Computer Engineering Commons^™

"Dual Peaks" Analog Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal, Dave Raul Breuer

Computer Engineering

The Dual Peaks distortion pedal is an analog effects pedal for electric guitar that distorts and boosts the guitar signal in order to achieve tonal characteristics often heard in music genres such as blues, rock, hard rock, and metal. Dual Peaks aims to remedy the current distortion pedal design, and provide a new spin not often provided in the majority of pedals. Dual Peaks contains two separate distortion channels which provide the player with a vast array of distortion and overdrive tones at the press of a switch. Also, Dual Peaks has a "noise gate" and 3-band equalizer circuits built …

Analog Sorting Using Pulse Width Modulation, Riley C. Olson

Computer Engineering

As time goes on, computers become more and more powerful. However, as processing time becomes less of a limiting factor for computing tasks, power consumption takes its place for many tasks. This paper proposes and tests a new method for sorting analog signals. This new sorting method converts analog signals into Pulse Width Modulated(PWM) signals of varying duty cycle , which are then sorted by a simple network of combinational logic, and then converted to a normal binary representation. In order to implement this new method, multiple circuits had to be designed and and tested to ensure their functionality and …

Corridor Navigation For Monocular Vision Mobile Robots, Matthew James Ng

Master's Theses

Monocular vision robots use a single camera to process information about its environment. By analyzing this scene, the robot can determine the best navigation direction. Many modern approaches to robot hallway navigation involve using a plethora of sensors to detect certain features in the environment. This can be laser range finders, inertial measurement units, motor encoders, and cameras.

By combining all these sensors, there is unused data which could be useful for navigation. To draw back and develop a baseline approach, this thesis explores the reliability and capability of solely using a camera for navigation. The basic navigation structure begins …

Portable High-Definition Audio Spectrum Analyzer, Alex Zahn, Jamie Corr

Electrical Engineering

The Portable High-definition Audio Spectrum Analyzer (PHASA) allows the user to visualize the audio frequency spectrum of an incoming line-level stereo audio signal. Upon pressing the touch screen spectrum graph, the PHASA displays the corresponding frequency and volume levels as well as crosshairs at the touched location. The PHASA features multiple left/right channel display modes— Left channel only, right channel only, both channels simultaneously, and the average between the two channels. The PHASA features multiple resolution display modes (standard-resolution and high-resolution) and multiple dynamics display modes (standard dynamics, averaging, and peak/hold). The PHASA accepts input audio via a 1/4" TRS …

Collision Avoidance Smartphone, Matt Columbres, Aaron Parisi, Joey Schnecker, Luis Wong

Electrical Engineering

There are many instances in day-to-day life where people cannot or would rather not pay full attention to their surroundings. Walking while preoccupied with a smartphone or walking while blind are excellent examples where technology could be used to make the task of avoiding 2collisions reactive, instead of proactive. A device which monitors a user’s surroundings and notifies the user when a potential collision is detected (and, additionally, notifying them as to where the obstacle is with respect to them) could be used to make walking distracted less of a hazard for the user and those around the user and …

The Design, Building, And Testing Of A Constant On Discreet Jammer For The Ieee 802.15.4/Zigbee Wireless Communication Protocol, Alexandre J. Marette

Master's Theses

As wireless protocols become easier to implement, more products come with wireless connectivity. This latest push for wireless connectivity has left a gap in the development of the security and the reliability of some protocols. These wireless protocols can be used in the growing field of IoT where wireless sensors are used to share information throughout a network. IoT is being implemented in homes, agriculture, manufactory, and in the medical field. Disrupting a wireless device from proper communication could potentially result in production loss, security issues, and bodily harm. The 802.15.4/ZigBee protocol is used in low power, low data rate, …

Real-Time Audio-Midi Controller, Brian Shino Balberchak

Computer Engineering

Most MIDI controllers used in music production use a regular keyboard to generate the MIDI notes that are sent to the synthesizer. This project aims to provide the user with a different way of generating MIDI data: by playing an instrument of their choice with a passive electronic pickup to generate MIDI notes that correspond with the fundamental frequency of the musical pitch being played. The pitch-detecting algorithm used in this application utilizes a modified form of auto-correlation.

As an embedded systems project that uses signal-processing techniques, the knowledge of topics from the following courses was essential:

EE 211: Op-Amp …

Multispectral Identification Array, Zachary D. Eagan

Computer Engineering

The Multispectral Identification Array is a device for taking full image spectroscopy data via the illumination of a subject with sixty-four unique spectra. The array combines images under the illumination spectra to produce an approximate reflectance graph for every pixel in a scene. Acquisition of an entire spectrum allows the array to differentiate objects based on surface material. Spectral graphs produced are highly approximate and should not be used to determine material properties, however the output is sufficiently consistent to allow differentiation and identification of previously sampled subjects. While not sufficiently advanced for use as a replacement to spectroscopy the …

The Following Robot, Juan D. Cerda, Matthew S. Kwan, Vi M. Le

Computer Engineering

The objective of this project is to design, build, and test an autonomous robot with an associated Android application. The robot uses on board inertial measurement sensors (magnetometer, accelerometer, gyroscope) and coordinates itself through Bluetooth communication with the similar built­in measurement sensors on the Android phone to mimic and follow movement. The Following Robot incorporates the same basic movement functionality as a typical RC car. The robot follows the user’s phone through an application on one’s phone. This application accesses the phone’s accelerometer and gyroscope data and translates into appropriate conversions. Methods of tracking and calculating distance or angular displacement …

Electronic Deer Warning System, David Zhuo, Anlang Lu

Computer Engineering

Deer-vehicle collisions (DVCs) are extremely dangerous, often injuring or even killing drivers. Unfortunately, this form of automotive accident is commonplace in the United States. According to the NHTSA, DVCs result in 200 human deaths a year.2

Despite these deadly incidents, there currently are no deployed federal or state systems for preventing DVCs. There are many consumer electronic deer deterrent products, but their long-term effectiveness is questionable.3 In fact, there does not appear to be much research into electronic deer deterrent systems. Aside from constant audio output and electric shock, no other means of electronic deterrent exist. Even if fixed deterrents …

Prosense, Johnny Favazza Ii, Casey Glasgow, Matt Epperson

Computer Engineering

This project aims to gather advanced data sets from MEMS sensors and GPS and deliver it to the user, who can capitalize on the data. The once negligible half-degree difference of your board barreling down a wave can be recorded from a gyro and exploited for the perfect turn. The exact speed dreaded by longboarders where speed wobbles turn into a road rash can be analysed and consequently avoided. Ascertaining the summit of your flight using combined GPS sensors from the ski ramp allows for the correct timing of tricks. When it comes to pursuing excellence in professional sports, amateur …

El Capitán: Cal Poly Rose Float Digital Drive System, Gregory Raffi Baghdikian

Computer Engineering

In today’s world of smartphones, self-driving cars, and internet-connected coffee makers, it seems as if computers are contained in everything around us. These “embedded systems” have become critical components of our lives, improving everything about the things they control, from cost, to speed, to simplicity. One area that embedded systems has hardly gained a foothold is in the world of floatbuilding. Most of the floats in the Tournament of Roses Parade, including the one built jointly by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly Pomona, are technologically very simple, using mostly analog components and rudimentary discrete digital logic to …

Real-Time Digital Effects Processing Using Ios, Jonah W. Clinard

Computer Engineering

In today’s society, we are seeing incredible improvements in terms of creating smaller technological devices that behave more and more like the personal computers of yesterday. Mobile “Smart” devices, in particular, are becoming incredibly powerful not just in terms of processing power, but in the fact that they are able to provide assistance to users in their everyday lives. Application developers are now able utilize the power and size of these devices, to create and realize ideas that would have been previously viewed as impossible. This project applies the fields of digital signal processing, music, and mobile application development, to …

Synthetic Aperture Radar: Rapid Detection Of Target Motion In Matlab, Daniel S. Kassen

Master's Theses

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has come into widespread use in several civilian and military applications. The focus of this paper is the military application of imaging point targets captured by an airborne SAR platform. Using the traditional SAR method of determining target motion by analyzing the difference between subsequent images takes a relatively large amount of processing resources. Using methods in this thesis, target motion can be estimated before even a single image is obtained, reducing the amount of time and power used by a significantly large amount. This thesis builds on work done by Brain Zaharri and David So. …

Wirelessly Controlled Smart Outlet, Andrew Godsil, Ariel Dubinsky

Electrical Engineering

Popularity of home automation devices has increased greatly in recent years due to higher affordability and simplicity through smartphone and tablet connectivity. For the purpose of this experiment, we have developed the Smart Outlet: a stand-alone communication unit, used to connect home outlets to the internet. The Smart Outlet controls lighting and simple appliances throughout the home, remotely, using wireless commands from the web. A Google Calendar interface directly controls the outlets’ function by scheduling them with dedicated calendar events. The calendar’s interface can even be accessed from multiple different platforms (i.e. phones, computers, tablets) for the convenience of all …

Virtual Reality Engine Development, Varun Varahamurthy

Master's Theses

With the advent of modern graphics and computing hardware and cheaper sensor and display technologies, virtual reality is becoming increasingly popular in the fields of gaming, therapy, training and visualization. Earlier attempts at popularizing VR technology were plagued by issues of cost, portability and marketability to the general public. Modern screen technologies make it possible to produce cheap, light head-mounted displays (HMDs) like the Oculus Rift, and modern GPUs make it possible to create and deliver a seamless real-time 3D experience to the user. 3D sensing has found an application in virtual and augmented reality as well, allowing for a …

A Comparison Of Image Processing Techniques For Bird Detection, Elsa Reyes

Master's Theses

Orchard fruits and vegetable crops are vulnerable to wild birds and animals. These wild birds and animals can cause critical damage to the produce. Traditional methods of scaring away birds such as scarecrows are not long-term solutions but short-term solutions. This is a huge problem especially near areas like San Luis Obispo where there are vineyards. Bird damage can be as high as 50% for grapes being grown in vineyards. The total estimated revenue lost annually in the 10 counties in California due to bird and rodent damage to 22 selected crops ranged from $168 million to $504 million (in …

Digital Control Board For Phased Array Antenna Beam Steering In Adaptive Communication Applications, Mayur Bansal

Master's Theses

The application of adaptive communication techniques for mobile communications has attracted considerable interest in the last decade. One example of these techniques is spatial filtering through planar antenna array beam forming.

This thesis describes the development of a digital system that adaptively controls a phased array antenna. The radiating structure of the phased antenna array is tetrahedral-shaped and contains four antenna elements on each of its three faces. The overall system comprises of a digital control board with an external computer interface, an RF control board, and the phased antenna array. The RF controls the main lobe direction on the …

Cuda Enhanced Filtering In A Pipelined Video Processing Framework, Austin Aaron Dworaczyk Wiltshire

Master's Theses

The processing of digital video has long been a significant computational task for modern x86 processors. With every video frame composed of one to three planes, each consisting of a two-dimensional array of pixel data, and a video clip comprising of thousands of such frames, the sheer volume of data is significant. With the introduction of new high definition video formats such as 4K or stereoscopic 3D, the volume of uncompressed frame data is growing ever larger.

Modern CPUs offer performance enhancements for processing digital video through SIMD instructions such as SSE2 or AVX. However, even with these instruction sets, …

Robot X, Alan Truong, Alex Haag

Computer Engineering

The following report outlines the design decisions behind Robot X for the 2012 Cal Poly Roborodentia competition held annually during Open House. This investigation includes detailed overview of Robot X's sensory system, driving system, conveyor belt system, and can compartment system. In addition, basic hardware and software design are explored.

Project 308: Augmented Reality Mario Kart, Joseph Abad, David Allender, Joryl Calizo, Ryan Gaspar, Gavin Lee

Computer Engineering

Mario Kart is a popular go-kart racing game developed by Nintendo. The premise of the game is simple: drive a go-kart along a racetrack and reach the finish line before the other players. What makes this game unique, however, is the inclusion of weapons, traps, and other projectiles that a player can use to gain an advantage in the race. We have taken on the challenge of not only recreating this amazing game, but using the art of Augmented Reality to fully immerse the player in the full experience. Rather than play the game on a television screen with a …

Freeing Space For Nasa: Incorporating A Lossless Compression Algorithm Into Nasa's Fiber Optic Strain Sensing System, Kaitlyn Fiechtner, Allen Parker

STAR Program Research Presentations

NASA’s Fiber Optic Strain Sensing (FOSS) system can gather and store up to 1,536,000 bytes (1.46 megabytes) per second. Since the FOSS system typically acquires hours—or even days—of data, the system can gather hundreds of gigabytes of data for a given test event. To store such large quantities of data more effectively, NASA is modifying a Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer (LZO) lossless data compression program to compress data as it is being acquired in real time. After proving that the algorithm is capable of compressing the data from the FOSS system, the LZO program will be modified and incorporated into the FOSS system. …

Ultrasonic Shark-Tag Locator System For Iver2 Auv, Nathaniel Garcia

Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project is to develop a system for tracking an ultrasonic underwater transmitter that can be integrated into an IVER2 AUV to allow it to follow and monitor tagged sharks in the ocean for scientific research.

The system consists of a four main components including a shark-tag, two hydrophones, a filter/amplifier & threshold detector circuit, and a microcontroller.

This project, while not completing field testing and integration with the IVER2, is a proof of concept of a system that utilizes passive sonar to determine a bearing from the system to a shark-tag transmitter. Additionally, it devised several …

Touch Screen Sound Controller, James Fenley, Jonathan Law

Electrical Engineering

The Touch Screen Sound Controller sets out to explore the use of a touch screen as a sound control interface for the disk jockey profession. In addition, the project aims to provide an alternate means of transferring audio data by way of TCP/IP communications as opposed to MIDI. By applying our method, a user may stream pulse-code modulated data from a server onto a client’s RAM via an Ethernet connection. A 32bit, 200MHz ARM9 microprocessor addresses data from the RAM and proceeds with executing DSP instructions from the user. The connection between the touch screen and the central microprocessor is …

Sensor Integration For Low-Cost Crash Avoidance, Stephane M. Roussel

Master's Theses

This report is a summary of the development of sensor integration for low-cost crash avoidance for over-land commercial trucks. The goal of the project was to build and test a system composed of low-cost commercially available sensors arranged on a truck trailer to monitor the environment around the truck. The system combines the data from each sensor to increase the reliability of the sensor using a probabilistic data fusion approach. A combination of ultrasonic and magnetoresistive sensors was used in this study. In addition, Radar and digital imaging were investigated as reference signals and possible candidates for additional sensor integration. …