School of Engineering News
Laser Harp and Museum Beacon System Teams Win People's Choice Award at Project Day
December 15, 2015
The student leader for the Laser Harp project was Andrew Bowmen, while the faculty advisor was Chris Pung. Andrew's description of the Laser Harp was, "This project entails using lasers to emulate the strings of a harp. Each laser represents a note and when the laser line is broken it is played. In addition the notes played are configurable via a IR remote to change pitch and octave. LED lighting also corresponds to each note being played.".
The student team that worked on the Museum Beacon System included Michael Hartung, Matt Armand, Carlton Bennett, Dan Hoover, and Gina Sietz. Their description of their project was, "The Beacon Museum System was developed with the intention of making a museum or art gallery visitor's experience more informational and easier. The system begins with a web application that is used by museum curators to add information for all of the exhibits within the museum, and allows them to associate that information with the beacons of their choice. This information is then updated in a Parse database, which acts as the central hub connecting the two major pieces of the project. The other major piece, the Android and iOS mobile apps, pull this information by looking into Parse at timed intervals and pulling information for any beacons within the device's range. The types of information that the museum can currently store are images, a title, text descriptions, and audio for an exhibit. We also added the capability to implement multiple templates for use by the curators as a means of displaying information in a different format. The curators also have the option of including multiple exhibits as one beacon.". Their faculty advisor was Robert Adams.