Girard Training Stables is a horse-based nonprofit organization that offers riding lessons, mental health support, and physical therapy. A scheduling tool was recently built for them to assist in managing as many as 90 volunteers across many different events. Our goal was to add observability to this scheduling tool, as being able to better observe the tool’s internal state would make fixing any problems easier. To add this observability we added both frontend and backend monitoring to track metrics such as how many users sign up for new accounts, when users start and finish creating an event, how much the server running the website is using its resources, and how many errors are caught while the server is running. Using these metrics, we were able to gain much insight into the internal state of the website and its users. We found that the frontend metrics were useful to non-technical users, with 70% of the users surveyed being able to correctly understand the data generated and theorize about parts of the website UI that could be improved based on said data. We were also able to correctly catch and log 100% of the test errors that were generated, and send alerts to administrators if these errors led to system failure. Overall, we were able to significantly improve the observability of the Girard Training Stables scheduling tool by adding monitoring, making it more robust, scalable, and easy to improve for the future.

The purpose of this project was to create a modular embedded systems platform that would provide a hands-on lab experience for students learning about embedded systems protocols. The system would be designed to be modular, expandable, and productizable. Its modularity would eliminate errors in the design and make the entire system more robust. It would also be expandable, which means additional project boards could be created in the future without requiring a complete redesign of the system. And finally, productizing the entire system would allow it to be sold to other universities who may have a similar program that would benefit from a system such as the OCTOPUS.

The purpose of this project was to construct and write code for a vehicle to take advantage of the benefits of combining stepper motors with mecanum wheels. This process involved building the physical vehicle, designing a custom PCB for the vehicle, writing code for the onboard microprocessor, and implementing motor control algorithms.