The Fall Capstone Design Expo will be held December 5, 2022 in McCamish Pavilion (Georgia Tech Basketball Stadium). The Expo showcases Georgia Tech’s graduating seniors as they present innovative projects designed and built during the Capstone Design Course. Entrepreneurial students work in teams to solve an industry problem and develop innovative tools to assist researchers.

ECE has a long-standing and vibrant senior design (capstone) program. Teams of ECE seniors work on projects ranging across multiple research focus areas. Many of the projects are multi-disciplinary efforts bringing together unique combinations of students with complimentary technical skills from different engineering disciplines. These technically rich joint projects offer students the opportunity to gain cross training in other disciplines ranging from biomedical, mechanical, industrial, and chemical engineering to industrial design and beyond.  Emphasis is placed on the design process, the technical aspects of the design, and on reducing the proposed design to practice.

All eight schools within the College of Engineering compete, with ECE students making up close to a quarter of total participants. The Fall 2022 Capstone Design Expo features nearly 20 teams featuring ECE students.

One of which, The Bakers, is highlighted below to give you an example of the types of innovative projects students take on:

Team name: The Bakers
Project name: Shortbread - The Self-Diagnosing Breadboard
Team members: Christopher Saetia (EE), Huijin Chung (EE), Kyungchul Ha (EE), Michael Carrow (CmpE), Thomas Contis (EE)
Advisor: Brian Beck

About Shortbread:
A breadboard is a simple device designed to let users create circuits without the need for soldering. A variety of electronic systems may be prototyped by using breadboards, from small analog and digital circuits to complete central processing units (CPUs).

During the Fall 2022 Capstone Design Expo, The Bakers, a team made up of five ECE senior undergrads, will present their project, Shortbread. Shortbread is a self-diagnosing breadboard that eases the circuit prototyping experience by detecting and alerting its users of electrical faults before and after a circuit construction on the breadboard.

Before the circuit is powered, color-coded LEDs light up to indicate any short or open circuit faults on the prototyped circuit's nodes. And when the circuit is powered, Shortbread can detect dangerous surges of current draw from the power supply and disconnect the power supply from the circuit. Overall, these simple smart checks and safety features aim to provide a more efficient debugging and safe use experience when building circuits.

“As a team, we all leaned on each other to get through the complexities of developing this new product, and its success would not be achieved without everyone contributing their ideas to Shortbread's design. This project allowed all of us to go through the stages of product development and appreciate the hard work that goes not only into designing a product, but also its planning, marketing, and manufacturing. We each had the chance to experiment with new tools and electronics, and we will carry forth the lessons we learned from this project to our future engineering endeavors,” said Christopher Saetia, a senior in electrical engineering.

You can view all the Capstone Design Expo teams and projects on the Fall 2022 Projects webpage. The entire Tech community is encouraged to attend the Design Expo on Monday, December 5 in McCamish Pavilion.