The Project aimed to raise 1000 CAD by hosting a charity event at Tailgators Ottawa. All the funds collected through that event will be transferred to Make-A-Wish Foundation, Canada, to support children with illnesses. The event involved an entry ticket of $10 which provided attendees with an unlimited game of pool table and table tennis, and a silent auction. For the silent auction, the items were collected from businesses that wanted to participate in that noble cause. To promote the event, a detailed marketing strategy plan was created. The marketing plan was executed step by step to gain visibility and attract the audience to the event. Once Marketing was completed successfully, the event was hosted at Tailgators, and the funds collected will be transferred to the Make-A-Wish Foundation Canada Coordinator. After the event’s completion, a closing report will be submitted to Make-A-Wish Foundation. A lessons-learned document will be prepared for Academic purposes.
Reaction All Years
Snowprint is a website that lets you create unique snowflake designs. By entering a significant date, like a birthday, into Snowprint, you can generate a personalized design related to that specific date. Additionally, you can manually create a design using the design-it-yourself panel. The resulting design can be downloaded as an STL model for 3D printing and as a PNG image for laser cutting (or any other purpose for which an image is suitable).
Snowprint was created to replace a website that was used by our clients at MakerSpace at Algonquin College. Unlike the previous website, Snowprint can generate a snowflake design directly. In contrast, the previous website generated design parameters that had to be manually entered into a separate program to generate an STL model. This method was slow and susceptible to errors, which motivated the development of Snowprint. The snowflakes showcased in the gallery below were designed using Snowprint and manufactured in MakerSpace.
During development we learned more about 3D printing, laser cutting, the HTML, CSS, SVG, and JavaScript languages, the three.js library, graphics, geometry, random number generation, accessibility, and technical writing.
We organized an event for the “Legacy of Hope Foundation” which is a national, Indigenous-led, charitable organization that has been working to promote healing and Reconciliation in Canada for more than 19 years. Their goal is to educate and raise awareness about the history and existing intergenerational impacts of the Residential School System (RSS) and subsequent Sixties Scoop (SS) on Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) Survivors, their descendants, and their communities to promote healing and Reconciliation. Our project was a music gala charity event to raise funds for the “Legacy of Hope Foundation” which featured music, a dance floor, karaoke, and a silent auction. We believed, that music gala charity events are a powerful way to bring people together, raise awareness, and generate significant funds for important causes. They are a fun and engaging way to make a difference and support important causes. The event was organized on March 27, 2023 from 7 PM to 10 PM at Amigos Sport Bar at Merivale, Ottawa. During the event, we also tried to raise awareness about the work of the “Legacy of Hope” and the cause it supports. This was helpful for the attendees about the cause and encourage them to get involved in a friendly manner. The event brought the people together for an evening of fun and entertainment, promoting community building and a sense of togetherness. We believe, our project made a difference by supporting important causes and making a positive impact in the community. Moreover, the extent to which the event raised awareness about the cause and the work of the “Legacy of Hope” was also a key factor in determining the success of the project and by monitoring these metrics, we had a clear understanding that the project was successful in achieving its objectives and making a positive impact in the community.
The project was led by the project team, consisting of team members with skills covering different areas of project management, such as procurement, communications, risk management, quality management, and stakeholder management. Each team member had a specific role and accompanying responsibilities, to ensure that the project is delivered within its defined scope, timeline, and budget constraints. This clear division of tasks was really helpful to ensure the smooth and successful execution of the project.
The night before the event, we found out that the venue had no speakers anymore so we had to rent it within a very short period of time. All the proceeds from ticket sales and other activities are going directly to the designated charity. The event was organized as a part of the course work and we learned that we can bring people together for an evening of fun and entertainment while raising awareness and funds for the cause. The project’s ultimate objective is to make a difference and support important causes in a fun and engaging way.
The Cone of Silence is designed to emit ultrasonic frequencies, which are frequencies that are parsed as audible frequencies by microphones (24kHz to 26kHz). The device acts as an effective white noise generator to counteract microphones on digital devices. The device is designed to function with a power supply, which is charged via a USB-C connection. It also has a potentiometer which will interact with the amplifier circuit to control the effective radius of the device.
In September of 2022, the team connected with Mechanic to You after reviewing their post on seeking a team to build a mobile application for their business. Since 2009, Mechanic to You provided auto repair services to Ottawan at the customer’s home parking, on the curbside or from Mechanic to You’s garage. The use of smart phone devices has become the norm in everyday life and in that it lies the opportunity to automate the process in receiving requests for services and providing jobs to subscribed auto mechanics.
The team built the base of the Android mobile application around a framework that is consistent with the client’s business requirements. The MtY app consists of two parts, the mobile application and a back-end application holding business information that drives the activities around completing a service request. The MtY app is a user friendly application that emphasizes on an appealing design that blends smoothly with components that dynamically respond to the user’s requirements. As with any business that wishes to expand digitally, a database system and a system to exchange information is required which the team built. The back-end application is the key to promoting the solution that Mechanic to You offer by delivering and updating business information through a representational state transfer(REST) application.
The journey in developing the MtY app has been rich with real world experience that allowed experimentation in a heuristic approach to practice under an educational environment. The team acquired both hard skills and soft skills through corresponding with the client, keeping up with group meetings, forming a mode to expressing ideas and establishing the criteria to reaching a consensus. On hard skills, the team learned to use new tools and framework, such as, extensible application markup language(XAML), Xamarin cross-platform integrated development environment(IDE) and many application programming interface (API) available on NuGet package manager.
Lastly, the team would like to express our thanks to the client and Algonquin College for facilitating the grounds for our learning process. It’s our honour to have participated through-out the phases of the project from the planning stage to proudly presenting our successes on the MtY app.
This project began with Indro Robotics, a R&D company who specializes in the development of unmanned vehicles. They reached out to us to come up with a proof of concept of a lightweight RFID reader for drones. This would be used to augment the performance of their existing camera-based inventory management system. Problems such as improper lighting and damaged labels causes the vision-based system to generate inaccurate readings. New technology such as RFID does not rely on line-of-sight, but instead uses radio waves to identify objects.
We were challenged to design and build a lightweight RFID scanner that would meet the following criteria:
– Have a read range over 0.7 m.
– Have a maximum dimension of 20x20x20 cm with payload.
– Weigh no more than 1kg.
– Be built within a budget of $1000.00.
– Store data in the Jetson Nano.
– Reads tags in all orientations.
The solution consisted of designing and building a lightweight RFID scanner for drones that would be able to scan multiple tags and store its data on the onboard Jetson Nano. This was accomplished with the Spark Fun Simultaneous RFID Scanner and supporting hardware. This development board is designed to work with an Arduino, but with extensive firmware development the reader was able to transmit, receive and decode radio waves sent from the RFID tags. Then sends the data directly to the Jetson Nano via serial communication.
This project was a valuable learning opportunity to gain skills we never had. The project involved 3D modeling, 3D printing, custom circuit schematics, bill of materials, C-programming, microcontroller interfacing. Fortunately, we accomplished all our project criteria, and it was returned to our client where they will develop the idea further.
The project began when the Public Health Agency of Canada approached our program with a problem: how to communicate time sensitive measures to different communities and user groups. The Covid-19 outbreak brought attention to this issue and highlighted the significance of precautionary measures. Our aim was to explore timely means of communications to different communities and user groups, and how to build trust for adoption of life saving practices.
Through our secondary research we learned for individuals to adopt prompt health measures, they need to be made aware of what they are at risk of and how to best practice recommendations to protect themselves. The first step was to understand an individual’s baseline knowledge of communicable and non-communicable diseases and assess trusted channels health information. We decided to narrow our focus to the rise of type-2 diabetes in Canada, focusing on general awareness and baseline prevention knowledge.
We compiled questions about access to healthcare advice, channels of information and attitudes towards health behaviour. We adopted a mixed-methods approach that involved a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews. The survey was designed to gather health behaviour data, status of communication with healthcare providers and desired outcomes of healthcare experiences. The interviews aimed to gather qualitative insights on patients’ experiences and perspectives; what influences their trust with doctors, health advice considered and their healthy lifestyle practices. We had 67 validated survey respondents, 7 semi-structured interview participants and consulted 5 subject matter experts.
We uncovered a significant communication gap within the instances of adults without family doctors, which places an onus on individuals to explore health related information through their familiar channels. In our survey; Google, family and friends were just as common for clarifying new medical terminology as asking healthcare professionals. We found participants wanted a family doctor to experience consistency and build trust for continuous care. The healthcare provider-patient relationship also influences the social support network on best practices for informal caregivers, having a ripple effect affecting holistic coaching and social pressure to engage in at-risk behaviours.
Based on user testing, we found that people responded well to reminders for healthcare check-ups and age-related health milestones. To address this touchpoint need, we have developed a digital solution with physical interactions that includes a pilot program kiosk available to pharmacies for health risk assessments. The kiosk prompts users to take a two-minute survey to assess their potential risk of developing type-2 diabetes through the CanRisk application. This content can also be available through an interactive email format, marketed towards employers and services for employee engagement. The main objective is to build trust within a communication channel that can be scalable for other lifestyle and age related health risks, as well as ad-hoc health advisories such as heat waves, seasonal flus and other transmissible diseases.
Project Hope is an initiative to support Indigenous communities through the Legacy of Hope Foundation. Our project involves a variety of activities that allows us to engage with our community and raise funds for a great cause. We will organize a dinner and music event, “Rhythms from Brazil,” which is a night filled with live jazz music and delicious food that will bring together members of our community for a fun and meaningful way to support Indigenous communities. We will also hold a raffle for an indigenous keepsake, which will give participants a chance to win a unique and special item while supporting a great cause. Additionally, we will celebrate International Women’s Day and St Patrick’s Day with themed bake sales, where we will sell delicious baked goods that are specially made for the occasion. Lastly, we will provide an option for online donations, allowing individuals who can’t attend our events to still contribute to our cause.
All proceeds will be donated to the Legacy of Hope Foundation to support their work with Indigenous communities.
A smart phone application and martial arts body armour equipment are designed, programmed, assembled, and tested based on cost, sustainability, durability, and manufacturability for the purpose of enhancing martial artist’s training routines within the boundaries of the Android platform, closed source software, and client requirements.
The project was directed by the client, a Karate instructor, looking for better training solutions. The objective of the project was to deliver a working prototype of a mobile application that can communicate with a body armour to record strike data. The mobile application would aggregate strike power, location, and timing data gathered from each sensor and display it to the end user to provide a visual representation of progress and areas requiring improvement. The mobile application, in conjunction with the body armour, would enable martial artists to assign concrete data to their striking, both the power of the strikes and the locations of the strikes, allowing more informed and precise training. The visualisation of the data and gamifying certain elements would provide incentive to continuously train and hone their skills.
To achieve this goal, our team disassembled and embedded sensors connected to a microcontroller within the body armour provided by the client, this involved various electrical engineering work. The electrical circuits for the sensors went through different variations and required extensive testing to achieve the desired accuracy, granularity, and range for the sensor readings. A printed circuit board (PCB) was designed, printed, and assembled for the final circuit. Wires were routed throughout the armour and soldered to the PCB with the microcontroller. The microcontroller read and transmitted data to our mobile application.
The mobile application was built for Android using Kotlin, the official language for Android development. Communication was done through Bluetooth; the functionality was built from the microcontrollers side and the applications side. When entering one of the modes, the application read the transmitted data from the armour and display the appropriate data depending on the mode. Three modes were built, training mode with a configurable time that displayed strike strength, location, and averages to the user. The second mode was a speed game mode, giving the user one minute to strike the armour as much as possible, with their total strikes displayed and being their final score. The last mode was a strength game mode, giving the user ten seconds to strike the armour as hard as they could, displaying their greatest strike. Strike data was saved and persisted to allow the user to review their progress. The application allowed for multiple users, with the strike data tied to the appropriate user. Saving the users and strike data was done using SQLite, Androids bundled database.
There were various challenges along the way, but the project has been a success with a working prototype built. The project provided various exercises and concepts in both computer engineering and electrical engineering disciplines. Producing the prototype was a valuable experience which allowed for experimentation, creative thinking, learning opportunities, and team building.
The PLC-based Automated Irrigation System using Industrial Robot is a cutting-edge solution for clients that need a dependable and effective irrigation system for their home-farms, plantations, or gardens. Our team was charged with developing and deploying a system that would automate the irrigation process while reducing the physical work and water consumption associated with traditional irrigation systems.
Our client, a small-scale farmer, was experiencing a number of issues with their current irrigation system like Manual labour was time-consuming and physically demanding, restricting the farmer’s capacity to scale their operation. Furthermore, old irrigation methods frequently resulted in water waste, which is a major concern in locations with limited water supplies. The client was searching for a solution that would increase irrigation efficiency, minimise water usage, and allow them to expand their operations.
To meet the client’s requirements, our team created a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller)-based irrigation control system. The system includes an industrial robot that follows a predetermined course and controls the water based on the plant’s requirements. The PLC-based technology has various advantages over traditional irrigation methods. The technology is fully automated, which reduces the need for manual work and enables the farmer to easily increase their operations. Furthermore, the method is intended to cut water usage by focusing on specific regions of the farm or plantation that demand water.
We discovered the significance of communication and teamwork through this project. Our team collaborated closely with the client to understand their wants and specifications, allowing us to create a system that fit their specific requirements. We also learned the significance of testing and validation in ensuring the system’s dependability and efficiency.
Finally, the PLC-based Automated Irrigation System with Industrial Robot is a game-changing technology that outperforms conventional irrigation systems. Our team was thrilled to design and execute this system, which has assisted our client in improving their operations, reducing water usage, and increasing productivity. We are certain that this method has the potential to change agriculture while also benefiting the environment.