When I think of some of the most memorable nights in college, it isn’t the night of the biggest party, or the night when I took a big test. Rather, one of those nights is the one before the engineering design showcase. The night that a group of friends built an electric couch.
This had all the best elements of college put together: Good friends, engineering, and a couch.
It was the night before the Engineering design showcase. A very busy time in the semester for Engineers, and a very long night at the OEDK for those that procrastinate on their projects.
Background:
Jonathan Bunt was the one to originally come up with the idea. He claims that his bike got stolen and he needed a way to get around campus, so he thought up the idea of building an electric couch. He had built a prototype before back home, but he had decided to build one at Rice as well.
Our group of 2020 ECE majors: Jonathan Bunt, Thomas Herring, Cam Walton, Anthony Perez, and Manuel Pacheco (me) had built this electric couch before, but some parts had fallen apart, and the battery was inconvenient to transport. Because of this, we decided it needed a major overhaul, and we put this off until the night before the engineering design showcase.
The Night Before:
The night consisted of building a shelf at the back of the couch:
On this shelf, we were able to neatly strap the battery down, as well as put some sweet speakers:
When the couch was finished being built around 5 or 6 am, everyone was so tired that Anthony decided to take a nap:
The rest of the OEDK was still live around this time, with plenty of other teams working through the night.
Engineering Design Showcase
We transported the couch down to Tudor Fieldhouse, and threw together a poster to display about 30 minutes before the start of the showcase.
The design showcase went great. We were placed right at the entrance of the floor of the event, and captured the hearts of many walking into the event. I think we brought a lighthearted fun project, that is generally unconventional for an engineering design showcase event. We were even featured in the official video of the showcase.
The full youtube video is here:
Conclusion
We recognize that this project is in no way at the level of what other engineering teams at Rice build.
But we had fun, and you can’t blame us, right?
