate the angle it needs to turn to drive parallel to the obstacle. It turns and then the cycle repeats itself.
In addition to that, I was able to see how software developers work, how they fix bugs in the software and how they implement new features.
Doing my internship at Viaboxx was a great experience. Supported by friendly and experienced colleagues I was able to learn a lot about developing and using software in combination with hardware.
Special thanks go to everybody who supported me.
The Viaboxx team thanks Jakob for choosing us for his school internship. We had a good time together and hope to have given him a good impression of software development and the daily life of a software developer.