This blog is being created to document my progress through my capstone project for the Oregon State University computer science degree that I am pursuing.  This is the final course and project in the program, and I will be graduating in June 2022.

At this point in time, final projects and groups have not yet been assigned, although each student has by now submitted their top 5 project selection picks, and groups will be finalized in the very near future.  For students like me, who did not have a pre-made group or pre-approved project idea going into the course, the selection processed worked by browsing a list of available projects here, filtering them by course (CS467, 3-month), and submitting a list of desired projects ranked 1 – 5. For my introductory blog post, I will briefly cover the project selections I made, and why I’m interested in them.

The first project I selected, found here, is to create an Intel 8088 emulator in C/C++ and successfully run and play a Space Invaders ROM. This is the most interesting project to me for a number of reasons. I have long enjoyed playing video games, and have used a wide variety of emulators for various systems. From this perspective, it would be enjoyable to work on a project which I’d myself be interested in using. Additionally, I enjoy programming in the C language, and one of my favorite courses at OSU was CS271 – Architecture and Assembly Language. It would be great to expand on the concepts I learned in that course for the project.

The second project I selected, found here, is called Software Programming Quiz, and is a web application designed to allow employers to create quizzes for job applicants, and to receive various statistics on the performance of the quiz takers. This project is interesting because it is in the realm of full-stack web development, which is an area I’ve focused on in past projects. I believe the skills I’ve learned in the past couple of years would be a large benefit to working on the project, and would feel confident in my ability to contribute.

The third project I selected, found here, is called Job Tracker, and is another web application designed to assist CS students in their job / internship hunting by tracking the status of their various applications, as well as skills and a contacts list. This project is also interesting to me because I can use my previous experience working in full-stack web development to be a strong contributor. Also, this is another case where I’d be interested in personally using the project itself for my own job-hunting purposes, increasing its attractiveness as a capstone project.

The fourth project I selected, found here, is a ‘dating app’ for animal adoption. This project mainly interests me because I like the idea of such an application, as I love animals. Also, as I just recently took OSU’s mobile application development class, I would be able to use those skills (i.e. Flutter development) to contribute to this project.

The final project I selected, found here, is called Embedded Modern APRS Tracking UI, and is a project focused around receiving APRS packets (APRS is an amateur radio protocol for receiving position and weather announcements) and plotting them on a map, with the target platform being an embedded device (i.e. Raspberry Pi) with a touch screen, and would require interaction with multiple sensors and an RF interface. This project is the most out of my comfort zone that I picked, however I’ve long been interested in embedded development, and believe this project would provide some welcome experience in this field.

Projects and groups will be assigned soon, so check back here for updates. I am looking forward to a great semester, and putting a lot of effort into whichever project I’m assigned to!