12 Project IT day To encourage academic excellence, the Department of Applied Information Systems hosted their annual (virtual) Project IT day on 19 and 20 October 2022. his year’s judges were Jessica Tandy, partner at Bizmod Consulting; Shaivar Girdhari, an AIS Master’s student specialising in blockchain and its uses/applications in healthcare; Nomfundo Nkosi, ICT graduate; Kutloano Ngema, a cloud solutions architect-engineer at Microsoft; and Junior Innocent Manganyi, programme coordinator. Like any other project presentation day, the students were filled with great anticipation for the day, and they exhibited a collection of IT projects that included business analysis presentations and software applications. The winning group, Ace Tech, was made up of third-year development software students, Brendon Chiriga, lulama Sammy Nkuna, Palesa Kumalo, Angelic Danielle Mokoena, Lerato Tlhako, Lethabo Makopo, Tshikuvhe Phetho, Gerald Simbarashe Macherechedze, and Amos Tategula. Their winning web application is called ‘Save-a-Drop’, which uses technology such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and machine learning to analyse and collect data from water systems. The web application monitors the water pressure, and alerts users about potential pipe leakages. The application has an embedded water flow meter integrated with an Arduino that will be installed in residential water meters, which would help to detect early infrastructure aging. The web application solves the major issue of water loss that South African citizens at large face, as one of the reasons for water wastage is poor infrastructure. Residents and municipalities are unable at times properly to detect infrastructural damage on time (pipes are hidden, and so forth). Save-a-Drop aims to make it easier to see these issues by helping to analyse water trends, detect damaged water systems (pipes), based on the water flow/pressure analysis, and provide all the knowledge about anything related to water that users need. The group was asked to share what their experience was like, and this is what they had to say: “Project Day 2022 was what we could call ‘New fish in the water’, mostly because we went with an unclear knowledge of how things were going to be; however, we were well prepared for anything. We struggled in the beginning with connectivity issues, which led us to switching servers. This put us under pressure but, because of the great team support and trusting each other, we were able to manage our time and work, and stayed focused throughout. Overall, it was great success, and all our hard work and dedication paid off in the end.
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