“Can we build this?” is the creative spark that motivates the members of UCSB’s Engineers Without Borders (EWB). While it may not be your typical research question, it captures the group’s curiosity, hands-on mindset, and willingness to take on open-ended challenges. By approaching each project with this sense of exploration, EWB members create opportunities to bring together engineering, community engagement, design, sustainability, and other interdisciplinary elements into a single, meaningful project.
Engineers Without Borders is an international nonprofit organization that enacts humanitarian projects in over 40 different countries. The projects include improving access to clean water, sanitation, agriculture, and sustainable energy. While the UCSB chapter has projects in Rwanda and Panama, both focused on providing access to clean water, it also has solar power projects directed at helping communities in Santa Barbara. The majority of their funding comes from URCA (Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities) grants. Despite the name, students from all majors are encouraged to join and participate in their volunteering events.
Engineers Without Borders is an international nonprofit organization that enacts humanitarian projects in over 40 different countries. The projects include improving access to clean water, sanitation, agriculture, and sustainable energy. While the UCSB chapter has projects in Rwanda and Panama, both focused on providing access to clean water, it also has solar power projects directed at helping communities in Santa Barbara. The majority of their funding comes from URCA (Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities) grants. Despite the name, students from all majors are encouraged to join and participate in their volunteering events.
Last year, the local team’s efforts culminated in the completion of a solar-powered table, which is now located outside UCSB’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Upon completion, the EWB engineers were prepared to move on to new projects. One sub-team, headed by Local Team Lead Riley Tang, turned their attention towards a new application for solar energy: wildlife cameras.
Solar power offers many benefits; it’s renewable, provides a continuous energy source, and eliminates the need for a physical connection to an external power supply. As long as there is sufficient sun exposure, the device can operate indefinitely, storing excess energy in a battery for use at night and on cloudy days.
Camera, PTZ platform, and control board (left) and physical layout of the camera (right) Photo and diagram credit: UCSB’s Engineers Without Borders
The self-sufficient, solar-powered camera system will be an ideal tool for researchers in the field, as the camera itself is about the size of a football allowing for easy deployment. While all the components, such as the solar cell, control board, charge controller, battery, and imaging hardware, have been completed, they have yet to be assembled into a unified system. The camera will be mounted on a tripod making it not only convenient to relocate but also providing structural support in case of severe weather. The pan-tilt-zoom system the camera is equipped with will enable 360-degree horizontal and vertical panning. All captured footage will be transmitted to an off-site receiver.
“Our club has recently become interested in developing instrumentation, so I think one thing we’re thinking about is potentially just developing the camera and then letting whoever wants to use it for their studies, to use it at the reserve,” shared Riley. Potential applications of the camera include monitoring seasonal nesting, tracking animal movements and interaction, population counting, and habitat monitoring. Due to its small size, habitats will not be disturbed.
The engineers aim to complete the camera by the end of the 2027 academic year and deploy it at COPR. However, they have already visited the reserve to investigate an optimal location. In the future, they hope to explore image processing and computer vision techniques to allow quantitative analysis of collected footage.
To learn more about UCSB’s Engineers Without Borders and their projects, you can visit their Instagram: @ewb.ucsb or visit website here. For camera inquiries, you can email Riley Tang at hrtang@ucsb.edu.