President, Tau Alpha Pi
Wrote a proposal for $4000 of hardware, got it, and wrote the software to make it run!
Fall 2000
Reference: Dr. Behbood Zoghi (TAP Advisor)
As a service project to the department and its students, we undertook an information dissemination project called The Informer. The Informer is simply two computer monitors displaying information in a slide show manner. However, we wanted to be able to remotely administer these devices, and make it easy enough for any secretary to operate it. This project consisted of the design, acquisition, and implementation of a computer system mounted on the walls of the two primary buildings in the Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution department. After deciding how we were going to implement this system, we had to acquire the hardware. Surprisingly, we were able to obtain industry donations totaling $4000 to purchase two flat panel monitors and professional brackets to mount them to the wall. The computer systems were donated by the department. I developed an extensive LabVIEW application that gives us an incredible degree of flexibility, much more than would have been possible with a commercially purchased software package. This system can display jpegs, most movie clip formats, web pages, and time and date information. Administering this system is a simple method of drag and drop into a specified directory on the central server. These systems then update their local harddrives according to changes on the server machine, limiting server hits. In addition, the user can specify an expiration date for each item. This way, a file will automatically be removed from the play list after a specified date. The Informer displays department, student, or industry related information to its viewers, and has been an excellent addition to the ETID department. Here is a picture of the Fermier and Thompson monitors.