Siek's GEEN 1400 Projects Win Awards at Engineering Design Expo

December 2010

The Fall Engineering Design Expo featured more than 400 students who showcased 80 projects developed in GEEN 1400: First Year Engineering Projects, GEEN 3400: Invention and Innovation, or ASEN 2500: Gateway to Space. Over 300 attendees voted for the "Peoples Choice Award". One of the GEEN 1400: Games for Health projects was runner-up for that award:

• The Mario Project
  • Katherine Ebeling
  • Chad Hotimsky
  • Colby Mulloy
  • Sarah Safranek
  • Joseph Schmitz
  • Erin Zachman

  The Mario Project is a fun CU-themed Mario Brothers game in which the user runs on a sensor pad to move Buffy through the CU campus. The game was programmed with Scratch using a PicoBoard to detect inputs from a student custom-made sensor pad made of copper wire, foam, and plywood.

From the same section, The Green Team's Recycling Jukebox received the "Best in Section" award. This recognition was given by industry judges based on interviews with each project team, demonstrations of each project, and evaluation of each project's results by the judges.

• Recycling Jukebox
  • Eric Bodine
  • Carl Gallaher
  • Bartosz Koczera
  • Zachary Pierce
  • Benjamin Schlitzer
  • Mathew Williams

  The Recycling Jukebox encouraged people to recycle by rewarding users who recycled two cans with the selection of a music clip. The team used a combination of infrared sensors to detect cans and LabView to count the cans and play the music inside of a student custom-made sheet metal container.

Three other projects from the class were also rated highly by the judges:

• Team Simon Says Run developed a physical version of the 1980s Simon electronic game where the Simon game lights were on poles spread apart and a user had to push buttons on the poles to match the sequence.

  • Benjamin Anderson
  • Bradley Biscoe
  • Kellie Lind
  • Kelly Mitchell
  • Jordan Tsiao
  • Benjamin Zatz

• Team Optimus Pong created an enhanced version of the classic game of Pong where the user's side-to-side running motion controlled one of the pong paddles.

  • Liynah Alkhadhra
  • Lars Anderson
  • Garrett Brown
  • Denys Frolkov
  • Nathan Lapinski
  • Trudy Vo

• Team 4 Square created an electronically enhanced four square playing field that used motion capture with three cameras to detect if the ball was "in."

  • Simon Braun
  • David Breitling
  • Brandon Curiel
  • Leonardo Hermosillo
  • Tyler Herrera
  • Zachary Tafoya

The class was directed by Professor Katie A. Siek along with teaching assistants Amit Gupta and Kaitlin (Katie) Hegarty.