KNUST Tratech 2014!

Hi everyone,

Among the many avenues set up on KNUST campus for students to show off their skills, innovations and brilliant ideas, Tratech ranks top of the list. Everybody has heard of tratech, people talk about it but what remains a mystery to many is how it all began.  Join us as we uncover the story behind tatech.

Tratech is a yearly event that was conceived by the KNUST Student Representative Council (SRC) in 2004 to enable students come up with innovative ideas that would help the community around them and the world at large. It would also help students from the various colleges put into practice all the theory learnt in class, this would help students appreciate what is done in fields different from theirs.

The tratech fair is open to groups and individuals, the groups being departments or creativity groups. In 2013, the organizers of tratech thought it wise to introduce a competition, whereby at the end of the one week event awards would be given to groups and individuals.This was introduced to further encourage the participants of the showcase as  well as appreciate them for their efforts. In their wisdom, they categorized the awards, so that awards are given to winners from the various colleges, as different colleges would be showcasing projects in their own field. Also there is an award for the most innovative project, which is in line with the theme for that year. Furthermore, as a means of encouraging the young entrepreneurs, there is also an entrepreneurship award. Tractech gives an opportunity to everyone; all you have to do is grab it. This year’s tratech (2014) marked the 10^th anniversary of tractech on KNUST campus and the Tekhabit team was there to bring you the best from the event.

The First stand we met as we arrived at the premise was mechanical Engineering and on show there was a solar irrigation system. Living in Ghana where there is frequent interruption of power supply, this design would certainly attract a lot of interest from medium and large scale farmers to help improve production by introducing reliability and provide a long term cost effective solution to irrigation.The system uses a solar panel fitted with a photo sensor, an actuator and a battery. The photo Sensor detects the position of the sun together with a micro controller and sends this info to an actuator to turn the panel towards the direction of direct sunlight. The battery connected to the panel then stores the energy as electricity. This solar System is connected to a small pump which with the help of pipes siphons water from a reservoir to sprinklers on the field.


As we entered the building The stand that caught our eyes most was that of smerklabs  which had on display the all so colorful   "order now" app but ofcourse we had to stop and take a shot with the mascot first!!(should have been a selfie)


Order Now - Food Delivery is a new App in Ghana that enables you to Order food online from your favorite restaurants.With just a few taps, you can order quickly from many restaurants around your location.
download the app here

Next up was the Agric Engineering stand which had another irrigation system ! but This one uses wind instead.With no electricity involved/required, the system uses wind which is free of course to drive a mill with a number of blades. this mill together with an arrangement of gears and pipes pumps water from a higher placed reservoir into a smaller but lower placed ones  which are fitted with a number of small pipes to disperse the water on the field.

Have you had problems trying to direct a friend to a particular location? well, Ananse Companion aims to make this sometimes troublesome task fun and simple. Ananse companion is an android app designed by a computer engineering student that uses Google earth services in an interactive way to help with directions to anywhere you wish to go. The app is not on Play store yet as it is still in the development stage.watch this space for an exclusive review once it is done.

The creativity group had something special for us. A bin that sorts out garbage into smaller bins! On demonstration, the bin sorted  wood, plastic and metal into three separate bins. on dropping the rubbish into the bin, it is stopped by a slap surrounded by aluminium foil. the foil- micro controller arrangement then sends an actuating signal to a motor depending on the material being sorted and the type of signal generated in accordance.The movement of the motor causes the slap to tilt to drop the garbage into the appropriate sorting bin.

There were so many innovative projects on show! not least among them was an obstacle avoider, a building bricks produced using plastic bags as the binding agent,a quad-copter and so many more.oh and we had so much fun with the flight simulator at the aerospace stand even though Chidi and I managed  to crush our planes on all attempts!

I have to say congratulations to the organizers and and all the participants. it was a big success and we certainly learnt a lot although we had a lot of fun too.