NFA Students retrofits DPW Speedometers

City of Newburgh's Department of Public Works has two speedometers that use a 12v battery to operate. The life of these batteries are roughly 1 day before they need to be recharged at headquarters. It is too much work for the DPW workers to set-up and breakdown the speedometers each day to ensure the safety of its residents.

I am a teacher at Newburgh Free Academy-Main, teaching courses such as Design and Drawing for Production, Architectural Drafting, and Engineering Design. My engineering class designs, builds, and test various prototypes throughout the year.

My proposal is for students to use this real-world problem and retrofit these speedometer units with solar panels so that these devices can be used for extended periods of time.

Starting in April 2020, I plan to introduce this design problem to my Engineering class as their final project. They will have 2 months to come up with the design, drawings, testing the solar panels, and build working prototypes for the mounting system.

This project will benefit the Newburgh Dept of Public Works, Police Department, and the people residing within Newburgh. Monitoring speed has the potential to make neighborhood more safe by reducing speeding.

Подкрепен от Newburgh, NY (November 2019)