Need a "High Impact/Low Budget" EE Capstone idea (6 months, zero build experience)

Hi everyone,

I’m an Electrical Engineering senior starting my graduation project. I’ve got about 6 months to wrap this up, and to be honest, I have minimal experience actually building physical hardware from scratch, most of my time has been spent on theory, MATLAB, and simulations.

I’m looking for an idea that:

1. Is Feasible: I need to actually finish it.
2. Looks Impressive: I want it to seem innovative (or at least like I put serious thought into it) for the examiners.
3. Is Cheap: I don’t want to spend my life savings on specialized components.

One idea I’m looking at is a Non-Invasive Fault Detection System for Solar PV Panels. The concept is to use an ESP32 or Arduino with a few cheap current/voltage sensors to monitor I-V curves and use some basic DSP or a lightweight algorithm to identify things like partial shading, dust accumulation, or aging.

A few questions :

• Is this actually doable in 6 months for a beginner? I’ve heard there are plenty of datasets and research papers on this, but how hard is it to translate that into working hardware?

• Are the resources (GitHub, libraries, papers) actually out there, or am I going to be reinventing the wheel for half a year?

• Is this "boring" to professors? Does it come off as a "copy-paste" project, or is there a way to make the presentation look high-end?

• If this idea is crap, what would you suggest instead?

another idea I've been considering also is an EEG Brain-Controlled Prosthetic , which uses a cheap BCI (like NeuroSky) to control a 3D-printed hand. It’s much flashier, but is it a total trap? I’m worried about signal noise and it failing on demo day.

Thank you all in advance.