Not nearly enough information has been provided, and all of it is totally subjective.
Do you have access to a SCADA system such as LabVIEW?
When you say College do you mean university?
What programming and electrical experience do you have?
What is your approximate budget?
What is the technical level of the project? Is it a part-time school project (like a burglar alarm) or a University thesis project (quantum particle accelerator)?
etc, etc.....
Please provide MUCH more information if you want a meaningful answer from real engineers and scientists. We are willing to help but are not going to make wild guesses as to what you actually want.
Well, what electrical areas did your course(s) cover, and what are your areas of interest, hobbies, etc. When choosing a project it is always a good idea to look at one that you have an interest in.
What are YOUR ideas, perhaps you have some but don't quite know how to make a project out of them.
my course covered plc, scada, hmi, drives, and touch screen.
i have studied plc's pf different companies. and i am interested in projects in which more of ladder language is required.
i hav studied the programming for car parking, car washing, automatic lock system, remote control of t.v, automatic process control of several industry like chemical industry n etc.
OK, what major equipment do you have available to use for your project ($250 won't go very far if you have to buy a PLC)? Can you use the one of the university's touch screens, PLC's etc or do you have to buy them.
If you really wanted to build a good project you could make yourself a miniature working model of an automated production line. This would be controlled primarily by a PLC (and even an HMI panel connected to the PLC if you wanted to get really technical) and use different sensors and actuators to perform a task. This brings together and demonstrates a number of engineering and programming skills (including most of the ones you have mentioned above) into one impressive looking display that is not only fun to build, but also fun to interact with.
An example of a task could be an automated sorter that sorts different coloured, sized, shaped (or weight) small objects into bottles or containers from a central hopper and automatically stops when the bottle (or container) is full. The sort is fairly straightforward - limit the speed of flow of objects to a slow enough rate for them to be detected correctly (such as using a opening mechanical gate), detect and verify object as it passes a detector(s), then move a mechanical gate to get the object to fall into the correct container.
If you need more ideas then I suggest you perform a google search of the internet for "plc project" or something similar. I can (and will) only go so far in providing ideas and inspiration. As a budding engineer you are responsible for furthering your education in the engineering fields, and that includes thinking for yourself and coming up with your own ideas.
Having the ability to choose your own major project is a great chance to do something unique that you want to do, rather than some standard project that every other student is doing and has done for years (like writing a pi calculator using c language).
Sooooo, look on the internet and at the world around you, have a think, and post some of your ideas here (surely you must have some, they don't even have to be too detailed) and we will see if they can be turned into a project relevant to your engineering field and personal interests.
Are you sure you're not one of our customers that need 27 50HP VFD's in a NEMA 4X 316SS panel with air conditioning and all controlled over Ethernet/IP using Allen-Bradley ControlLogix and Siemens S7-300 processors talking to a Allen-Bradley Multi-server Factory Talk Supervisory Edition SCADA system.
(Seriously, we did get asked that - his budget was, get this, $6,350.00. And he couldn't understand whay it would be more expensive - swear to God.)
"Almost" Good Answers: