Reaction All Years

Project Description:

The project investigates the energy performance of a 100 sq.ft. real-scale test shed constructed by Building Science students. The test shed is equipped with an in-floor heating hydronic system using Uponor PEX piping that is designed to be powered by a vacuum tube collector with an opportunity for the future addition of the geothermal loop through connection with a three-way valve.

The in-floor hydronic heating system was installed as a part of the Uponor – Algonquin College project that aimed to investigate the performance of Uponor PEX piping application at the radiant heating systems. The industrial partner (Uponor Ltd.) has a particular interest in assessing energy efficiency, thermal comfort, usage efficiency, regulatory compliance, and ease of installation and maintenance of their product. The main aim of the hydronic part of the project is to help the industrial partner demonstrate and market the superiority of its PEX products and solutions by providing Uponor Ltd. with a detailed analysis of the results from future system testing.
In addition to the hydronic heating system, there is an electric baseboard installed in the shed, which provides an opportunity to conduct a comparative analysis of both systems. Thus, the focus of the presented part of the project was to evaluate the shed’s energy performance by conducting a series of tests (heating and cool-down) using the installed 2000 W electric baseboard heater. The instrumentation included the data logger with three temperature sensors installed throughout the height of the shed. The “heating” tests aimed to investigate how fast the indoor temperature of the shed reaches the user’s comfort setpoint of 20 ᵒC. While the “cool-down” tests involved observation on the temperature decrease after the heater was turned off and till the temperature balance with outdoor temperature archived. The tests were performed under different weather conditions have shown that the average time for heating the shed’s upper space was between three and five hours, depending on the outside temperature. While the cooling of the shed occurred within 14 to 20 hours, which is respectively dependent on the temperature outside. The findings of those tests provide the experimental results of the shed’s energy performance, establish the setpoint for further hydronic system testing, and show that to archive the better performance hydronic system should provide power higher than 2000 W.

In addition to this and to ensure the further safe use of the shed without damaging the installed in-floor hydronic system, the removable floor finish was designed and installed. The design of the floor includes a radiant barrier to prevent excessive heat losses through the ground, as well as allows application of different thermal mass concepts by filling the space between pipes with different materials. Moreover, the test shed itself is equipped with panels designed to facilitate testing the effect of different details and composition of wall assembly on the building envelope performance.
The further steps and opportunities of the project include conducting a comparative analysis with the hydronic system, separate and connected to the solar source and potentially. Moreover, the testing opportunities that this equipped shed provides will enable college students and professors to perform a regular range of repeatable applied research activities to test, analyze, and benchmark the performance and effectiveness of the systems used in this project as well as to connect them with the building envelope performance.

The project is sponsored and made possible by the Office of Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Uponor Ltd (PEX), and the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

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Project Description:

Caremada wishes to create a website application task list. They currently only have their task list available to be accessed on mobile. However, they would like a web app to be integrated with this pre-existing mobile app. Connecting to their database with a web app using tools such as angular, nodeJS and javascript, as well as other website creating tools such as HTML, CSS, and bootstrap, will create a functioning web app that has integration with their mobile application.
The application is integrated into Caremada’s user account homepage. By clicking the “Tasks” tab, the user starts the product dashboard. Both as a caregiver and a client, the dashboard shows tasks with all necessary details and operations, including posting comments and editing tasks. The product also used the notification system that sends updates to the related party when triggered. All information is secured by running the API, and the authentication process goes before page load. Therefore, unauthorized users are restricted from extracting information of tasks details of other users.
During building the project, our team gained great experience in software development with agile methodology, as well as web app design, Angular, NodeJS, HTML and CSS.

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Project Description:

Choosing where to live is one of the most important decisions any person will make at some point in their life, at least once. What do you look for when choosing a place to live? Location, close by amenities, quality of the building, but most importantly, it’s the community around you. The community that is made up of the same people who chose to live where you live. It is the community that makes you feel at home and who you can always rely on in a crisis. You need to make sure you are connected to that community in the best and most efficient way to get the most out of your home.

This is exactly what our client, Smart Living Properties here in Ottawa, wants to solve. We started by conducting market research to find out what’s most important to renters today to achieve that sense of home. We interviewed 35 people from different walks of life and analyzed their responses to uncover the fine details that matter the most to them. Armed with this information, we designed the user experience of our app, Smart Tenant to exceed expectations.

Our next task was to design an equally engaging user interface which we also had volunteers test out to ensure its ease of use and intuitiveness, and that it meets their expectations.

It was now time to move on to the development stage. Choosing the right technology stack to build the final product is crucial to the success of any application For the frontend we use the most professional and trusted cross-platform technology to date, React Native to ensure it looks just right on both iPhone and Android devices. React Native was developed and maintained by Facebook and is currently the leading technology for building cross-platform applications. For our backend, we used Google’s Firebase services for secure and robust data storage and transmission. All our data is kept here in Canada.

Smart Tenant recreates the sense of community from the ground up. It is centered around every individual tenant to deliver an experience that has never been felt; a never been felt before sense of community. Smart Tenant allows its users to engage with, not only their neighbors but with local businesses, property managers, and landlords.

As for our learning outcomes, this experience has been unparalleled and far exceeded our expectations. We learned and experienced what it takes to design and develop a mobile application from scratch and learned to overcome the typical, and some unique, challenges that come with it. We sharpened our design and development skills significantly and learned to work and cooperate together as a group and in a real-world setting. We feel that the quality of the learning we gained from this experience far exceeds the quality and extent we would have received from an internship or a co-op term.

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Project Description:

This project came to be when the client, Carolyn Lorimer, wanted to build a net-zero home. The first of its kind in Canada. She knew that a system of sensors monitoring data must be implemented. This system needed to be able to monitor the air quality of the earth tube heat exchange, which will be the primary heating and cooling method for her home since it is an incredibly efficient method. It is also needed to compare the exterior air temperature to the interior air temperature to ensure gauge the effectiveness of the earth tube. To create this system, Carolyn needed help from Electrical Engineering Technology students, so she came to Algonquin College to give students a chance to learn via the project course.
This project was then assigned to the student team. Over the course of the project lifespan, the team then researched the equipment that was purchased, and put together a plan to build a working system. To do this, the team got individual sensors working with the controller. After the sensor configuration was done, a ‘wiring harness’ was created so that once the home was built, Carolyn or another group could install the system on the house.
Over the lifespan of this project, the team had numerous learning outcomes, including, but not limited to, sensor configuration, troubleshooting, project management, project documentation, and programming skills. By working on this project, the team needed to develop their skills using various sensors, especially sensors which they were not familiar with beforehand. Their troubleshooting skills were brought to a higher level since they were working with software and equipment they were not familiar with. The team gained new troubleshooting skills by fixing things when they were not working. By working on this project, they had to develop their project management skills by creating various documents for every step of the way, as well as managing the whole project.

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Project Description:

A permanently mounted turbine will be designed to be placed beside a highway and/or high traffic roadway to help ease the load on existing electrical circuitry in a town. The design focus is based on efficiency and reliability of electricity production from the different wind conditions generated by the passing vehicles, and to reach the end goal of a turbine efficient enough to remove a substantial load from street lighting and the distribution system. This project will include SolidWorks FEA analysis, design of electric generators, motors and controls, and a creation of a downsize scaled, 3D model prototype.
Key Requirements are:
• Function with the most efficient blade type at wind speeds of 14.4 ft/s.
• Charge an 8.4V 18650 battery pack.
• Provide feedback generation statistics including kW/h.
• Stay in a budget of $1,500.
• Produce enough energy to power an 8V LED panel

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Project Description:

Promly is a social enterprise that was founded by Jennifer Libby, a psychotherapist with over 20 years of experience treating at-risk adolescents. In response to the social media industry’s lack of responsibility for the growing youth mental crisis exacerbated by social media platforms, Promly was created as a safer and healthier alternative. The aim of Promly is to act as a social network platform for its target users, Gen Z, where they can connect with one another while also being provided various features to help address mental health issues and coping strategies.

To achieve this goal, Promly developed an iOS mobile application that is currently in beta. However, to ensure a wider reach of their audience they also wanted an Android app version, and so our team was tasked with creating the Android mobile app version of Promly as our project. Due to limited time and resources our team had narrowed down the specific features of the Android app to develop at least 1 main feature which is the ‘We Got You’ feature. The major function of the We Got You feature is to provide immediate access to crisis, suicide prevention, and mental health resources. It also provides various stories, articles, and questions from peers where the user can get information and answers provided by therapists and mental health professionals. Within the scope of this project, all that information is currently mocked up.

As the client already had a beta in place for their iOS version of the application, our main goals were to replicate the look and feel of the iOS app for Android. We first worked on the layouts of the We Got You feature pages and made sure to follow the client’s UI design including button placements, images, and branding colours. Afterwards we focused on implementing functionality so that the user can navigate between pages and scroll up and down the pages with ease. This also included buttons that can be pressed and redirect the user to the right pages (such as specific mock articles) or functions such as the device’s dial pad/SMS application to contact holistic resources.

Working on this project has taught us how to cooperate as a team and use agile methodology to deliver parts of a project in sprints. We also learned more about mobile development for Android and how to use a GitHub repo for storing our code. With the completion of this project, the client will have the base for the ‘We Got You’ feature for Android and they can proceed with replacing the mock data with their database and continue further development.

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Project Description:

The goal of our capstone project is to work alongside representatives from TELUS to put together a small PON lab using PON devices from two different vendors and standardize their features so that they operate in the same manner, allowing them to operate together in a passive optical network. This would allow for more plug-and-play interoperability in TELUS’ networks across Canada, since currently there are limitations on most device interoperability. Ciena has partnered with us in this project to provide us with equipment to install in the PON lab and provide technical support on their equipment. We’re implementing this solution by using software-defined networking technologies to standardize the differences in device functionalities.

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