Rizwaan Abdulkadir, of Soddy Daisy, and Grant Powell, of Jamestown, Tennessee, are majoring in computer engineering and are due to graduate from UTC in December.
What started as an undergraduate capstone project has become an entrepreneurial adventure for two University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students.
Rizwaan Abdulkadir and Grant Powell, both UTC computer engineering majors set to graduate in December, were part of a five-student team—comprised of the entire set of UTC students in that discipline at the time—assigned to work together in the capstone course beginning in August 2023.
Students are required to submit ideas for the group project, and the five students proposed five different possibilities. Their instructor, Roland Howell, suggested another idea that all five agreed on. That was to design a device to replace the logic board used in the “Digital Logic and Introduction to Computer Hardware” course.
What’s a logic board? Well, if you’ve ever seen the inside of a computer—and a flat surface there covered in a grid of small wires—you’ve probably seen a logic board. In digital logic classes, students work with these boards to learn about the fundamental circuitry operations of computers. They’re part of lab kits students buy along with course textbooks.
Howell suggested that the students design a board to improve on the then-available version, which had limited power and input/output connections and “numerous other shortcomings.”
Together with their classmates Eric Randolph, Maxwell King and Seth Hulsey, Abdulkadir and Powell collaboratively designed a custom-printed circuit board with a microcontroller, as well as switches and lights to indicate inputs and outputs for digital logic lab exercises. They named their board the “Integrated Lab Companion.”
Abdulkadir and Randolph led the hardware design. Powell, Hulsey and King developed accompanying software. After several prototypes, the team’s effort resulted in a fully functional device manufactured and shipped from China. A standout feature of the new board was its integration with custom PC software, which brought new functionality not available in previous iterations.
The five students successfully completed the project in spring 2024, the course’s second semester. Randolph, King and Hulsey moved on, but Abdulkadir and Powell kept working to turn the design and its accompanying software into a commercially available product.
“I’ve noticed that most engineers or computer science students, they don’t have an entrepreneurial spirit,” Abdulkadir said. “They’re like, ‘I’m going to solve this problem, and I’m going to solve it really well, and then I’m going on to the next. I don’t want to deal with politics or trying to sell something.’
“Well, if I’m going to do something, I want to see it go all the way. You can always create a prototype, but if you want to make sure people actually benefit from the work you put in—and it doesn’t matter what that work is—you have to take that extra step.”
“Not to mention,” Powell added, “this is a good idea that has a market. We’d all had the digital logic class already, and we all hated that old board.”
Why? First, it came with the $50 lab kit in pieces that had to be assembled by the student. For many, it’s their first experience with such hardware, Powell said, and it wasn’t unusual for students to damage it in assembly.
“Then, it doesn’t work, and there goes $50 bucks,” he said.
The black object in the foreground is the UTC student-developed DigiLab One logic board for use in digital logic lab courses. The red lights indicate the output states generated by a circuit, multicolored wires connect the board to circuits, and the black-and-white patterned cable enables the board to interact with the computer software to run automated testing.
Their prototype included a capability that Abdulkadir describes as “our most requested feature,” the integration of a seven-segment display. The display’s letters and numerals clearly indicate the performance of circuits students design in lab exercises.
“That removes the need for separate, extra wires and resistors to a separate, seven-segment display that they would have to keep track of,” he said, “so now they don’t have to worry about attaching the display improperly and they can instead focus on the circuitry.”
The software is designed to test the circuits students create with the board.
“They can use it all on their own without the software and still get the exact same features, but they can use the software, too,” he said. “It’s (software) designed for taking control and testing the circuit, such as the instructor can define how the circuit should operate and then check it by having the software take control and test it.”
This feature enables circuit testing to be done much more quickly than previous manual testing.
Through the capstone course, student teams are supplied modest funding—usually to cover materials—to defray the costs of implementing projects. Abdulkadir and Powell’s team was furnished $1,000 to bring a prototype logic board to fruition. They were required to either provide 12 units to their professor for use as a classroom copy or create a business and sell the devices directly to students or through the University.
After a lot of conversations about procedures and requirements, Abdulkadir scoured the internet for suppliers of hardware for the boards, wiring, soldering, assembling, packaging and shipping.
He found them in China. Google Translate helped overcome the language barrier. The more significant communication challenge came from the 12-hour time difference. Hours could pass before responses came to text messages or emails, often in the middle of the night. To help shorten the lag in communication, Abdulkadir got used to setting 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. alarms on his phone to wake him for a digital chat with suppliers in Shenzhen, where it would be 3 p.m. or 4 p.m.
Then, there was navigating requirements around international shipping. The labor cost of product assembly in China versus in the U.S. Shipping by air versus lower-cost, much-slower shipping by sea.
Then came an order from the UTC College of Engineering and Computer Science for 100 of the new boards for the fall 2024 semester—about three weeks before classes began. Somebody was going to have to front $2,000 to get production going, and it couldn’t be Powell, already paying his way through college and off-campus housing through a full-time job as a manager with a Walgreens store—in addition to being a full-time student.
Abdulkadir had spent most of summer 2024 looking for suppliers and manufacturers—and he remembered a little money he’d put back from a good-paying internship in an earlier summer. Suddenly, there was capital to start production for the order.
“As soon as he told me, ‘Hey, I actually got a hundred coming,’ maybe three weeks before the start of the semester,” Powell said, “I started the port for the web app.”
Powell describes the software he and the team developed for their capstone project as “initially basic, intended for limited use in that course.” As the use case expanded, the software required an entire overhaul.
While Abdulkadir managed the logistics of delivering the boards to UTC, Powell transitioned the software from a Python-based installable application to a progressive web app built with TypeScript and React programs. Hosting it as a website simplified setup for users, eliminating the need for software downloads. Powell said this shift enabled him to enhance the software with additional features, improving its overall functionality and scalability of the product.
They branded their device the Digilab One—with cable to connect to a PC, extra boards to build circuits on, greater functional capacity and the full software feature available to anyone who buys the board. Even with all its added features, DigiLab One would sell for the same price as the previous, less user-friendly circuit board model. The shipment arrived in time for the start of classes and the product is in use in the digital logic lab classes meeting this fall.
“The first time we went to Howell’s lab, and they were all using the website with the boards, it was pretty amazing,” Powell said. “There were a hundred students using the site that I’ve been working on. I could have just about cried.”
Wiring for connecting the DigiLab One logic board to a student-designed computer circuit and a cable for connecting to a computer running companion, custom-developed software. Rizwaan Abdulkadir researched and found suppliers and manufacturers (in China) to source these items, including the packaging enclosing them, as well as their assembly into complete kits and shipping from China to the U.S.
Howell, who described the computer engineering major as a small but growing part of the Computer Science and Engineering department, said the digital logic course can be the only exposure students in other computer science majors have to “low-level hardware concepts.”
“I was excited when the team decided to take on the challenge of redesigning the lab companion board. They have added many extra features that I am already using this semester in the lab. They had to learn PCB design, USB serial connections, file encryption, microcontroller programming and much more to turn this idea into a complete working project,” Howell said.
“It could have ended with them finishing that project and moving on to the next class, but Rizwaan’s and Grant’s continuing efforts to create and supply an all-in-one package, along with completely rebuilding the software, have made this project a resource for students in our college (and hopefully others) using for years into the future.
“They have done an amazing job, and I couldn’t be prouder of them.”
Despite only one member of their original, five-student capstone project team “graduating on time” in May 2024, Abdulkadir and Powell both say they’re glad to still be on campus.
“It actually worked out for the better,” Powell said, “because now we’re here for the first semester of deployment of the new boards. I’ve been going into the labs once a week and, through that, found a small issue we had to tweak in the software, and that was perfect feedback.”
They have another order—for 50 units—and Abdulkadir continues looking for ways to control production costs. Those have been joined by operating expenses such as the fee for registering with the state of Tennessee as a limited liability company and filing required annual reports, franchise tax and other taxes.
It won’t be right away, but in time, orders will produce a profit. For now, they’re satisfied with breaking even. They haven’t made decisions looking too far into the future.
“We did this to improve the quality of education for digital logic,” Abdulkadir said. “Sure, we could have done only the minimum, but if we don’t take it to scale, there’s only so many lives we can change.
“By taking it scale, if we commercialize it, we can not only improve the learning experience for students at UTC, we have the opportunity to possibly go to Tennessee Tech, Chattanooga State—other campuses—because this class is a part of the curriculum for computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering at most universities in the state. After all the hours we’ve spent and seeing what an improvement this is, of course we want it to benefit other students.”
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UTC College of Engineering and Computer Science
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
The DigiLab One logic board (above), alongside two sets of wiring included with the product. Rizwaan Abdulkadir researched and found suppliers and manufacturers (in China) to source these items, including the packaging enclosing them. Abdulkadir arranged for the assembly and shipping of complete kits from China to the U.S.
