Summer project aims to aid homeless services

September 29, 2025

Despite living in Arizona, Thomas Vamos attended the DSU GenCyber Camp for his second time. With a strong interest in technology, he discovered the Dakota State GenCyber camp while looking for STEM opportunities, but found the opportunities near Tucson cost prohibitive or required a connection to get in.

"We found GenCyber through the internet and thought it was a great way to get some STEM experience without the massive barriers to entrance that you find everywhere," Thomas said.

As he prepared to attend the camp for the second time, he brought a project he had begun working on the month prior. He was in the process of creating a device and software to track the number of visitors who frequent Z Mansion in Tucson, Arizona. As a Tucson resident, Thomas volunteers each weekend making and serving brunch.

The Z Mansion, supported by the Certified Community Health Specialists (CCHS) Foundation, the WORKship team, and Avant Recovery, provides hundreds of thousands of free meals and free shoes and clothing, treats thousands of patients at a weekly first aid clinic, and gives check-ups and shots to thousands of homeless pets.

"Every Sunday, there are hundreds of people who are coming in needing food, medical treatment, clothing, and more," Thomas said.

He worked with a friend on developing the prototype, which includes a 3D printed barcode scanning device that loads a scan into a Google Sheet graph to visualize the data. He spent eight-hour days in the computer lab teaching himself how to do different aspects of the project.

While attending the camp, Thomas showed his models and initial prototype to Dr. Andrew Kramer, who provided opinions and advice for his project.

"I am impressed at the wide range of skills Thomas is using here, including software design, hardware/electronics design, 3D modeling, and 3D printing," Kramer explained. "It's rare for a student at the high school level to be comfortable working with any one of those, so seeing Thomas taking on all of them together is impressive."

"Professor Kramer motivated me," Thomas said. "He was a role model in how we can combine tech while still serving humans."

While consulting Thomas from afar, the two discussed the advantages and disadvantages of various micro-controllers such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, how to meet project requirements while addressing challenges like power consumption or battery use long-term, whether it could or should be connected to the internet, and how to turn a breadboard prototype into a printed permanent PCB board.

"I'm just really thankful for Professor Kramer's support and all the times he checks in on me and all the interest he shows in this," Thomas said.

"I am particularly impressed by the noble goals and motivation of the project," Kramer said. "Thomas has a valuable skillset, and he is using that to invest directly in his community. Thomas is helping his neighbors and working to improve the lives of those around him."

Inspiration for the device

As a member of the cooking and serving staff in the kitchen at Z Mansion, Thomas became aware of issues, such as being unable to predict how many people would be attending, which meant they never knew how much food to make.

"We needed a way to optimize our food production in order to be able to serve people in the best way possible," he explained. "Because if you don't have enough food and you overdistribute, you're not going to feed everyone, or some days you make way too much food and some of it ends up going to waste."

Thomas hopes to use the data to solidify and better understand observational trends, such as numbers increasing toward the end of the month, as benefits are often depleted by then.

"Homeless research is a very overlooked topic as an area of study because it's not profitable," he explained.

Thomas has enjoyed working on this project because it combines his passions for technology, the humanities, and business optimization.

Currently, the device requires wristbands to be distributed, which track nothing but tally the number of people in attendance. He hopes to switch to a computer vision device that would eliminate the need for wristbands in the future.

As for Thomas, after graduating from high school, he plans to go to college for electrical engineering.

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