Freshman Design Expo

Yesterday was Louisiana Tech's Freshman Design Expo. Thirty-two teams presented some very interesting projects. Some were wacky, some things that are already being done,and some were very original and very impressive. I was asked to be a guest judge by Dr. David Hall and it was a great pleasure to help.

They have a program at Tech called "Living with the Lab." Each freshman has a Parallax BOE-Bot of their own. It is a engineering lab that they live with. Check out the impressive video below. The Design Expo allowed them to creatively use what they had learned over the course of the year and was part of their ENGR 122 course.

Each project had at its heart (or brain) the Basic stamp and a BOE. A host of other Parallax products including Servos, Pings))), Hall effect sensors, Flexi-force sensors, PIR sensors, Accelerometers, IR's, RFID readers and tags, EMIC text to speech SIP module and LCD displays were also used.

Parallax provided prizes (thanks to Ken Gracey) that were awarded to the first, second and third place teams. Certificates were also given for Can Do (difficult to accomplish design), Rolex (best crafted), da Vinci (most creative), Shoot the Moon (technically difficult, might not have fully achieved), Patient Pending (original patient worthy idea).

It was fun to be a judge, I got to meet some great people and got to see a lot of interesting work. Thanks for inviting me David!

Here's the video!