By Jay Wee

When it comes to internships, one might typically associate them with menial tasks like data entry or retrieving printouts. While this may sound like an exaggeration, it is not unusual that companies tend to be hesitant when endowing interns with major responsibilities, as they could come with high business risks.

Far from the aforementioned scenarios are the experiences for two NUS students, Khairul Iman Nasri B Azharie and Hong Wei Yang, who recently completed their internship with NUS IT.

They were tasked with developing a real-life Wi-Fi monitoring prototype sensor using an IoT (internet of things) device, Raspberry Pi, backed by Linux networking and Python scripting.

“Raspberry Pi” is NOT THIS…

(Image source: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/favorite-fresh-raspberry-pie/)

…BUT THIS!

The prototype monitors the health of Wi-Fi access points and captures its transmission automatically around the clock, akin to a traffic camera that monitors the vehicle flows on the highway. With this data projected over their web dashboard, administrators can then better respond to downtime and detect potential issues, enabling users to have a seamless experience. They also plan to make this information public through social media platforms like Telegram, so that students know which areas to avoid if the Wi-Fi is down.

Prior to this, they had never worked on anything related to their studies. Armed only with the guidance from their NUS IT mentor, Bok Koon, they began their first technical and development journey late last year on their winter internship.

Obstacle in Wonderland?

The path to growth is often lain with challenges and one of the major ones they faced was to integrate the frontend (user experience and website) with the backend (API, coding, network, etc.) of the system.

It was particularly tough as both ends posed very different sets of challenges (creativity vs. logic). On top of this, they had to learn a new framework in order to use and deploy it. Research, self-exploration and ‘Googling Harder’ beyond the confinement of the classroom were instrumental for Khairul and Hong Wei to overcome all their challenges.

It feels like going down the rabbit hole and most of the time, it turns out to be a dead end.

– Khairul, NUS IT Intern

Best of Both Worlds – Guidance When Needed and Freedom to Explore

Besides learning through the guidance of Bok Koon, the interns were confronted with tons of reading so that they could grasp the concept of various protocols and deployment methods. Often, they had to decide which approach to take in order to solve a problem, and then pitch the idea to convince their mentor before deploying their chosen solution.

During their time here, they also realised that NUS IT was a lot more than just a tech care center ‘for people who couldn’t get their Luminus or Outlook to work’. Nor was it simply ‘a short-cut to Engine on level 3’.

It was only after speaking to some the staff, and asking me about the second run of Mod-Reg that I knew that they are working on big projects and a lot of stuff in the back end that many students take for granted. We tend to forget that all these applications are still made by people who put in time and effort to make it work. People don’t really care when they work well and only protest when they don’t.

– Wei Yang, NUS IT Intern

Not surprisingly, both Khairul and Wei Yang found it perplexing that many computing students did not know of the many learning opportunities readily available within their own campus.

Opportunities Abound For Interns

I don’t think any company out there would give interns so much freedom to determine how to develop the project. Also, I am glad that NUS IT knows that they are getting their own students to work on their projects so they kind of treat us more like students, instead of being a full-time working employee. NUS IT also knows about the academic challenges that students face.

– Khairul, NUS IT Intern

We are glad that we were able to provide this unique experience and edge to our students and hope that this will help them when they step through the graduation portal, into the working world.