Maintenance rooms in many older buildings across the Texas A&M University campus have flooded over the years, resulting in significant equipment damage. These issues are currently present in Fermier Hall and Thompson Hall, home to the department.
Department head Dr. Reza Langari and facilities manager Frank Cervantez challenged students to design and implement a solution to monitor these rooms and be alerted when problems such as flooding or unauthorized entry are detected. Seniors Dustin Tish and Brandon Bowen stepped forward to develop the “Maintenance Room Internet of Things (IoT)” project.
The project resulted in a new embedded system module that uses the university’s wireless network to monitor and publish environmental data from each maintenance room to an IoT program.
The team’s dashboard allows authorized personnel to log in to the program and receive this data in a graphical format. In addition, if certain environmental parameters such as water or light levels are exceeded inside of any maintenance rooms, the IoT program immediately alerts Cervantez. Having this information anywhere internet access is available allows him to quickly address the problem and resolve the issue before costly damage occurs.