One of the distinctive features of a Humber college education is the opportunity for students to complete a capstone research project that solves a real-life challenge. In a recent collaborative initiative, professor Timothy Wong, PhD, Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology (FAST), mentored and advised two students as they completed their capstone project.
When Alexandra Urzola Mendoza and Victor Teske, students in the Computer Systems Technician diploma program at Humber, started collaborating with professor Timothy, they were inspired to build a temperature and humidity sensor for monitoring studios and equipment storage. As a result of effective collaboration, the students successfully built Sense Weather Station, which is described as follows:
“Sense Weather Station is a set of sensors that collect data for weather analysis. These instruments/sensors are capable of recording air temperature, air humidity, and atmospheric pressure. It is willing to generate personal forecast reading, that is used for sharing results with others and operates as another source of point for creating new measurements for the database.”
— Sense Weather Station Project Team
Challenge addressed
The project idea was born out of the observation that studios and equipment storage is usually located in fully enclosed spaces with no windows. Humidity and temperature changes can have a negative impact on music instruments and sensitive studio quality electronics, such as fine-tuned speakers. The ideal temperature of studio and music equipment storage is around 21 C° with a relative humidity between 40% to 60%. However, the environmental changes created by air conditioning and heating make it challenging to keep the instruments in tune since the climate control and the on-off cycles have been designed to fit the human schedule. The daily swings in the environment are likely to affect the longevity of equipment over time.
Impact of the project
The project team has found that, due to humid summers and freezing winters in Toronto, it is important to have the ability to monitor the equipment environment, store the information in the cloud as history and generate alerts when environmental variables go out of range.
When the project team created the sensor, they connected with Humber’s TV Studios (figure 2), overseen by Michael Gilman, Manager, Technical Services, and installed the device (figure 3) in order to test temperature and humidity. As a result, the team was able to acquire the readings from inside the room (figure 1), analyze the impact and visualize the data on the Cloud web domain.
Aasim Manji, who maintains the Humber TV studio and utilizes the application, shared positive feedback about the ease of use and information about the humidity and temperature within the space. Aasim stated,
“It [Sense Weather Station] really helps me keep track of the TV studio’s temperature and lets me adjust the space’s settings accordingly as we need to maintain a certain temperature due to all the equipment inside.” — Aasim Manji, Digital Media Technician, Humber College
Upon testing the sensor, the project team completed the capstone project and showcased it as part of the ICT Capstone Project Expo 2022. The project is yet another example of inspiring collaboration between faculty members and students.
Learn more about ways to get involved in research projects taking place at Humber.