Technology users may one day be able to play Xbox games from their smartphones, thanks to an innovative capstone project funded by an Aggie-owned business.
Wednesday afternoon, Gazoo, a startup company based out of Startup Aggieland that focuses on cloud computing, presented a $10,000 check to a group of four Texas A&M seniors for their capstone project. Of the check, $5,000 came from the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, which supported Gazoo and the group of students through the TEES Technical Assistance Program, said Dale Cope, director of industry assistance for TEES.
A capstone project is an end-of-undergraduate project where students try to solve a challenge facing their industry, often working closely with a sponsor company. The team of four seniors, dubbed “Digicloud,” will work to generate a prototype gaming product for Gazoo.
The product they are working on will be a device that can attach to a gaming console or computer to enable remote gaming, allowing users to stream games to personal tablets or iPhones in a clearer manner than currently possible.
Chris McDonald, Class of 2012 and Gazoo cofounder, said Gazoo decided to fund the students after it raised more than $1 million in funding this year. McDonald said the decision came because he is a supporter of Aggies helping Aggies.
“We’ve been able to fund these students here at the product innovation cellar to build one of our consumer products for us,” McDonald said. “We’re really excited about this because sharing this opportunity with students of A&M is showing them what can be done here on campus that’s real and actual.”
Ryan Lindenman, Digicloud project manager and electronic systems engineering technology senior, said the team has been designing the project and will begin constructing it in January.
“We can’t graduate until the project has a working prototype to give to Gazoo,” Lindenman said. “It’s really exciting, though, because we get to build something really cool.”
Chris Castro, engineering technology senior and software engineer for Digicloud, said receiving the check on Wednesday made their work begin to feel real.
“It feels like a job,” Castro said. “It’s very real. There is a lot of pressure with real investors and real stakeholders. We will be doing new things and working with things that have never worked with before, but it’s really exciting.”
The project will take time, said Jose Contreras, electronic systems engineering technology senior and testing engineer for the project. Contreras said the team wants to make the most of its funding and apply its time toward the project.
“It’s basically another part- to full-time job,” Contreras said. “Even just Sunday for the designing I was [in the lab] after church until dinner — and then I came back after dinner.”
Digicloud, a team of four senior engineering students, received a $10,000 check Wednesday to fund its capstone project.
Photo by Tanner Garza.