Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering (ECEE)

ECEN 4610 Projects
Fall 2006

Team Aztec

Team members:

Jed Brown
Mike Mason
Josh Price
Andrew Youngs

Project Description:

We are designing a PC Oscilloscope for our capstone project. The design objectives for our oscilloscope are:

Probe functions as contact from DUT to oscilloscope.
Signal goes through probe into the signal conditioner.
The signal conditioner readies the signal for the ADC
The Analog/Digital Converter converts signal it to digital..
The FPGA then takes that data and places it into memory.
Once memory is full, data is sent to the USB controller (handled by the fpga) via UART.
The USB control sends data to the PC.

There are two ways the scope could be used.

Trigger based
Free-flow

For trigger base, via software we tell the FPGA when we want it to trigger (at what voltage), when the data received hits that value, the process above starts and data is sent to the memory.

For free-flow as soon as the ADC passes valid data to the FPGA, we begin passing the data to the memory and to the USB in a loop until via commanded to stop.

Preliminary Design Review presentation: (2.6 MB PowerPoint)

Critical Design Review presentation: (1.0 MB PowerPoint)

Expo Photos

Team BAKE

Team members:

Ashish Bablani
Kelby Penney
Bryan Schoen
Evan Schurr

Project Description:

We have a goal of building a paintball gun with video and sound that is controlled over a computer network. Using data obtained from the wireless signal one can aim and shoot the paintball gun at a specific target. The range of motion for the device will be 360 degrees of horizontal motion and 60 degrees of vertical motion. This device will be useful for recreational, security, and military purposes. In the security and military fields this device will eliminate the threat to a human life, where the user can be at a remote location protecting the area in which the device controls. Recreational purposes include the usage at paintball arenas for added obstacles.

Preliminary Design Review presentation: (3.9 MB PowerPoint)

Critical Design Review presentation: (5.7 MB PowerPoint)

Expo Photos

Team Big Country

Team members:

Tim Gathmen
Daniel Kuester
Justin Migacz
Yazan Karadsheh

Project Description:

Due to the rapid advancements in the digital signal processing technology particularly in the audio realm it is now possible to implement sophisticated digital sound effect in real time. We proposed to develop the Kabuki 2000 "Real time music modulator," which could be used to implement finely-tuned effects in live stage performance. Echo, Reverb, Pitch Shifting, and Granulation, these are merely a few audio effects that the Kabuki 2000 will be able to offer. The Kabuki 2000 will be able to organize a preset list of effects that aid in musicians live stage performance, and have a user-friendly interface to move through and tweak effects. The kabuki 2000 will be cased in metal or plastic, which the user will be able to mount it in various situations (table, floor, rack). The kabuki 2000 will be easily connected to a PC through a USB port, to download various preset audio effect play lists. The device will illustrate various equalizer bars on a LCD touch screen where the user will be able to control the intensity as well as modify specific parameters of each audio effect. The interface, which is the most elaborate portion of the project, will consist of several foot pedals, knobs, and viewable screens, to allow the user maximum control.

Preliminary Design Review presentation: (797 kB PowerPoint)

Critical Design Review presentation: (627 kB PowerPoint)

Expo Photos

Team Chopper

Team members:

Shirley Choi
Bejan Hafezzadeh
Joseph Kaiser
Sean Norwood
Itay Tenne

Project Description:

A long-term research project is currently in progress to perform subterranean mapping using co-operative helicopters holding a long wire acting as an antenna.

Our team's objective will be to create a generic communications interface board and a generic communication protocol to achieve a modular avionics system. The goal for our capstone project is to use this avionics system and a simple LTI controller & model to get a model RC helicopter to hover autonomously (or augmented control). If time permits, we would like to perform data logging for system identification, which may be used in a sophisticated compensator and estimator.

The helicopter has 4 main components (all commercial parts) which we will try to get to communicate with each other:

Flight computer (compensator & estimator)
Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) (Position and Orientation sensor)
GPS (Position sensor)
RC receiver (Feed forward or reference input) and RC Servos (Actuators)

Preliminary Design Review presentation: (298 kB PowerPoint)

Critical Design Review presentation: (1.9 MB PowerPoint)

Expo Photos

Team Dayrider

Team members:

Tim Ikenouye
George Jenny
Amjad Sawaged
Kieran Tie

Project Description:

Our project is to design a remote and self-controlled vehicle that is as energy-efficient as possible. This will be accomplished using technologies and principles employed in the design of full-sized hybrid automobiles. The design will include components that consume no more than the application requires (LED lights and other high-efficiency electronics) as well as regenerative techniques to reuse power expended in operation.

The vehicle will be actively controlled by a reprogrammed wireless router, running a custom Linux install - in essence, this will allow complete control over the system software and connected peripheral sensors and devices within the system. These peripherals will include temperature, speed and optical sensors.

The vehicle will be self-controlled by software responding to external data collected by sensors on the vehicle. Specifically, the primary source of power will come from a solar panel mounted on the vehicle. Optical sensors will determine the optimum location within a certain range to collect light energy and software will move the vehicle to that position.

Project Objectives:
- Minimum: A solar-powered, router-controlled RC vehicle.
- Target: A self-controlled software-sensor interface with hybrid/regenerative techniques for energy recapture and reuse.
- Optimal: A vehicle that consistently consumes less energy than it is able to harvest, with secondary systems (GPS, Energy Savings Calculator, self-defense capabilities, battery charger, bells, whistles) powered by the excess energy. A variety of harvested energies (in addition to solar) and energy recapture techniques.

Preliminary Design Review presentation: (3.2 MB PowerPoint)

Critical Design Review presentation: (1.8 MB PowerPoint)

Expo Photos