Developing Instruments to Measure Energy Use in Earlham's Buildings

Ivan Babic '13
Hardware Interface Project, Earlham College

“With the building monitoring, we want to show how hard it is to produce energy, and how easy we spend it,” Ivan says. At the project’s completion, Ivan and his co-workers Ben Smith, ’12, and Sanele Mahlalela,’11, willl install LCD touch screens in campus building to display the information they collect.

The students — who majors include Politics, Computer Science, and Biochemistry — worked together to design, weld and program the components. Their work is part of the Hardware Interface Project, an outgrowth of Earlham’s computer science department.

“This really makes you use problem solving skills,” Ben says. “We’re not doing assembly stuff where you have a kit and you’re following the manual. Here, there is no manual.”

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