A team from the Fall 2022 Spark Challenge explains their project to Dimitrios Peroulis, Michael and Katherine Birck Head and Reilly Professor of ECE

Roughly four dozen teams will be presenting their design projects to a panel of judges next week as part of the biannual Spark Challenge. The event is a campus-wide, corporate-sponsored design competition, hosted by the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Spark is open to all undergraduate students at Purdue University. It allows students to present their projects in one of two ways: demonstration only or demonstration and competition in the challenge, which is judged by ECE faculty and corporate sponsors. Teams compete for cash prizes.

Among this year’s entries are:

• Way of the Water Bottle - A water bottle that can monitor the user's drinking habits and give appropriate reminders as to when they need to drink more water.
• Water Quality Monitor – A water quality monitor that assesses potability of water, and a flushing and pump-filter system to dispose of uncleanable water and clean easily purifiable water.
• It’s Called (Car) Soccer – Remote controlled cars that play soccer.
• Our Pillow - An alarm clock pillow that uses heat, sound, motion, and light to wake people up.
• Whacker Tracker - A system that allows the user to swing a golf club and receive statistics about their swing.
• Yuki Ota – A training device for the sport of Olympic style fencing.

Many of the Spark Challenge entries are ECE senior design projects. Senior Design is a required capstone experience which allows students to apply the knowledge they’ve gained from their ECE courses to s semester or year-long project. This allows students to gain hands-on experience, enhance their written and oral technical communication skills, and develop their teamwork abilities.

The Spark Challenge is set for Thursday, April 27, and Friday, April 28, from 10am – 2:30pm in the Bill and Shirley rice Design Studio in the MSEE Building. The event is free and open to the public.