One of my most comprehensive personal projects that I have worked on was my ultrasonic distance measurer. Armed with an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor, an Arduino Board, a 16x2 LCD display, a breadboard, and some jumper wires, I was able to engineer a device that tells the distance between itself and an object in front of it through ultrasonic pulses.
Throughout this project, I was able to gain hands on experience with
both computer science and computer engineering. I learned how to use
circuit boards in conjuction with jumper wires, breadboards, sensors,
and displays.
Not only did I gain experience with the hardware components, but I wrote
the software to control these components. Figuring out how the hardware
and software interacted seemed like a nearly impossible task at the
time, but luckily I was able to do plenty of research and figure it out.
Following development, I was able to test and refine the functionality
so that the distance measure could be accurate up to 30 feet. This was a
very rewarding project because I had a tangible device that I could
actually use if necessary.