Computer Projects

Summary
This post is a listing of any completed or ongoing projects as well as a running tally of completed computer repairs.

Description
The accomplishment of finishing a project is a great thing.  It's awesome to start from imagining a new project to completing it.  This is especially true if I had no experience before starting.  Often times, between work and school, this sense of accomplishment is lost to quickly focusing on new problems.  Posting the major projects is both for reflection and maybe it helps someone else. If there is interest in a tutorial from one of the projects listed, let me know!

Below the projects is a section of repairs.  Repairs are accepting an unusable computer from somebody and making it a working computer.  A repair is a project but are excluded from the project list as the final product of a repair is always the same, a working computer.  I do these repairs because I believe computers greatly increase the quality of life.  Unfortunately, a machine could become completely unusable at any moment and not everyone knows what to do or may not have the financial means when their computer becomes unusable. If you can make computer repairs, have a little extra time, and get approached by anyone that needs help, I would encourage you to take the extra time and help.  Repair projects are both rewarding and a great source of learning experience.

The Projects
Almost all of these projects were written after June 2011.

Name:	Project Mendel
Goal:	Complete multiple tasks related to genetics. Determine if something is due to chance (better than chi-squared test). Perform a test cross using a punnett square diagram.
Concepts:	Math for genetics, C# Winforms, Java, string manipulation

Name:	Sequence Cutter
Goal:	In a 40 page document full of nothing but the letters A, T, G, C, N, remove and label the data between each set of N characters. (Remove all non-read sequences from sequence data).
Concepts:	C# Winforms, Java, Generics, Queues

Name:	RC Car Hack
Goal:	Pair a broken remote control (RC) car with an arduino and PC, through bluetooth to control with simple keypress or xbox 360 controller.
Concepts:	C#, Winforms, Bluetooth, System.IO.Ports, Arduino, Motor Driver

Name:	Arduino Vending Machine - Accepting Dollar Bills
Goal:	Use a bill validator (BA-30) and Arduino to show when a bill has been accepted.
Concepts:	C#, Winforms, System.IO.Ports, Arduino, Bill Validator

Name:	Image Viewer
Goal:	Display all available images from a designated folder in an ASP.NET site
Concepts:	C#, ASP.NET, MS SQL Server 2008, GridView control, DirectoryInfo, FileInfo

Name:	Word Counter
Goal:	Get the count of words from the page source of any specified webpage in order to analyze or make associations with the content
Concepts:	C#, Winforms, ASP.NET, HtmlAgility Library, Dictionary object

Name:	Contact Us
Goal:	Send an email filled with user input
Concepts:	C#, Winforms, ASP.NET, SmtpClient, MailMessage

Name:	Message Station
Goal:	Send text messages (SMS), of unlimited length, to a contact picked from a saved list.
Concepts:	C#, Winforms, SMS Gateway, SmtpClient, Queue, System.IO.File

Name:	PDF Form Filler
Goal:	Take user input and fill fields in an existing PDF file
Concepts:	C#, ASP.NET, ITextSharp Library, SmtpClient, MailMessage, Android, WebView

Name:	Mobile Learning Center
Goal:	On Android, create an application that only uses HTML for presentation. Additional HTML modules can be added/downloaded to extend the application (Dynamic) while running.
Concepts:	Android, Download Manager, HTML, java, java.io.*, java.util.zip.*, ASP.NET

Name:	Android FTP
Goal:	Upload a text file via FTP
Concepts:	Android, Java, java.io.*, java.net.*, Apache Commons Net Library

Name:	Agricultural Surveyor (IN PROGRESS)
Goal:	Make a platform to collect data from agricultural areas using an automated quadcopter, ardupilot mega, and android phone. Analyze, manipulate, and present data collected using C#/ASP.NET. Store data using MS SQL Server 2008.
Concepts:	ASP.NET, MS SQL Server 2008, GridView, DirectoryInfo, FileInfo, Android, Intents/Broadcast receivers/Content Provieders for SMS and sensor information, Arduino, hobby hardware

Name:	Scrape Web Info System
Goal:	Get links from a search, separate all words from each page retrieved, and count all the words.
Concepts:	ASP.Net, C#, MS SQL 2008, HtmlAgility Library

Name:	Maximum Data Rate of a Channel
Goal:	Calculate the maximum data rate of a channel according to Nyquist and Shannon.
Concepts:	Android, Java, static methods

Still working on listing more....



Repairs
2011

• Hardware Replaced
• Hard drives - 5 (includes either reimage, clone, or file transfer)
• Optical drives - 2
• RAM - 3
• Graphics Card - 1
• 
  
• Malware Removal - 8
• Network problem resolved - 6

2012

• Hardware Replaced
• Hard drives - 1 (includes either reimage, clone, or file transfer)
• Optical drives - 0
• RAM - 0
• Graphics Card - 0
• 
  
• Malware Removal - 2
• Network problem resolved - 2