Overcoming classroom barriers. Salting wintry roads with less waste. Powering a lawn mower with water.
Senior design students tackled these projects in ECET 49700 (Project Design and Development, Phase II), which is offered each semester as a capstone course for electrical engineering technology majors.
Five students were honored during the public display of the projects May 4:
- David Christensen won the Stryker Award of $1,400 for an Outstanding Senior Design Project for “Classroom Inquisition.” The project implemented the concepts of full-text communication and question/answer sessions in an intuitive and aesthetically pleasing manner for use by instructors in their classes.
- Andrew Burke won the ECET Department Award of an Apple iPad for an Outstanding Senior Design Project for “Discover the World: Interactive Educational Globe.” The educational toy is intended to help parents teach young children about the places shown on a globe. Through the use of an electronic interface, the Discover the World globe engages children and their parents in an interactive educational journey.
- Justin Koegle won the ECET Department Award of an Apple iPad for an Outstanding Senior Design Project for “Electrolysis.” This project was a control system to create hydrogen gas from water. The project then used the produced hydrogen to power a gasoline lawn mower for a short period of time as a proof of concept.
- Kyle Long received an Honorable Mention Certificate for “Salt Spreading Controller and Monitoring System.” This system is intended to automate the current salt dispensing system on snow/ice removal vehicles to improve safety and reduce material cost.
- Brian Smith received an Honorable Mention Certificate for “Automatic In-System Guitar Tuner.” His creation allows a musician to select the desired tuning of the guitar. It conditions the guitar’s output signal to one that can be quantized and then compares the actual value of the string’s note (frequency) to the user’s programmed desired value. If the string needs to be tightened or loosened, the tuner mechanically changes the position of the guitar’s tuning peg until the string is oscillating within the tolerated range of frequencies.