On Friday, December 6th, fellow Adafruiter Noe and I had the opportunity to visit Boston College (BC) for Professor John Gallaugher‘s Student Tech Showcase. We were also joined by BC alum and maker Guy Dupont.

At the end of every semester, Prof. Gallaugher organizes a showcase for his students in his physical computing and Swift programming classes to present their end of semester projects science fair-style. All of the projects were very impressive. For most of the students, the class had marked the first time they were working with these technologies, including electronics for the physical computing students.

Prof. Gallaugher uses CircuitPython and a lot of Adafruit hardware in his physical computing course. We were able to chat with the students presenting to learn about their projects and hear about their experiences using CircuitPython and Adafruit hardware. Here are a few projects that we saw (all of which are using CircuitPython):

The CPwii uses two Circuit Playground Bluefruit boards that are connected to each other over BLE. One board (the controller) sends accelerometer data to the second board (the display) that is connected to a NeoPixel matrix. The matrix displays a Mario Kart-style game where you drive the green pixel with the controller by tilting the board left or right. You need to avoid the red pixel obstacles to make it to the end of the track.

A soil moisture project uses the Adafruit STEMMA Soil Sensor to alert you when your plant needs a drink. The enclosure is 3D printed to look like a frog. The frog ribbits through its speaker eyes until you water your plant.

If you’ve ever needed extra motivation to get out of bed in the morning, this project may be the key for you. It uses two Circuit Playground Bluefruit boards as an alarm that won’t turn off until you pick up your tooth brush.

There was a very creative mini golf game on display. One Circuit Playground Bluefruit board acted as the controller. Its accelerometer data was sent to the second Circuit Playground Bluefruit that was attached to a servo with a tiny 3D printed golf club attached. The controller board lets you swing the golf club to try and sink a hole-in-one.

Often makers find a component that they really want to use and build a whole project around it. That was the case with the AI-Powered Smart-Lamp. It uses a Huskylens AI camera to identify colors. Once it recognizes a color, it changes the color of the NeoPixels inside the lamp. The camera also turns on the lamp with facial recognition.

There was a festive Matrix Portal S3 project. On the surface it is a countdown timer, but with a twist: a Christmas tree is grown during the span of the timer. Once the time is up, you have a fully decorated Christmas tree on the matrix.

Many of the projects were assistive tech projects for the BC Campus School. This project uses a Raspberry Pi 4 to demonstrate ASL with a robotic hand. You can type in a word or phrase into the terminal and the hand will then spell your word in ASL with pauses so that you can practice.

The DigiBand uses a Circuit Playground Bluefruit and an iOS app to assist with music classes as the Campus School. The CPB accepts button inputs from students to play along with music setup in the app. The enclosures and circuits for the buttons use 1/8″ jacks to allow for students to insert their own accessibility switches.

There was an alphabet game that used MPR121 capacitive touch breakouts. You could touch the nails below each lasered letter and hear it repeated back through the speaker. There was also a game mode where the speaker would play a letter name and you would touch the letter.

I’m so glad that we had the opportunity to attend the showcase. As you can see from this blog post, the projects were excellent and the students were rightfully proud of their work. Prof. Gallaugher has created an excellent curriculum and has facilitated a positive and kind learning environment. In case you weren’t aware, he shares all of his resources for anyone to access. This includes his slideshows from class and many YouTube videos on his channel.