Two teams from the University of the Philippines Diliman recently bagged the first and second prizes of an electronics design competition sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) for their innovative entries on low-cost printer and Wi-Fi technologies.
Team RAL, one of the two teams from UP Diliman, captured the top prize for their entry, ?3D Print Earth: A Linear Data Robot as a 3D Printer with Scrap Plastic from Bottles as its Printing Material?, which the group said could lower the cost of 3D printing by designing an environment-friendly 3D printer that uses scrap plastic as printing material.
The team, composed of Juan Paolo Espiritu, Martin Jude Borja, Carissa Norielle Cruz, Emilio Vicente Gomez and Kevin Matthew Yatco under the mentorship of Dr. Manuel Ramos of the UP-Diliman College of Engineering, received a cash prize of P 200,000.
The other team from UP Diliman, Team Low-Cost WiFi-Based BEMS, snagged the second prize with their project that aims to provide energy consumption visualization for building administrators using the existing Wi-Fi network of the building.
The project uses distribution panel meters (DPM) to measure power consumption from electric distribution panels of buildings and monitoring software that gathers, processes, and sends data to users through a Web-based interface.
Team members are Anna Katrina Gomez, Dan Niel Ramos and Anthony Kristianne Tang with Dr. Jhoanna Rodette Pedrasa as their faculty adviser.
The team from the Rizal Technological University came in third with their homebrew microcontroller-based solar/ wind power generation project. It harvests available energy sources such as solar irradiance and gusty wind to cut on the cost of electricity.
Most of the materials used in the design were recycled, with the neodymium magnets and aluminum backing plates used in their design coming from defective hard drives while the propellers of the turbine were from a 6-inch diameter PVC pipe.
The members are Renz Benhar Bobadilla, Florimund Bryan Garalde, Rhene Anne Orayan, James Brandon Masikip and Enrico Feliciano of the College of Engineering and Industrial Technology of Rizal Technological University under the supervision of Engr. Wilfredo Tamajo.
The second and third runners-up received cash prizes of P 100,000 and P 50,000, respectively.
The winners were announced in late March after a year-long selection process, which started on July of last year by the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (PCIEERD).
A qualifying round was conducted and finalists were given financial support by PCIEERD for materials and supplies to implement their design. The qualifying entries came from the following schools:
? Ateneo De Manila University (ADMU) – 2 qualified entries
? University of the Philippines ? Los Ba?os (UPLB)
? Technological Institute of the Philippines (TIP)
? De La Salle University (DLSU)
? Mindanao State University ? Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) – 3 qualified entries
? Samar State University (SSU) – 2 qualified entries
? Manuel S. Enverga University Foundation (MSEUF)
? Marinduque State College (MSC)
? University of the Philippines – Diliman (UPD) – 2 qualified entries
? Rizal Technological University (RTU)
? Batangas State University (BSU)
? Bulacan State University
? Westmead International School
The entries revolved around the theme ?Smarter Energy,? which is anchored on the DOST flagship program on Smarter Philippines. The program seeks to develop technologies that will provide solutions to pressing national problems using ICT.
The competition, which was open to all undergraduate electronics, electrical and computer engineering students, was aimed at selecting the most innovative, creative, and the one with the highest socio-economic potential in electronic design.
PCIEERD launched the competition to prepare students who may later on contribute in providing services to the semiconductor industry through the DOST?s Advanced Device and Materials Testing Laboratory (Admatel), and the upcoming Philippine Electronic Products Development Center (EPDC) and the Philippine Integrated Circuit Design Institute (PICDI).
?This is also a proof of our confidence and trust on the skills of our local talents in electronics design and that our Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) can produce world-class, competitive engineers,? said Nelson Beniabon, chief of PCIEERD?s Emerging Technology Development Division (ETDD) and head of the competition. ? Jane Tadili, with reports from PNA
