Grant Nicol CET

• Communications Engineering
• Wireless Systems
• Data Collection & Communication

Most Significant Contributions:

• (2008–2021): As President / Board Member of the Certified Technicians and Technologists Association of Manitoba (CTTAM).
  • Mr. Nicol has made significant contributions to industry over the past 13 years. He has locally impacted Manitoba, by guiding the CTTAM in overseeing the certification of thousands of Engineering Technicians and Technologists – building both provincial and national capacity in this highly specialized area, thus increasing availability of skilled labour capable of supporting the agricultural and horticultural sectors. Mr. Nicol has participated on multiple joint committees with the Engineers Geoscientists of Manitoba (EGM), attended regular meetings with the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies of Manitoba Association, and attended pivotal meetings at the Manitoba Legislature to lobby for changes in limited liability legislation.
    
    For six years, in his role of Director on the Council of Certified Technicians and Technologists (CCTT), Mr. Nicol impacted the sector on a national and international level – as the CCTT is the International Engineering Alliance (IEA) signatory for Canada, and therefore empowered to award the designation of International Engineering Technologist to qualified individuals. Additionally, through the CCTT, Mr. Nicol worked with other provincial representatives in addressing broader, national issues, and oversaw operations of the Canadian Technology Accreditation Board (CTAB) – which was responsible for accrediting Engineering Technology programs across Canada, based on a set of National Technology Benchmarks (NTBs) maintained by CTAB. His contributions directly impacted provincial, national, and international competency and capacity levels available to numerous industries including, but not limited to, agriculture, horticulture, and environmental management of land and water.
• (2019): Advisor for two research projects with direct applications for agriculture.
  • Bee Aware: Smart Beehive: The scope of this project included creating a smart, connected beehive system to reduce operational costs and increase production of operations at 4K Honey in Brandon, MB. This project included technological modifications to beehives through electronics and sensors, as well as the design of a wireless network. As Project Advisor, Mr. Nicol was involved from the tour of the facilities and lessons in “Beekeeping 101” to multiple meetings and conversations with the sponsor, 4K Honey. He provided significant contributions related to the features and technology implemented in the design.
  • Practical Application: This academic-industry project partnership delivered real solutions for real industry challenges related to productivity – through wireless monitoring technology that now provides real-time monitoring of the beehives within the system, resulting in practical connectivity to groups of beehives scattered across large farm operations.
  • Automated Tile Drainage System: This project developed the basis for a smart tile drainage system – with the ability to monitor soil conditions, weather conditions, and the upcoming weather forecast – and thus, capable of accurately determining when to retain and release water in the system. A network of wireless soil sensors with a 5-kilometre range was implemented, to collect data on moisture conditions throughout the field; and additional sensors were strategically located to measure local weather conditions. As Project Advisor, Mr. Nicol worked with the student researcher to develop design criteria, and identify key technologies best suited to the project, and assisted in developing the wireless sensor network required to collect the local data. The next phase of development will be to incorporate use of data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). Automating decision-making, through use of real-time feedback and AI, will ensure that soil moisture conditions are monitored and accurately adjusted.
  • Practical Application: This smart tile drainage system will improve crop yields, providing critical capacity for farm operations, especially with the challenges of global warming.
• (2019): Advisor for research project with indirect application for agriculture
  • Voice Controlled Guidance System: This project developed a voice-activated audible guidance system for Assiniboine Community College. Students and representatives from Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada (VLRC) worked collaboratively to understand the current technology available, determine requirements for a guidance system, and identify concerns to be addressed in the research. With advice and supervision from Mr. Nicol, voice recognition and command technology was developed concurrently to the development of the tracking system, which used beacon technology. Throughout the project, a visually-challenged VLRC employee visited the College to test prototypes and provide feedback which was used to implement changes and additional features. The project resulted in the only fully working voice-controlled navigation system of its kind in Canada, receiving national news coverage.
  • Practical Application: This unique system paves the way for the technology to be used in other academic institutions and corporate offices, and also has capacity to provide position and location sensing of farm machinery or workers – representing opportunities for vision-impaired farm workers, adapted from research conducted for the College’s infrastructure.
• (2016): As Director on the Council of Certified Technicians and Technologists (CCTT)
  • Mr. Nicol represented Canada as part of the CCTT delegation that attended International Engineering Alliance (IEA) Meetings in Malaysia in 2016. Signatories of the Accords meet every two years to discuss global criteria for engineering education, as well as certification and licensing standards. These signed accords between signatories allow for international recognition of credentials, supporting capacity for mobility among engineering professionals. Through his involvement at those meetings, Mr. Nicol directly impacted these agreements and standards – which are fundamental to creating highly qualified personnel (HQP), and facilitating strong research and collaborations around the globe.
• (1998): As Manager of Engineering Services for Sky Cable Inc., a wireless broadband service provider internet access system in Manitoba.
  • Mr. Nicol led a team of technicians and IT specialists from California to Israel. He was Project Lead for this first-of-its-kind system to be installed in Canada, and only the second-of-its-kind in North America. The new wireless digital technology system – which, for a true two-way wireless internet access, required a wireless transmitter at all customers’ premises – was tested under an experimental license from Industry Canada. This technology has now matured and is proving to be essential in delivering connectivity to both urban and rural locations that lack the infrastructure for hardwired systems. Shortly after the trials led by Mr. Nicol were completed, several companies successfully secured funding under the Rural Broadband Initiative to launch wireless internet services in rural, underserviced areas of Canada. This pioneering research is now impacting precision farming, smart farming, and smart agriculture – by providing cost-effective resources for off-grid installations that build capacity for wireless connectivity of sensors, networks for large-scale deployments, and nodes for Cloud platforms – to support crop management decisions directly affecting food security.
    
    Mr. Nicol continued to design and deploy innovative licensed wireless broadband systems throughout Saskatchewan, with another wireless communications company – providing high-speed connections for several remote First Nations nursing stations, to bring Telehealth services into underserved communities.

Ongoing Projects:

• Using wireless sensors for livestock monitoring.
• Agricultural applications of sensors, IoT, cellular data systems.
• Wireless control of agricultural systems.
• University of Winnipeg-TerraByte team: Agriculture re-envisioned-breaking through the proximal data bottleneck (Participant).
  • Advances in sensors, robotics, and machine learning hold the potential to address global food security issues by automating tasks like weeding, disease assessment, plant care, and phenotyping. These technologies can boost crop yields, speed up breeding programs, and reduce resource usage and environmental impact. To make this a reality, there's a critical need for a large dataset of labeled plant images to train machine learning models. This project aims to develop and eventually commercialize a data rover for collecting high-quality field data, with the goal of supporting plant breeders, scientists, and farmers in their work.

Applied Research Capstones (Led by Grant Nicol):

• IOT Cloud Platform.
  • Research and design work on configuring a cloud based platform for managing IoT devices and data. The goal is to develop a platform that could be used for ACC course work as well as support applied research projects.
• LoRa Indoor Propagation Analysis.
  • The study of indoor signal propagation at 915 Mhz. The test results and information gathered will be used to create a model to predict the coverage of a LoRa gateway for indoor use in a commercial environment.
• Eye Movement Monitoring System.
  • Designed to reduce accidents by detecting and alerting sleepy drivers. This device monitors a driver’s eyes to detect eye movement that would indicate behavior of a tired driver and alert the driver and others in the vehicle.

Applications:

• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Development Campus LPWAN Network and IoT Based Soil Sensor for Indoor and Outdoor Soil Monitoring. Students: Chen Hua and Devon Nelson. Industry Collaboration: Assiniboine Community College Ag instructors and researchers. (2021)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Smart Tile Drainage System. Student: Wenbin Zhang. Industry Collaboration: Strategic Systems Engineering. (2020)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Green House Monitoring and Control System. Student: Prabhsimran Kaur. Industry Collaboration: The Green Spot. (2020)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Intelligent Weeding System. Student: Bowne Yang. Industry Collaboration: Decision Works. (2020)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Smart Culvert Control System. Student: Salman Hakim. Industry Collaboration: Strategic Systems Engineering. (2020)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Wireless Water Quality Measuring Device. Student: Matthew Shurvell. (2020)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Voice Controlled Indoor Navigation System for the Visually Challenged. Students: Fadi Al Sai, Jairo Mosquera. Industry collaboration: Vision Loss Rehabilitation (CNIB). (2019)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Bee Aware; Development of Smart Beehive. Student: Kent Collins. Industry Collaboration: 4K Honey. (2019)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Bee Aware; Development of a Wireless Network to provide Smart Beehive Connectivity. Student: Adam Lennox. Industry Collaboration: 4K Honey. (2019)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), RF Alert FOBS: In-building alert system for senior care facilities. Student: Scott Jersak. Industry collaboration: various healthcare professionals. (2019)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Count ‘N’ Care: In-building tracking system to aid emergency responders. Student: Prarthi Gheewala. (2019)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Smart City Mobile Air Quality Sensing And Mapping. Student: Russell Dowd. (2018)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Livestock Weight & Health Tracker. Student: Tyson Mowatt. Industry Collaboration: local dairy farmers. (2018)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Smart City Traffic Control System. Student: Brolin Legare. (2018)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Smart Irrigation System. Student: Jodi Gray. (2018)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Energy Harvesting Application. Student: Guillermo Maradiago. (2017)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), GPS Based Livestock Monitoring System. Student: Miguel Chavez. (2017)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Remote Forest Firefighter Tracking. Student: Chris Nantais. Industry Collaborations: Manitoba Emergency Services Training Center. (2017)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Remote Vital Signs Monitoring and Alarm. Student: Gleb Korliakov. (2017)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Connected Home. Student: Pavlo Tovaryansky. (2016)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), RFID Livestock Inventory Systems. Student: Morgan MacDonald. Industry Collaboration: local livestock producers. (2016)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), LPWAN Smart Refuse Bin. Student: JinYan Huang. (2016)
• Grant Nicol (Co-ordinator and Technical Advisor), Room Occupancy Detection System. Student: Angel Torres (2016)

• Applied Research Project ELTE-0090-CET02
• Broadband Systems ELTE-0062-CET02
• Cabling and Installation ELTE-0077-CET01
• Emerging Technologies ELTE-0082-CET02
• Environment, Ethics & Society ENVR-0020-CET02
• Environment, Ethics & Society ENVR-0020-CVT01
• Instruments and Measurements 1 ELTE-0058-CET01
• Instruments and Measurements 2 ELTE-0065-CET02
• Manufacturing Techniques ELTE-0088-CET01
• Project Management BUSN-0128-CET02
• Report Writing COMM-0270-CET02
• Technical Writing COMM-0178-CET01
• Wireless Data Systems ELTE-0085-CET02
• Wireless Systems ELTE-0086-CET02

International Engineering Technologist IntET. Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologist / International Engineering Alliance, Canada

CET. Certified Technicians and Technologists Association of Manitoba (CTTAM) with lifetime membership for efforts in building awareness and participation in the communications engineering technology field.

Lifetime membership to the CTTAM for efforts in building awareness and participation in the communications engineering technology field.