Computer Engineering Commons^™

Music For Me, Zachary Graber, William Henrion

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Music For Me is an online web application that enables users to compose improvised music alongside an AI. Users have an array of understandable, easy to use yet powerful options available to them. While previous AI-collaborative music improvisation tools exist, they are either limited in scope, with minimal structure and user customization or completely overwhelming with a large amount of provided options so as to be inaccessible except to those dedicated to learning the program. This web application provides an intersection between these two extremes, providing a pick-up and play model that allows for a rich improvisational experience while still …

An-Drew: A Chatbot Application For Personalized Digital Expression, Jeffrey Huang

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

COVID-19 and the resulting quarantine affected many people over the past year, impacting many people’s mental health. To make matters even worse, those most in need of assistance with managing their mental health are often the ones with least access to support. These populations would benefit from a way in which to express themselves and practice self-care that is accessible and enjoyable. Art therapy offers one such solution. In this paper, I used word recognition and connections to determine a person’s mood by reading their responses to An-drew’s questions. My experiment shows that this is an effective start to seeing …

Extracting Creative Procedural Knowledge From Photoshop Tutorials, Federico Madden

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

For my senior design project, I created a web app that, given the text of an online Photoshop tutorial, uses a neural network to extract specific Photoshop actions (e.g. File - New or Layers - New Layer) that the tutorial either implicitly or explicitly instructs the reader to take. This neural network consists mainly of a BERT embedding layer followed by an LSTM module, with a linear multi-class, multi-label classification layer on top. The network achieved a macro average F1 score of 15.1% on tutorial sentence classification tasks.

Distributed Firewall For Iot, Ryan Lund, Anthony Fenzl, Chelsea Villanueva

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Minimal local resources, lack of consistency in low level protocols and market pressures contribute to IoT devices being more vulnerable than traditional computing devices. These devices not only have a wide variety of processors and implementations, but they often serve different purposes and generate unique network traffic. Current IoT network security solutions fail to account for and handle both the scale at which IoT devices can be deployed and the heterogeneous nature of the traffic they produce. In order to accommodate these differences and improve on current solutions, we propose the implementation of a microsegmented firewall for IoT networks. Unlike …

Sustainability Action Tracker, Gladys Hilerio, Isabelle Termaat, Patricia Ornelas Jauregui

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The Center for Sustainability at Santa Clara University is actively looking for ways to involve students in sustainable actions and accountability. With our help, they would like to create a site where students and faculty may track their sustainable behavior. This site will provide users with all the information they need to live a sustainable life, and include milestones in the form of progress bars and badges. The Center for Sustainability will be able to collect the data from this site to evaluate the progress of our university as well as the success of the site. Our motivation for this …

Sdhome: Securing Fast Home Networks, Christopher Batula, Holden Gordon, Tianyi Zhao

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) is a highly discussed network attack in Software Defined Networks. Attacks such as the Mirai Botnet threaten to compromise portion of large networks, including home users. Today, corporations secure their network using enterprise level software to protest their network from DDoS attacks . But their solutions are meant for large networks and depend on expensive hardware. There are few security solutions for home users and most are expensive or require a subscription for full protection. In this paper, we propose a new solution in the form of a plug and play device that will allow …

Centrifi: A Centralizedwireless Access Point Management Platform, Andreas Anderhub, Zac Wilson

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

With the ubiquity of wireless end-devices, more strain is placed on standard network deployment architectures. Mesh networks have started to rise in popularity in order to meet the needs of modern wireless networks. However, the existent solutions for deploying and centrally configuring mesh networks leave much to be desired, as most are either too expensive or too cumbersome. This paper showcases a solution to this problem, CentriFi—an open source platform, built to run on OpenWrt access points, providing a quick and easy way to set up and configure mesh networks in a central location using the 802.11s standard. CentriFi provides …

The Character Jar: Trait-Based Facial Feature Generation Software, Angela Shao

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

While AI has come a long way in random facial generation, very limited research has been done on targeted generation. Initial impressions given by faces vary widely depending on the shape and proportions of the features. This project will design a program that manipulates a face shape according to given traits. By using preexisting research on the correlation between facial features and associated characteristics and impressions, the practical uses of facial generation increase many fold. This allows facial generation to be applied to marketing and design, as well as increasing the overall accessibility to any laypersons seeking such applications.

Galapago!, Kristina Anderson, Kat Hibbert, Mariah Manzano, Catrina Nguyen

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

When traveling to the Galápagos Islands, tourists are unaware of all the Islands have to offer and only visit popular tourist spots. They bring in pests which are damaging to the ecological structure and do not contribute to the local economy. There is very limited Internet services on the Islands and not many online resources to be found. We have created a mobile and web application that show users recommendations for their visit. Because the Galápagos Islands do not have reliable internet connectivity, our application must not rely on connectivity to function. Instead, users will only need to connect once …

Omwanathrive: A Neonatal Survival App, Story Deweese, Tiffany Lee, Samantha Sy, Emily Zhang

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Uganda’s infant mortality rate is alarmingly high, ranking twenty-first in the world for highest infant mortality; eighty-one babies die within their first month of life each day in Uganda. The UN reports the greatest risk factors are rural location, prematurity, and young impoverished mothers with limited educational opportunities. Thus, young women are giving birth to children before they even learn about how to take care of their newborn infant. Our solution to this problem is in the form of a mobile application called OmwanaThrive: Neonatal Survival App. The purpose of the app is to educate women about how to properly …

Youlearn: Offline Media Streaming Application For Rural Uganda, Emma Allegrucci, Jiabei Luo, Brianna Mcgovern

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The country of Uganda has implemented universal primary and secondary education. But still, some families cannot afford to send their children to school. When young people drop out of school, they often must resort to working illegal, unsafe, and low-paying jobs. Job prospects are even worse for disabled children. The objective of this project is to bring digital educational resources into rural villages in a low-cost manner.

YouLearn is an educational system that allows for o✏ine media streaming. Our system includes a Raspberry Pi to store the media locally and allows for streaming without WiFi being necessary. Our system supports …

Drive Health: Road Condition Detection, Peter Ferguson, Brian Walker

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Roadways play an essential role in toady’s society by contributing to economic growth and development, providing social benefits and fast routes to travel around efficiently. With more and more cars on roads, the quality of the streets is deteriorating faster than before. This decrease in road health contributes to hazards such as potholes and can cause significant damage to vehicles on the road. Currently, the process of improving and monitoring roads’ health is done infrequently and is time-consuming for the government. Therefore, many road quality issues are manually reported by the people who drive on them. This requires filling out …

Mobile Application To Distribute Water Quality In Rural Nicaragua, Rachael Freitag, Sarah Ortiz-Jones

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The organization ASDENIC provides the citizens of northern Nicaragua with many resources to help them become more informed farmers and improve the quality of their lives. ASDENIC currently holds weekly meetings to distribute information such as water quality, weather conditions, and other important agricultural updates. However, technological limitations still prevent Nicaraguan farmers from getting updates from ASDENIC in real-time. We have partnered with Santa Clara University’s Frugal Innovation Hub and ASDENIC to create a mobile application to distribute necessary information to communities in rural Nicaragua in realtime.

Our mobile application is a platform for community leaders to share relevant information …

Photo-Realistic Image Synthesis From Text Descriptions, Ryan Cain, Gabriel Kralik, Campbell Munson

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Deep convolutional generative adversarial networks (DCGANs) have proven capable at generating diverse, photorealistic images of human faces, but it is difficult and often time-consuming to choose what kind of image these generative adversarial networks (GANs) produce. We create a simple, intuitive web application through which users may write a description of a human face in plain text and generate photos that appear to match the given description. In this paper, we show how text can be used to direct the output of a conditional GAN with a DCGAN architecture. While our images did somewhat resemble human faces, they often had …

Smart Quizzes, Andres Cisneros-Munoz, Cole Sanchez

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Standardized testing, while efficient for testing a large amount of people, is not an effective or holistic method of evaluating test takers. They fail to take into consideration factors such as stress, which can inhibit a student’s ability to perform well on a test. Our goal is to create a framework for creating tests that are dynamic, adaptive assessments, minimize stress levels, and overall improve student performance. This solution will produce in tests that even out the academic playing field while being more informative in their assessments.

Neptune: Marine Robot Rov Control System, Alex Achramowicz, Chris Layco, Cooper Zediker

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The mysteries of the aquatic world and the dangers human activity poses to its environmental health are important considerations. It is pivotal we find ecient methods to study and monitor the subsea environments in order to maintain and improve their health. This document provides insight into the planning, design, implementation, and testing in developing an enhanced control system for a marine remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to eectively control various mounted hardware components. Our goal for this design is to greatly assist scientists and environmentalists observe and collect subsea data to improve the subsea environment.

Clubgrove, Travis Le, Lyman Shen

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The current Santa Clara University Club system does not provide the necessary information in a relevant and concise fashion. As a solution, we built a system that caters towards students who are looking for clubs. In addition, the system also caters towards club leaders who want to increase their clubs’ visibility. Our system allows students to look up clubs, search club events, and look at interested clubs as well as previously joined clubs. The goal of this project is to provide an easy way for students to be involved in more clubs and allow clubs to gain members without spending …

A Low-Cost And Energy-Effcient Wearable Device For Posture Monitoring, George Shappell, Ying Huang, Ali Nazemi

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Millions of Americans suffer every year from back problems, now imagine if there was a way to help track and prevent back problems. Our solution to this problem is PostureBot a device that will help its users to correct their back posture and maintain good back posture.In doing so this device can help elevate and prevent people from developing minor and serious back problems in their future.

Flomosys: A Flood Monitoring System, Tai Groot

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to numerous innovations in the industry, including improvements to existing systems. Disaster prevention and monitoring systems are a prime example of such systems. Every year, there are significant and preventable financial losses, not to mention the safety hazards caused by floods. To warn people ahead of time, it is possible to deploy low-power wireless sensor nodes to send readings across any terrain to a cloud platform, which can perform pattern analysis, prediction, and alert forwarding to anyone's cellular device. In this paper, I propose Flomosys, a low-cost, low-power, secure, scalable, …

Advocasea, Emily Dang

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Plastics and pollution in the ocean pose a tremendous threat to the world’s biodiversity and human life on the planet. However, this issue is characterized by a lack of visibility and urgency. People do not understand the importance of this pollution because they do not sense an immediate or tangible impact on their lives. AdvocaSea is a virtual reality experience that teaches people about plastics in the ocean in a more immersive and engaging way, and by doing so, gives them more motivation and agency to make change in the world. This experience was delivered at Santa Clara’s Senior Design …

Acas: Always Connected, Always Secure, Blaise Aranador, Antonio Gigliotti, Shining Liu

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

There is no place where safety is more important than in the home. Research has shown that home security systems are effective in deterring burglars; additionally, these security systems allow residents to monitor their property at all times, even while they are away. More and more of these home security devices rely on a stable Internet connection and cannot provide functionality without it. ACAS is a system that helps keep smart devices connected to the Internet, even in the event of a home internet outage.

ACAS includes a programmable router that can connect to multiple Internet sources, which sets it …

Securely Updating Iot Using Blockchain, Rachael Brooks

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Because of the extensive growth of loT devices in the last few years, researchers have been looking for ways to reduce the amount of power they use. One cause for concern is the energy used to communicate with manufacturers when an update has to occur. Our solution to this problem is to move those communications off the device and onto a blockchain, with the owner of the device as an intermediary. The update is handled through the blockchain and is mediated by a smart contract. Overall, the owner pays for the update, the manufacturer passes the encrypted keys for the …

Truck Routing Application, Adam Miller

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

This application aims to provide dispatchers with an accessible tool to assist them in routing a fleet of trucks in the most ecient way. The vehicle routing problem is a notoriously complex and inecient problem to solve, yet dispatchers are tasked with solving it every single day by hand. Rather than radically transform a dispatcher’s time-sensitive workflow, my application seeks to provide them with a simple, powerful tool that can supplement their daily duties. This application will ultimately help dispatchers perform their jobs more eciently and contribute to the reduction of fuel consumption, carbon emissions, and vehicle maintenance costs.

Leapi: Wireless Diagnostic Assistant, Jeff Collins, Austin Iverson, Collin Seaman, Joseph Sindelar

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Nearly every person who usesWiFi on a daily basis has had trouble with a bad connection. Wireless connectivity issues are often difficult to diagnose and fix. Current solutions such as wired extenders, and MeshWiFi commercial packages are expensive and do not provide the user with a system that suggests placement of mesh units to maximize coverage. Our solution is an inexpensive and open-source diagnostic tool that maps out Wifi quality and informs the user of interference. With a simple, meaningful display, users will find trouble spots in their house, diagnose why IoT devices are not working, effectively place WiFi extenders …

Mitigating Fake Digital Media And Quality Assurance, Hetesh Sehgal, Xinyu Chen, Kyle Jiang

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

With the introduction of social media, the internet is filled with an excess of data and content. Users feeds are cluttered with fake, malicious, and unnecessary information, polluting their page and wasting their time. As observed in the 2016 US election, spam accounts posting fake news were successfully able to sway political opinion and misinform the general population. Additionally, with social media becoming one of the biggest advertising markets, there is a rise in the number of fake accounts with a large number of followers that mainly consist of bots. It should be a priority to protect the public from …

Multilock: A Document Escrow Service, Dominic Lagorio, Steven Herman

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The objective of this project is to create a system wherein it is no one person’s responsibility to claim agency over a given file, but rather that the responsibility is distributed amongst a number of individuals who must decide as a unit to grant access to said files. There are a number of driving factors here, including removing culpability for individual involvement with the file, preventing compulsory access to files, and providing sophisticated security protocols for file access.

Biometric Authentication Via Electrocardiogram Signals, Austin Miles, Carlos Garcia

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Biometric authentication has proven to be a reliable form of security as we have seen its continuous acceptance in multiple areas of technology. This includes facial recognition, fingerprints, gait analysis, and others. In this project, we develop a system that will provide authentication via electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. This system will employ a supervised machine learning approach to connect the various features generated by an ECG signal with the user. We will collect data using an online database. We will use this data to train the machine learning model that will be used to authenticate. Once a user is authenticated, then …

Platica: Personalized Language Acquisition Training & Instruction Chatbot Assistant, Nam Tran, Philip Cori, Andres Morales, Evan Johnson

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

English is immensely important and useful in our society, however there are many people across the world who are learning English as a second language and have limited options to practice. Casual English conversations with native speakers is one of the most proven and immersive ways to practice a language. However, not everyone has those opportunities or the resources to attend ESL classes. We aim to solve this issue with our project PLATICA, a robust, low-cost mobile application that anyone can use to build experience conversing in English. PLATICA takes advantage of state-of-the-art deep learning and natural language processing techniques …

Trippit: An Optimal Itinerary Generator, Andrew Nguyen, Osama Shoubber

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Travelers often lose interest and joy when traveling in tourist-packed areas around the world. As more restaurants and attractions open up in popular cities, the wait and travel time from one location to another inevitably increases. Each attraction has certain hours throughout the day where visitors surge and the wait times increase. In addition, traffic and travel time is an important factor to consider when looking to optimize ones trip. However, with large amounts of attractions, it is difficult to calculate and consider the most optimal routes and times an individual should use to visit each possible attraction. Travelers ultimately …

Homebook, Stephen Poth, Simon Stauber, Jake Vargas

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Having a reliable address system is something that is often taken for granted, but simply having one comes with immense benefits. People can easily find locations of friends and family, services like taxis know exactly where to pick customers up, and emergency response units can accurately find the scene of emergencies quickly. However, in many developing countries, these are luxuries only afforded by the wealthy and privileged neighborhoods. Locations are given haphazardly through description, often leading to late arrivals. In some cases this can be a dire possibility. Our solution aims to change this by developing a mobile application that …