Technology Tuesday

I have told you many times before about Imagine!’s collaboration with the University of Colorado Engineering School, where students create a variety of assistive technology projects for individuals served by Imagine!. (Don’t recall? Check out here, here, here, here, and here for just a few examples of projects).

Well, students this semester are at it again, and one group has taken their project to the next level. They have entered their project into an Elevations Credit Union contest, wherein Elevations is giving away up to $1,500 to help fund local projects that support the Boulder community. As they put it, Elevations wants to support “CU Buffs that are doing something awesome for their community.”

The winners of the funding are determined in part by an online vote on Facebook, and you can help. Click here and vote for “Electronic Color Organ Box.” You can vote once daily, and the contest runs through Friday, so don’t be shy – feel free to vote every day. Here is how the students are describing their project and how they would use the funds:

Our awesome project is an electronic color organ box. A phone or music player is plugged into it, and six different boxes will light up based on the bass, mid, and treble sounds from the music. There will be two columns of boxes, the bottom two are the biggest and will light up the same color with the base. The middle two will light up a different color together with the mid frequencies. And the top two boxes will light up a third color with the high frequencies. There will be three different color schemes that the user can choose for the boxes to be through a remote. The remote will also be able to control the volume of the music and intensity of the light. This electronic color organ box will be put in Imagine!’s Charles Family SmartHome in Longmont, CO, which is a home for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We will use the money for electronic boards such as an arduino and spectrum shield. A spectrum shield breaks up the frequencies of the music. Also, we will buy nice acrylic to make the boxes and so the light will have a nice glow through it. We will buy LEDs for the colored light, an AC/DC cord, and miscellaneous things such as wires and screws. The money will definitely be put to good use! 

Thanks for helping out, and thanks especially to the CU students for adding their project to this contest!

Don’t forget to vote!