Senior Project Need your ideas!

Devinwesolowski

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I have to start working on my senior project for school, its a big deal because it can so easily hold me from graduating. Right now we are just starting. I know that i need a presentation, a 5 page paper, and a product.

What i need help with is the product and ideas, i really want to go to college for computer sciences so i really want to do something with a computer. I have a cousin that went to an "ok" school for computers and he will be helping me.

My first idea was to build a computer, but that gets really pricey so thats out of the question. My second idea was to make my 2005 HP desktop computer more energy efficient or something. But yeah i have an older computer that still is perfectly funtioning that i can take apart and or use in this project.

I'm open for any ideas, and it doesnt have to be building a computer, it could be coding or something. I did take webpage design 1 and 2 in school so i kind of know some things. I could also talk to one of my teachers about more of that.

EDIT: What about taking the monitor and making it into a picture frame thing?

Please, i need your help!
 
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You should really take a look at Arduino and Raspberry Pi.
They're relatively cheap and with some simple coding (especially on the Arduino), you can do some pretty cool stuff with 'em.
 
agree with raspberry pi

$35 is affordable.

make part of the project designing a case and part of the project coding it do something cool.
 
I assume this is for high school?

What kind of criteria are there for the project? What are the restrictions?
 
Ooooooh, something i know a bit about there.
I was pretty excited about the Raspberry Pi when it came out, so i wrote some articles about it. This one has some stuff that could give you a few ideas if you choose the Raspberry Pi route. If you can't be bothered reading, there are some cool YouTube videos on there.

I'm not suggesting you copy any of these, but maybe it could generate some ideas?

The only problem is picking it up - until recently, i was still hearing a lot of people talk about several months waiting times. Has this been resolved yet?
 
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sorry for the late response, but there isnt really any restrictions. The only ones are about marijuana and abortion.

Yes it is for high school, it can be as elaborate as i want to make it, and 35$ is definitely affordable!

But wow i just watched a video about the raspberry pi, that is seriously the coolest thing. I had no idea it existed until now! I really like it, i mean really really like it. What could i do with it though that would be of MY own doing? i mean its incredible enough as it is, and i bet no teacher at my school will not think its amazing, but i need to do something with it that would be considered my product, in the sense that i did something using the raspberry pi.

How would i go about getting an operating system? im not 100% sure how that works. Would it be something i could take out of my 2005 HP compaq presario?
 
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There are a lot of sites where you can get the OS pre-installed on the SD card, in a package with the RPi. For example, this one comes with the RPi, a case of your choice, and an SD card with 'Debian' installed:
https://www.modmypi.com/shop/raspbe...spberry-pi-set-up-kit-(including-raspberry-pi)

Unless you do something insanely difficult, i can't think of anything particularly new that you could do. Maybe playing around with speech recognition, or remote control maybe? I'm pretty sure you can easily add your own touches to it though :)

As long as the hardware exists, there aren't many restrictions on what it can do. I have seen remote control cars, speech recognition robotic arms, a University basically stuck 64 of them together and made a super computer, and there are so many more things being done as well.
 
Raspberry Pi runs on Linux, so it's free. There's several different distros out there built for it.
 
Alright, so i go and i get a distro which i THINK i understand, and now i have my raspberry pi and the software for it. Now im definitely going to look more into this because im having a hard time comprehending what i can do and i have months before this needs to be finished anyways.

I have an idea. Can i make this raspberry pi have the ability to surf the net and go on youtube and such? Ide imagine it doesnt use much power. So maybe i could do something about energy and money saving and show them that this little 35$ device can do as much as the average 500-700$ machine alot of households have just to use the internet.

Then maybe is there a way to show them the energy use of the linux compared to my MSI GT683? A way i can visually show them because the people i have to present to dont know anywhere near as much as you guys do.

EDIT: so from what im looked more into, the internet speed is slow with the device when its right out of the box. but there are things you can do to speed it up so it is quite efficient. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0pLdY2Ap5Q is a 2 minute video, that you will probably understand better than me
 
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So i just edited and posted a video link into my post, saved it, and now its completely gone for some reason. Fantastic.

So to shorten up what i was saying before it got deleted,

I had an idea, the web surfing speed for the device is slow when its straight out of the box. But there are ways to modify it to make it faster, and actually really nice. What if i did modify it, and then did my thing on how this 35$ device can do anything a families home computer can do? Also, im pretty sure it only uses a fraction of the power that normal computers use. So i could go on about the energy saving and money saving qualities. Also, it could make a great home entertainment device with its 1080p HD video it can watch movies in better detail than alot of TVs.

Plus is there a way i could compare the energy usage of the raspberry pi to my MSI GT683 laptop? maybe in a way that the average person could see the significant differance. And then maybe do some math and tell them how much they could save in a year.
 
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