TAMU Tau Alpha Pi

Wireless Infrastructure Project

President, Tau Alpha Pi

Wrote a proposal for $50,000 of hardware for TAMU, and got it!

Spring 2001

Reference: Dr. Behbood Zoghi (TAP Advisor)

As mentioned in the Organizations section, I was president of
Texas Gamma’s chapter of Tau Alpha Pi, National Honor Society for Engineering
Technology. Each semester we try to provide some kind of service to the ENTC
students and faculty. This year we thought it would be very cool to provide
wireless 802.11 network connectivity in our two department buildings, Thompson
and Fermeir Hall. We decided there were two possible approaches to this goal.
One, submit proposals to manufacturers of 802.11b hardware seeking support in
the form of hardware donation. Two, fund raise enough money to purchase several
thousand dollars worth of hardware to donate to the department. As president, I
lead the process of corresponding with various 802.11b manufacturers. Cisco Systems‘ University Relation
manager was rather interested in the idea, and requested a more detailed
proposal. I compiled a 10 page proposal outlining the mutual benefits of this
partnership, and he accepted. To make a long story short, after considerable
dialogue between Tau Alpha Pi, Cisco Systems, and the ETID department, Cisco
agreed to donate $50,000+ of hardware to the ETID department for the creation of
a research environement suitable for wireless application development. ETID
requisitioned university funds to pay a team of students, led by Mike Warren, to lead the design
and installation of the wireless infrastructure. The university expanded this
project to include the design, purchase, and installation of a wireless network
in the Evans Library and library annex, a rather large undertaking. This project
has been met with huge success and has been dubbed the Wireless Infrastructure
Project.

The Informer

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.