Reaction All Years

Project Description:

The purpose of this project was to save time and decrease the manual process of applying the labels to the samples. Originally, Deslauriers Custom Cabinets would hand apply every label and with batches of samples being over 100, this can prove to be a very time consuming task. The automated label applier uses a combination of a thermal printer, conveyor belt, laser position sensor and a stepper motor in order to accurately locate a label onto a sample in a continuous fashion. Once a sample passes down the belt, a laser position sensor is tripped which sends a signal to the Arduino microcontroller. The stepper motor is then turned on the exact length of one label in order to peel the label from its backing at the correct time that the sample passes. The label is then applied with light pressure from a plastic paddle. This project has taught us a lot about how organization and communication is key when working in a team setting in order to make a project successful.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

Our client wanted the team build an animated video describing the multiple aspects of our value proposition, starting from battery manufacturing to building packs and fast charge, describing a fully vertically integrated solution encompassing multiple aspects of the technology at his company GBatteries. This video will help attract more more people in the industry to want to invest in this product.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

SkillsGuild is an android application built on the idea of keeping cultural traditions and skills alive. We want to encourage people with unique skills from all cultures to join and share their knowledge. It is a home for all non-commoditized skills to be shared and celebrated, giving masters of those skills the opportunity to post and manage their class.

The idea of SkillsGuild came from our clients Randy Desormeaux, Simeon Seguin, and Mike Grainger, who were inspired by an interest in the little cultural traditions and skills. “It seems to me that the things that are promoted and shared are things that can turn a profit on their own. That just seems like a shame. Deep historical roots shrivel up and are lost because there is no money in them? I’m a software developer by trade and so I had the idea that maybe one day I could build a platform that allows these traditions to be shared directly and inexpensively by the people who lived them.” – Randy

We started the process by researching the market, users and technology. We went through 3 iterations of design, prototype and testing to create a seamless UI for an optimal user experience. Meanwhile, we also developed a fully functioning API to support the front end of the solution.

With the API ready to support the front end tasks, we built and connected it with Firebase backend technology .

SkillsGuild app users can:

As a Teacher:
Register classes with customizable details
Have full control of registrant status, allowing or denying enrolment
Be notified of new class registrants
Use discussion boards to communicate with all registrants of a class

As a Student:
Explore classes by location, keyword, or category
Give classes a review
Join classes and be placed on a waiting list
Post messages on Class Providers discussion board
Bookmark classes for later access

SkillsGuild differentiates itself from similar platforms by harbouring a variety of unique skills and cultures that are otherwise difficult to find training for. We allow class providers to have control of communications, registrants, and class details. We allow users to explore and sign up for classes, and offer a tool to communicate with providers of the classes they have registered for. We do this all in one spot, the SkillsGuild application currently designed for android.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

The project impacts advancement of propagating energy and water efficient piping system by helping the industrial partner validate the superior performance of new technology—both quantitatively and qualitatively. In particular, the project is enabling College students and professors to perform a range of applied research activities to test, categorize, and benchmark the performance of the company systems against conventional piping materials and their associated installations. The industrial partner has particular interest in assessing energy efficiency, thermal comfort, water quality and usage efficiency, regulatory compliance, product life-time, ease of installation, and ease of maintenance of its systems. The ultimate aim of the project is to help our industry to understand the superiority of PEX technology.

The presented part of the project is the first workstream out of three defined workstreams. This part of project includes actual installation for Hot Water Delivery (HWD) System that was designed and built specifically to investigate water delivery time, water volume waste, water-flow and zero-flow heat loss, as well as the overall energy efficiency of the system. The 30.48 m (100 ft) real-life test system was developed to imitate the layouts and sizes that would be found in a residential condominium installation using Uponor’s PEX pipes, commercially available fittings and outlets to ensure that the data obtained is as consistent with real-world practices as possible.

The results showed UA values of 3.81 W/m.K for flow condition heat loss and rough estimates of 30- minute cooldown times for zero-flow conditions. In addition, the activation of the re-circulation system reduced the usable hot water delivery time by approximately 84% and consequently reduced the wastewater volume by about 76 %. In addition, insulating the system by applying one type of insulation on the external surface of the pipe reduced the usable hot water delivery time by approximately 21 % and consequently reduced the wastewater volume by about 18%. These results suggest that the test systems and methodology that have been created for this project phase is able to provide realistic and accurate results.

Moreover, to find the potential solutions for improving the performance of the hot water delivery system, the further investigations on the impact of running cold water line, using different types of insulation and water-saving valve are developed and in the process of implementation.

The project is funded by NSERC and the industrial partner (Uponor Ltd.) contributing cash and in-kind annually to this project for three years. Uponor is the world’s largest manufacturer of PEX piping with 100 years of expertise in piping and home building. This project is one of only four ARD-2 grants in Algonquin College’s history.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

Developments in technology allow for further automation of repetitive, complicated or mundane tasks. Creating a convenient tool to help automate a process was the goal of our project.

The Rideau Valley Soaring Club commissioned a battery tester device that would simplify the battery testing process. The 12V gel cell batteries power their radios and other instruments in the gliders. Club members test their batteries before every flight by conducting a load test. The battery is put under load so it will draw current, and the voltage is monitored over time. The degree of voltage drop observed during the load test indicates if the battery is in good health or has degraded. Testing the batteries before each flight is important as a degraded battery may drop its voltage mid-flight rendering the glider instruments inoperable.

To automate this process, our team has created a device which connects to the battery, performs the load test, outputs a graph on the screen so the user can monitor the voltage, and finally outputs an audio/visual message to indicate the health of the battery. The final screen displays the voltage at the end of the test and a rating out of 10. A different audio clip accompanies the final display depending on the test outcome, hence “Talking” Battery Tester.

Operation is simple: the battery connects to the tester, the user taps the screen to begin the test, the user observes the output message, then the battery is disconnected once the test is over.

The tester makes use of an Arduino microcontroller which reads the battery voltage through a voltage divider circuit. The analog signal is converted and mapped to the graph on the TFT LCD touchscreen. Through use of Pulse Width Modulation, timers and interrupts, an audio clip is played to accompany the test results. The audio clips are stored as an array of bytes on the tester’s flash memory. The Arduino uses SPI to retrieve the characters which are fed to the PWM output connected to the speaker. A Graphical User Interface was designed using Python which allows the user to customize and configure audio and rating values of the battery tester.

We believe this tester will serve the glider club members well. Our team learned a lot about microcontrollers, timers, interrupts, Serial Peripheral Interface, pulse width modulation, and python coding over the course of this project. The tester is fully functioning but has been deliberately created with further development in mind. Our hope is that future developers add even more features to increase the value of the Talking Battery Tester.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

Algonquins Applied Research department in coordination with TELUS is looking into the steps necessary to green light an open source application for commercial use by performing static and dynamic application security testing, OSINT investigation, and other open source security testing methodologies. There are many powerful applications that are free to use and open for public modification. This raises a security question when deciding if some of them are okay for use in a private or enterprise environment. Who is committing to these projects? What is their motive for doing so? Do these applications undergo any prior testing, static or dynamic? All of these questions should be answered and more when dealing with software that’s not under strict security regulation.

Contact the Team

Project Description:

The Project Management Graduate Certificate (PMGC), offered at Algonquin College, is expanding and continues to push boundaries of project management techniques by incorporating Artificial Intelligence. PMGC seeks to teach people how to apply a high level of leadership, technical, and business strategy skills to plan to optimize efficiency and effectiveness in project management. 
 
PMGC and its faculty has developed software, published books, and spoken publicly on AI and how it can be implemented to solve the common problems in project management. Paul Boudreau, a professor at the college, has published two books on artificial intelligence as it relates to project management and has a third book releasing soon. Past students of the program have attended competitions and fares to showcase the AI initiatives with great success. 

The faculty plans to create a LinkedIn page for PMGC that displays and highlights the unique initiatives in Applied Research. 

Nicole Priatel, a professor, and core member of the innovative faculty team has requested a video for the page that accurately displays the scope and impact of their initiatives. 

This video is targeted to graduate students looking to upgrade their career and external businesses looking to partner with the faculty. 

The purpose and goal of this project is to raise general awareness of Project Management Program, educate potential viewers on AI techniques used, PMGC and their successes, as well as recruit new students and industry partners to the school.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

The WEAR project is being developed for use in the Ottawa Hospital. The project came to life in hopes to improve upon the hospital’s current method of performing EMG tests. The current procedure of performing the test requires an expensive machine which is large, restricted to a small room.The test was also invasive to the patient due to the many interfacing cables and the lengthy setup required to collect the EMG test. The mobile WEAR device has been developed with these problems in mind to create a cheaper and more simple way to perform EMG tests.

The main features of the WEAR device are it’s compact design, positioning system, bluetooth, and ability to write to a micro SD card. The goal of the project was not to finish a completed device, instead the goal of this project was to create a functioning prototype with the features mentioned above.

The team was able to engineer the device’s compact design by implementing the device onto a PCB and programming the system on an Arduino microcontroller. We were able to get the device to a fraction of the size of a standard EMG device. For the device to understand the signals coming in we required a complex analog signal to digital signal converter, for this purpose we picked out a QFP chip called the ADS1298 that is capable of converting 8 channels at a time. We created the device’s positioning system by using an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), with this chip we are able to track the real time position of the device in three dimensional space. The device’s bluetooth was completed by using a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) nordic chip that is capable of using BLE 5.0 protocol, this gives the device a large transmitting range and a steady signal when a user plots data to a device. Going with a BLE chip we are also able to prolong battery life for our device allowing for longer sessions of testing with a single charge. The microcontroller picked out for this project has an onboard SD slot that allows us to write the incoming signals into this SD card for analysis later. The method of saving data to a micro SD card has been optimized and made more efficient.

Our team has learned so much from doing this project, from technical skills to project management skills. Trying to summarize all of the things we were able to take away from this is incredibly difficult. Most notably the team’s knowledge in PCB design, and software programming has vastly improved. The team learned new techniques to accurately solder a PCB and how to handle very delicate components. Some of the biggest lessons we are taking away from this are, the ability to make critical project decisions, creating and managing a project plan, and sticking to a strict schedule to get work done on time. Our team is very proud of our work on this project and we are confident in the skills that we could develop working on this project.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

At Ciena, one of the biggest bottlenecks to the testing phase of a new technology is the initial decision of which wiring configuration is best to ensure proper climate control for proper testing. With some products requiring more cooling than others as well as some products having more surface area to cool, it’s difficult to create one solution that is able to cool all of these different products properly. The current solution for the jig mounted fans is to wire the fans to either full speed (parallel) or half speed (series). Wiring these fans back and forth can be extremely time consuming while also limiting the options of the engineers to two speeds of airflow. The fans are often switched so many times during this decision phase that by the end there is next to no wire left to cut to do the modification.
The solution proposed is to create a control module using Pulse-Width-Modulation to be able to control the fans to go the exact desired speed. In addition to this, an algorithm will be developed to read the temperature from the onboard temperature sensor on the device and change the fan speed base on the current temperature. This device will have two arrays of three fans on each side of the card which can be expanded as well as a temperature sensor input for either side in order to assure all sides receive proper cooling.

Contact the Team

Gallery

Project Description:

In January 2020, the City of Ottawa declared a housing and homelessness emergency. Immediately following the announcement COVID-19 reached the pandemic level, leaving the already vulnerable homeless and precariously housed populations to experiencing greater challenges.

Through our partnership with the Alliance to End Homelessness, the Victimology Research Centre’s new project is studying the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on homeless populations in Ottawa through a service provider lens. The COVID-19 and Systematic Responses to Homelessness project is examining how the global pandemic has affected system responses to homelessness, the potential gaps and barriers that are being experienced by homeless people, and what innovations in service provision are being developed to adapt to the pandemic.

The project is comprised of two phases. In phase 1, qualitative interviews are completed for data collection purposes. The focus of phase 1 is system mapping and preliminary data collection which will be done through online and telephone interviews with service providers.
In phase 2, the project will move forward with ethics approval for additional data collection through surveys, focus groups, and interviews with service providers and people with lived experience.

From this project, two products will be made. The first is a COVID-19 Housing & Homelessness Sector Map which will outline the challenges and opportunities experienced by homeless people in Ottawa during the pandemic. The second is a report to the City of Ottawa, measuring the response of COVID-19 in the homeless sector.

Contact the Team

Gallery