Computer Science & Engineering Projects

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Track 4A - Oral Presentations

The Auction display project brings together the best of productivity and ease of use to a stock show system. Every year the Mesa County Stock Show is held with records of sale being handwritten for each showing. This project allows volunteers and participants to easily record and track key information about the stock show. By having the current sale, previous sales, and upcoming participants displayed, the show can run more efficiently and effectively. This application provides an easy to use solution for the stock show that makes the yearly event much more enjoyable.

The Western Slope of Colorado is home to many mountain bike trails. People who are new to the area may not know where to find these trails, or even general information about the nearby cities and towns. Is this trailhead near Fruita? Where is a good place to eat in Grand Junction? The Colorado Adventure Trail seeks to answer questions like these. This mobile application will feature information about the various mountain bike trails located near interesting towns and cities of western Colorado. Users can also view famous landmarks, popular restaurants, and other local attractions located within the towns themselves. Lastly, the app functions as a passport that users can stamp to verify that they have visited a location.

A diverse selection of food can help enrich well-being and daily life; however, it has become increasingly overwhelming to select an option at a restaurant that is not the habitual choice. The Foodi mobile application aims to provide food recommendations tailored directly to the user’s taste that are based on trends gathered from previous meals, experiences, and ingredients. With the Foodi app, users will have a better insight of their palette and feel comfortable expanding their dining options.

The Colorado River is undoubtedly one of the most vital resources for Mesa county and its surrounding areas. The Grand Valley Water Users Association helps regulate and protect this resource by distributing irrigation water in one of the 6 irrigation districts within the area. Currently, water users complete paper cards and return them to dropboxes in order to create a water request. Ditch riders, who relay these requests, collect the cards at these drop boxes. Our web application enhances this system by providing a digital interface that water users can access on their mobile device. From this interface they can submit their requests digitally, taking away the need to return to a dropbox location. The application aims to increase the amount and accuracy of these water requests.

There are many different forms of key card locks for keeping buildings secure. One is known as Mifare Classic, a card commonly used in buildings. To read or write a card, a unique authentication key is required. In general, the only way to do this is to use expensive proprietary software. Our goal is to write an app in javascript and C++, that will allow users to read and write to cards that are compatible MiFare Classic. This app will read the cards with an Omnikey 5022 reader that connects to the USB port.

The objective of my project is to create a program called Orca that will bridge proprietary and open source geospatial data. I am working for and alongside a local geographic information system (GIS) company, Kaart. This will involve creating an extension of an open-source editor for OpenStreetMap called iD to allow entering and storing of proprietary data. The iD editor was chosen because it is an intuitive platform that is hosted on a browser to maximize usability and in effort to reach a wide audience. The project consists of two parts: design of a user interface for inputting GIS data, and the implementation of a database to securely host and manage the data. When complete, my program will enable companies to manage all of their geospatial data on a single platform.

Track 4B - Engineering Design

Innovative Textiles, a company located in Grand Junction, Colorado, produces PowerPro, a premium quality braided fishing line. During production, PowerPro fishing line goes through a manual coloration process that is labor-intensive and produces significant color variation in the finished product. A team of senior mechanical engineering students designed and fabricated an automated dye dispensing machine capable of handling five liquid components to reliably produce the company’s Moss Green color. The machine is capable of automatically dispensing and mixing four colors and acetone with an error of less than 0.1 pounds per constituent.

DT Swiss is a bicycle wheel manufacturer with manufacturing facilities in Europe, Asia, and the United States. The Grand Junction facility produces high-end bicycle wheels and distributes them throughout the United States and South America. In the wheel building production line, decals with the company’s logo are applied to each wheel rim. After the decals have been applied to the rims, they are then baked at 150°C. Currently, the rack used for this process holds 60 rims. A team of senior mechanical engineering students designed a new rack to hold 80 rims of various sizes to increase the rate of wheel manufacturing.

The United States has over 400 beautiful, culturally important, and inspiring sites within its National Parks. However, vandalism threatens these protected lands, and one of the most destructive types is spray-painted graffiti. Current graffiti remediation methods can leave a site permanently scarred. A proprietary starch solution was developed by a team of Colorado Mesa University (CMU) chemistry students that is 90% effective at removing paint from rock surfaces. The product is biodegradable, environmentally friendly, and effective within a few hours of application. A team of undergraduate senior engineering students has teamed up with the chemistry team to design and develop an Engineered Applicator Device (EAD) that can mix, transport, and apply the starch solution to vandalized areas. The EAD is self-contained, lightweight, and portable so it can be easily carried by park rangers to remote locations. The benefit of this project to the broader engineering technology community is to encourage engineers to apply their knowledge to the well-being and preservation of nature and pursue developing products that encourage sustainability.

FHE is a company in Fruita, Colorado, that specializes in pressure control systems for the oil and gas industry. FracLock is the most recent innovation that connects surface equipment to wellheads via remote control. A FracLock unit takes several technicians’ multiple days to assemble. With components in the assembly weighing up to 1800 lb, it is necessary to use devices like the overhead crane that spans the length and width of FHE facility. Other departments also use the overhead crane for their lifting needs, leading to delays in the FracLock assembly process while waiting for overhead crane availability. FHE asked the design team to eliminate dependency on the overhead crane during the FracLock assembly process to improve assembly time. The team also identified a second opportunity to optimize assembly time. A 2-in-1 piston assembly build/test stand that allows technicians to build and test FracLock piston subassemblies in a method that prevents part damage currently occurring during assembly. These optimizations improve the efficacy of the FracLock assembly process while keeping quality of the product and the safety of the workers a priority.

Waterwheels have been used for thousands of years for different tasks such as crushing grain and powering farms. Like many inventions, waterwheels have been improved over time to increase efficiency. The purpose of this project was to provide a new addition to the water exhibit in Eureka! McConnell Science Museum. The two designs selected for this new exhibit to demonstrate efficiency are an undershot wheel and an overshot wheel. Power output and relative efficiency of these wheels are represented by LED light strips on each wheel. Water flow to each wheel will be easily manipulated by museum visitors using current components of the exhibit to increase or decrease the flow of water to each wheel. The LED light strips will indicate the power produced by each wheel. It is important to the designers that the exhibit is educational and easy to understand for all ages.

The purpose of this project was to design and manufacture a re-sizable 3-D printer enclosure. The design targets 3-D printers that employ the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technique, which produces significant amounts of harmful aerosol emissions that lead to the degradation of indoor air quality. There are enclosures on the market which capture harmful emissions, but the majority of enclosures only accommodate specific printer models. The implementation of nested aluminum tubing allows the enclosure designed by our team to resize into a minimum and maximum volume of 8 ft 3 and 27 ft 3 , respectively. Acrylic panels attach to the aluminum frame and slide along each other when the enclosure size is changed. The enclosure includes a filtration system that houses an activated carbon and HEPA filter that captures 90% of the number concentration of aerosol emissions within the enclosure. The enclosure accommodates 95% of common tabletop 3-D printers.

Ute Water Conservancy District is a water utility company that delivers water across the Grand Valley. With a mission statement of providing only the highest quality water to their clients, this project was created to uphold that promise. Currently, the company faces a problem with its inclined plate settler assemblies accruing sediment and algae. These assemblies assist in the sedimentation phase at the treatment plant. The company must partially shut down a settling pond to clean each assembly, which is both labor intensive and costly. The purpose of this project was to design and fabricate an automated device that removes this buildup without shutting down a settling pond. To avoid the partial shutdown the project meets the following criteria: autonomous, lightweight, and waterproof. A team of senior mechanical engineering students designed and built a robotic device to remove buildup from plate settler assemblies. The Semi-Aquatic Continuously Roving Utility Bot (S.C.R.U.B.) utilizes a combination of both brushes and UVC LED lights to remove sediment and algae from each plate assembly.

Capco is a company in Grand Junction, Colorado that manufactures the M320 grenade launcher for the U.S. Armed Forces. When this firearm is fired, the recoil force is significant enough that an operator is limited to 25 rounds a day. To increase the number of rounds a soldier can fire in a day, Capco is prototyping new buttstock designs that decrease the maximum recoil force experienced by an operator when firing the launcher. The purpose of this project is to design and fabricate a test stand to measure recoil force and displacement as a function of time when the launcher is fired with prototype buttstocks and the currently issued buttstock. The damping coefficients of each buttstock will be calculated from the collected data to determine which buttstock transmits the smallest force when the launcher is fired. The dynamometer will be used by Capco to make design improvements for future buttstock prototypes.

This project encapsulates the design and fabrication of a mass-air-flow sensor flex/continuity test apparatus for Walker Products. Walker Products has been in business since 1946 designing and manufacturing OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and aftermarket fuel system components and engine management sensors. Some of the many parts manufactured by Walker Products in their Grand Junction facility are mass-air-flow sensors that departments also use the overhead crane for their lifting needs, leading to delays in the FracLock assembly process while waiting for overhead crane availability. FHE asked the design team to eliminate dependency on the overhead crane during the FracLock assembly process to improve assembly time. The team also identified a second opportunity to optimize assembly time. A 2-in-1 piston assembly build/test stand that allows technicians to build and test FracLock piston subassemblies in a method that prevents part damage currently occurring during assembly. These optimizations improve the efficacy of the FracLock assembly process while keeping quality of the product and the safety of the workers a priority.

Track 4C - Engineering

The City of Grand Junction plans to extend the recently constructed Monument Road Bike Trail to connect the Lunch Loop trail-head with an existing bike trail on South Camp road. When this section is complete the trail will form a loop that provides miles of biking trails. The City wants to encourage riders on the trail thus the social impacts of design are a significant consideration. This design project presents the design of the proposed trail alignment, as well as an engineering cost estimate. An alternatives analysis considered different alignments and crossings with respect to safety to trail users, cost of construction, maintenance concerns, ease of use, flood hazards, and property owners. These criteria were used to select an alignment, as well as water conveyance structures. The project deliverable includes preliminary design drawings and calculations. The final deliverable to the City will include details of stream crossings, a cost estimate, grading plans, alignment plan and profiles, and cross sections of trail.

The purpose of this project is to redesign a culvert on Highway 340 near Fruita, Colorado. Culverts are designed to decrease future flooding problems near transportation infrastructure while still allowing the passage of water and animals. This allows for a natural flow path to be maintained within a controlled environment. This project is in partnership with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and aims to improve an existing culvert for maintenance, transportation safety, sustainable infrastructure, and animal passage. To accomplish this, hydrologic flow analyses, alternative design options, and a cost analysis for the chosen design have been conducted. Alternative designs included complete replacement, slip-lining, direct repair, and cured-in-place designs. This project includes permitting, regulatory research, environmental, sustainability, right-of-way, utility, and transportation factors that will contribute to the project construction timeline and cost. A 30% project design will be completed for CDOT by May 2020. This will include hydrologic analyses, transportation research, utility investigations, cost estimate, and chosen alternative design.

Track 4D - Oral Presentations

Currently, biosensor research identifying stress through physiological responses is completed with state-of-the-art sensors comprised of high-quality and high-price materials. These projects are generating substantial results and noteworthy findings. However, replication and production of low-budget versions of these high-grade stress detection tools for use of the general public is lacking. This project aims to explore this gap through the development of a proof-of-concept device comprised of three economical, accessible sensors: a galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor for measuring electric resistance, an electromyography (EMG) sensor for measuring muscle stimulation, and a photoplethysmography (PPG) pulse sensor. Using this prototype device, pilot data of physical responses was collected and analyzed during exercise, which is a fundamental form of stress on the body.

Both developers and students alike could benefit from learning web application security. However, it can be difficult for the average person to get their hands on a full blown web application that they can test for vulnerabilities. Web application security tools exist, but the most popular ones (WebGoat, NodeGoat, etc.) are based in more enterprise-friendly languages like NodeJS and Java. This makes writing lessons about additional vulnerabilities quite the challenge. Python is one of the most commonly used languages among security professionals and, to the best of our knowledge, no Python-based web app education frameworks have been created yet. We intend to fill this void with PyGoat - a collection of web app vulnerabilities that has a focus on Python security flaws. We also want to make writing more lessons about new and upcoming vulnerabilities as painless as possible with simple config files. The end result will be an easily accessible, deliberately insecure web application that anyone can learn from.

Grand Junction’s Rotary Club is a non-profit organization consisting of members of the community dedicated to give back to others. The Rotary Club conducts a Snowball Sweepstakes every year. This sweepstakes allows other local organizations to fund raise by selling tickets to the community. All tickets sold will be entered into a raffle in which snowballs are rolled down the mountain to create winning number combinations. Due to the global increase of web purchases the club wishes to modernize this event by moving from paper ticket sales to online sales. We created a new website for the club that allows administrators to add and delete database information while also allowing organizations to lead their customers to purchase tickets online. Those who are not tech savvy are still able to purchase physical tickets and not be left out of the fun. The website also provides basic information about the club and their event. The creation of this website makes it convenient for customers organizations and the club due to its automation of previously manual tasks.