Fall 2018-Spring 2019

 

Educational Aquaponics display with the Tech Museum

Modern aquaponics emerged from multiple agricultural methods that were seeking to provide a more environmentally sustainable means of food production. Aquaponics businesses are substantial players in the global agricultural market and the industry is still growing. Furthermore, aquaponics as a system was shown to be self-sustainable and environmentally viable.

This project provides an exhibit for visitors of the Tech Museum to learn about aquaponics. The exhibit demonstrates how fish and plants can be cultivated efficiently with minimal waste, space, and maintenance. Additionally, the system features an attractive and interactive space for children to learn more about aquaponics. The expected outcomes are a more informed agricultural audience, a healthier environment, and food for the community.

Community Partner: The Tech Museum

Smart Lockers 2.0 with the Gilroy Compassion Center and AtHack Inc

Smart Lockers are provided to clients of GCC for safe storage while they receive services, and AtHack is exploring installing outdoor lockers in public spaces for long-term storage. The main goal of this project is to improve on the initial design of the locker systems. Key areas where improvement would be carried out would be optimizing control panel/circuit space, improving user interface with customization based on user feedback, improving security of lockers, and creating an emergency backup power system. The lockers are extra-large for increased storage capacity where each locker is equipped with a keypad, LCD screen, power outlet, a short shelf and hooks.

Community Partner: Gilroy Compassion Centre , Athack Inc

Flying Drone array with the Tower Foundation

The project’s goal is to prove that programmable drone can detach from the Light Tower structure and fly in coordinated dances and then reattach to the structure. The project is building off of the theme of innovation, inspired by drone dances, like those done by Intel, and adapting it to live on a unique structure in San Jose. This iteration is going to focus on controlling a number of drones in the air and developing a scalable method for many more drones than are intended to be used in this project.

Closed-loop Integrated Agriculture system

This student team will be designing and building a closed-look agriculture system with local community gardens. The system will include a system that connect a rainwater
catchment, irrigation, aquaponics, and biogas into a single system. Currently, the California
Native Garden Foundation has individual parts, however, they will need to be integrated
together. There is also discussion of turning this project into a business plan, that will promote closed-loop urban agriculture systems.

Community Partner: SJSU Tower Foundation

Underwater Drone 3.0 with the South Bay Clean Creek Coalition

Project Pisces was started as an initiative in partnership with the South Bay Clean Creek
Coalition (SBCCC) to reduce depletion of endangered fish species. It supports SBCCC’s mission in conducting research of the fish with little to no impact on wildlife in the Guadalupe River. Below is the two projects for next year:

a. Improvement in Image recognition: Improving on a previous prototype
submitted during 2017-2018 academic year, this project will be to differentiate
the endangered species (Steelhead and Chinook) within themselves in addition
to differentiating it from other fish species. A proposed idea is to also recognize
adult phases of these fish along with the juvenile phases.

b. Steelhead Monitor Device: The goal of this project is to develop a device
that would also monitor Steelhead that usually stay close to the riverbanks. The
current prototype’s requires deeper sections of the stream, so the students
would need to redesign a underwater drone that can be in more shallow parts of
the stream.

c. Motors: Improving the Rover’s mobility through turbulent waters by using more powerful motors. During the rainy season, the Guadalupe river stream can overpower the current rover; The team would like the rover to be usable year round.

 Community Partner: South Bay Clean Creeks Coalition

CNC machine with SJSU Makerspace

By creating a user friendly 2-in-1 CNC machine, this project aims to allow engineering students an effective way to prototype their projects. The CNC machine will be a dual function mill and laser cutter and students will be able to switch between cutting tools as needed. This versatile design will provide access to two separate manufacturing methods, but on a much smaller footprint than two separate machines, maximizing valuable floor space in the room. The time spent manufacturing on student projects will be reduced with the availability of this machinery. Costs for this project will be reduced by purchasing the required parts and assembling the machine on site.

Community Partner: SJSU Makerspace

 

 

Fall 2017-Spring 2018 

Juice Box

The “Juice Box” is a set of stationary metal lockers designed as a safe storage solution for the homeless at the Gilroy Compassion Center. These lockers will include charging ports, outlet to plug in electronic devices, and a programmable keypad lock that can be personalized to individual clients while maintaining a master override for management. It comes with a solar powered backup battery which serves to prevent power shortages during high volume usage. The lockers also are designed to have easy interchangeability of electronic components for ease of future maintenance.

• Community Partner - Gilroy Compassion Center

Underwater Camera Drone 2.0

The Underwater Drone project is designed to provide a non-intrusive solution to allow research to be conducted on the steadily declining population of Chinook and Steelhead in the rivers of the South Bay. Our goal is to combine our expertise in Mechanical, Computer, and Software Engineering to design a drone which can navigate various parts of rivers and take pictures of fish which can then be processed by our image recognition software to identify its species.

• Community Partner - South Bay Clean Creeks Coalition

Engineering Building Condensate

The Engineering Building Condensate System is designed for San Jose State University Facilities Development and Operations to achieve water conservation to identify and evaluate options and technologies to re-purpose water recovered from condensation on the air conditioning coils.

• Community Partner - Facilities, Development, and Operations, SJSU 

  San Jose Light Tower

San Jose is a city that has been at the heart of Silicon Valley, both physically and figuratively, since the beginning. San Jose is a home to tech industry titans and engineers from every corner of the Earth. But unlike other iconic cities around the world, San Jose does not have a landmark that signifies its position as one of the great cities. The San Jose Light Tower Corporation and EPICS have teamed up to further the goal of getting this landmark built, taking inspiration from the original San Jose light tower. The original light tower was a marvel of engineering for the time. It's only fitting that San Jose once again have a landmark worthy of its people and its contributions to the world.

• Community Partner - SJ Light Tower Foundation

Sustainable Organic Garden

The goal for this project is to design a Smart Stormwater Filtration System. The outcome will produce a filtration system that displays  real-time data information and eliminates infrastructure dependence. As a result, this system will encourage small green spaces      throughout the urban communities by providing an easier access to usable water for watering part of the Santa Clara Eco Village garden and reduces the overall C02 emissions produced by larger farms that    depends on energysources such as fossil fuel.

• Community Partners - SJSU Organic Gardens, Environmental Studies Department, and California Native Garden Foundation
  

ReStore

The REstore-it project is created to help alleviate the storage problem that many homeless individuals face on a daily basis. San Jose is ranked among the top 5 cities in the nation for homeless population. The homeless population carry their belongings and are in need of a place for their possessions. The project is designed to enclose their personal property during the day and night to prevent the items from being stolen or lost. Each storage unit will have a programmed security keypad, insulated walls, a power outlet, and a maintainable design.

• Community Partner - Athackit
  

Spartan Superway Project

 

Present mobility options, especially in dense urban areas are becoming more and more unsustainable. Fundamentally different approaches to personal mobility are needed to address the problems listed above and achieve sustainability. An automated transportation network (ATN) system utilizing ‘pod cars’ is one such approach.This project’s goal is to develop and bring to market the elements of a solar powered ATN system that will be scalable, replicable, and that can be located within existing rights of way in urban locales.

Gratis

In a survey of 4,286 students conducted by the SJSU Wellness Center, approximately 49% of students skipped a meal or cut the size of it. Gratis, a mobile device app, aims to provide a fast interlinked network of Food Rescue between the users and food providers. For the development, the team will make a front-end-focused application with ReactJS framework and Firebase at the back-end. The design of this application will primarily feature a map with geographic elements, food events and listings. The team is implementing a web-based platform, and will migrate to a hybrid mobile application.

• Community Partner - The Newman Center

Space Spartans

 

Every year NASA host a design challenge called Microg NExT. This challenge that graduate students to design, build, and test tools that address current and authentic space exploration challenges. One of the current challenges is the problem associated with safely gathering ice core samples meant for use in "Ocean Worlds" like Europa. If successfully implemented in future missions this tool could contain proof of microbial life outside of our own planet.

•  Community Partner -  CommUniverCity

 

Fall 2016 - Spring 2017