A* Maze Pathfinder

Given a formatted maze with an entrance in the top left and an exit in the bottom right, this program will find the quickest route from start to finish, assuming there is one. After researching many different pathfinding algorithms, my teammate and I decided that a modified A* pathfinding algorithm was the best algorithm to use to solve this problem. Once we figured out the algorithm we were going to use, the only thing left to do was to build the program around it. This taught us about new algorithms we had not used before, and taught us how to use these algorithms to solve actual problems.

Check out the source code here

KinSHIFT: Social Fitness Application

Over a few months in the summer of 2016, a small collection of my classmates and I created our own company. Once we were finished school, we took a few days off to recuperate, and then began the process of learning the Android development environment, which we had never used before. We learned the basics of Java in school, but it was mostly just to teach the logic of programming. This single semester of Java, while helpful, was not enough to do what we wanted to do in Android. Our Linux learning helped while we set up servers for our back end and project management.

Our first app, KinSHIFT, was a social media engine for connecting like-minded individuals who want to exercise, but do not have the motivation to do it alone. On several occasions we had to rewrite large amounts of the application, due to code merge conflicts, or just untraceable bugs. This, along with the fact we were on a steep learning curve, caused us to take a lot longer than we had originally planned.

We took this as an opportunity to do some self-directed learning, and at the end of the summer, although we did not achieve exactly what we set out to do, we did learn a lot, and we all feel like we are better programmers and business people for this experience.

Self-Driving Car Project

As a self-directed project, two of my classmates and I created a scratch made RC car that used image stream processing to drive itself. It drove by following a line of tape on the ground, similar to a self driving car following the lines on the road. The car was modelled using online 3d design platform TinkerCAD, then printed using a 3d printer. It was a successful project, allowing us to learn about AI, and certain mechanical design principles.

Check out the source code here

Warlizard Anonymous Gaming Forum

We considered a number of different backend technologies for this, primarily open-source forum software PHPBB. After a meeting we agreed that we did not want to store user data, and wanted users to be able to post anonymously. We scrapped the PHPBB idea and decided to just run a basic REST API so we could create our own frontend. Our group completed the project, and had utilized team collaboration software to aid our development process to an extraordinary degree. In total there were 70 pushes to github, countless hours of team communication via slack, as well as various group meetings to ensure we were creating a project we could feel confident in, and one that met our own quality standards.

Check out the source code here

Big Brothers Big Sisters Donation Scheduler

I connected with a local branch of a national charity, Big Brother Big Sisters, to create a web application that will assist people in donating clothing and other items to the charity. The idea of the application was this: give users a chance to find out what they can and cannot donate to the charity through a variety of means. This allowed users to search for an item, and then figure out the best way to donate, therefore reducing the number of calls potential donors would otherwise have to make. This work term drew heavily on all the topics I learned about in my web development classes, as well as the technical communications course I took earlier this year. This experience also taught me that new systems are not always as simple to learn as you may think they are going to be.

Check it out here.