Digital Commons Network^™

Low-Cost Strider For Guatemala, Nicole Catherine Cooper, Gonzalo Hernandez, Jared W. Tower

Mechanical Engineering

The purpose of this project was to create a strider, a type of standing rehabilitation device, for children in developing countries who have trouble walking and supporting their full body weight. The project was initially brought to us by Cal Poly professor Brian Self, who had visited a clinic in San Marcos and determined that there were children there who had difficulties with walking and were a need for a rehabilitation device. The team discussed the problem with Dr. Self, Matt Robinson (a local San Luis Obispo prosthetist), and Cal Poly physics professor Pete Schwartz, all of whom had visited …

Design And Analysis Of The Brae Tractor Pull Tow Vehicle, Alexander R. Paulsen

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This senior project discusses the design and analysis of a towing vehicle for the tractor pulling team and the BRAE department. This report examines different types of existing hand operated towing vehicles and their strengths and weaknesses and how they can be modified to design a custom tow vehicle for the BRAE department. The purpose of this report was to make transporting and handling of the modified pulling tractors in the BRAE department safer for the operator and bystanders.

Bee Colony Startup And Cost Analysis, Marisela Herrera

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

The increase in demand for European Honey bee pollination along with colony collapse disorder has caused bee pollination rental fees to greatly increase. This project intended to determine how effective and economically feasible it would be for almond growers to begin raising their own hives for pollination. It was determined the biggest challenges were organizing and finding employees who were knowledgeable about bee keeping. When looking at the cost it was clear that even with the current cost per hive the startup costs were still less than the total rental fees for a single pollination season.

Once the hives have …

Design And Evaluation Of An Irrigation Storage Reservoir, James Tomac

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

No abstract provided.

Design, Construction, And Evaluation Of An Rc Vehicle Dynamometer, Christian Marron

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

No abstract provided.

Piezoelectric Powered Led Street Reflector, Collin Shane Douglass

Electrical Engineering

In many areas of Washington, it rains for a majority of the year. During rainy weather it becomes difficult to see street lanes and dividers, causing hazardous road conditions. The Piezoelectric Powered LED Street Reflector solves this problem. The PPL Street Reflector modifies a street reflector with LED lights. These lights help drivers clearly see where dividers and street lines are in non-ideal weather conditions, such as rain, fog, and snow. The PPL Street Reflector capabilities include harvesting energy through the Piezoelectric Effect, creating a self-sustaining device with minimal maintenance.

Portable Nano Hydro Generator For The Dc House Project, Caleb David Fink, Victor Olusoji Ojewole, Christopher Mapua Tan

Electrical Engineering

This Senior Project entails the design and testing processes of the Portable Nano Hydro Generator for the continuing DC House Project. No natural resources should go unused, especially in developing countries where they are found in abundance. Small streams in particular have potential to further Professor Taufik's DC House Project that will provide electricity to 1.6 billion people in the world without access to electricity upon completion. The goal of this project is to create a small portable generator that utilizes the discharge from small streams and convert it into useable electricity that could charge a car battery as an …

Sonar Walking Stick, Cornelio A. Furlan, Vivian Su

Electrical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Bike Safe: An Automatic Turn Signal System, Betty He Chan, Ricardo Alberto Duran

Electrical Engineering

Bicycles are vehicles that do not require a license to operate and share the road with cars, motorcycles, and other fast moving vehicles. An improper lane change from a bicyclist, such as one without any warning, can lead to great injury or death (especially after sundown). Bike Safe addresses this safety concern by providing a low-cost device that mimics the warning system motorists’ use every day. The system consists of a red brake light and amber turning signal lights that mounts to the rear of the bike, as well as a white headlamp that mounts to the front handlebars. The …

Smart Weights, Luke W. Rafla-Yuan, Austin C. Fox

Electrical Engineering

The goal of this project is to design and implement weights which can record and analyze work out patterns. Motivation for this project stems from the high cost of personal training. The hope is that this device will provide many of the benefits a user receives from personal training at only a fraction of the cost. The Smart Weight is designed with an on-board Inertial Measurement Unit providing acceleration, gyroscope, and magnetometer data. A microcontroller records and analyzes changes in motion, feeding this data into Multiplicative Recurrent Neural Network (MRNN) for exercise classification. A Raspberry Pi was chosen as the …

Design Improvement For The Smart Dc Wall Plug, Cory Yee, Haoyan Huang

Electrical Engineering

The DC smart wall plug is a subsystem within the Cal Poly DC House Project. The previous version faces challenges supplying DC voltage to meet household appliances’ nominal values. Specifically, it can only output the minimum required voltage for DC appliances to operate, resulting in unwanted power loss. In addition, the maximum output voltage is rated at 15V, which is insufficient to power most DC appliances. This design improvement project incorporates NFC technology as a solution to overcome the power loss and a new buck converter configuration to increase the output voltage range. Additionally, the new design introduces short-circuit and …

Energy Harvesting From Exercise Machines - Dc-Dc Buck Boost Converter (Lt3791), Matthew B. Wong

Electrical Engineering

Cal Poly’s ongoing Energy Harvesting From Exercise Machines (EHFEM) project proposes sustainability and energy saving costs through modifying exercise machines generating DC power, providing a renewable energy resource through physical exercise. The EHFEM project contains multiple sub-projects involving modifying several different exercise machines. Each machine generates DC power and an inverter converts this power to AC. This AC power returns to the grid. This project addresses an issue involving a previously installed DC-DC converter not returning power properly. When generating DC power, the grid demands a specific AC voltage, but the generated power through the previous DC-DC converter and power …

Ad-Hoc Hid: Modular Wireless Human Interface Device, Joseph A. Mazzanti

Electrical Engineering

Ad-Hoc HID is a modular, reprogrammable Human Interface Device. This device is intended to function as a keyboard, gamepad, or mouse, according to the user's needs. The final project is intended to be switch agnostic, making the final product adaptable to the user’s needs.

Wideband Balun Design With Ferrite Cores, Paul R. Biggins

Electrical Engineering

This project explores different balun devices in order to develop a balanced to unbalanced transformer that will operate over a wide bandwidth. The balun must operate from at least 1 MHz (or below) to the highest possible frequency. It must have an insertion loss of less than 1 dB under the ideal case with an imbalance of less than 1 dB and 2.5 degrees. Three balun topologies were tested, each built for a 1:1 impedance transformation ratio. Techniques of measuring each balun topology were investigated including gathering accurate data from a three port device with two port instruments and measuring …

Laser Tag - An Application Of Infrared Communication, Michael J. Altschuler, Michael B. Peterson, Elmer Pres Ventura Urbano

Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project is to design, build, and test laser tag system from the ground up. Much of the laser tag equipment that is available on the market right now use infrared technology to track and register “hits” between players. Our goal is to take this system and redesign it to shoot farther, be more energy efficient, and make it cheaper to produce.

Why Buying Local Will Soon Be Everyday Life: An Inquiry Of Local Food Markets, Logan M. Spittler

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study was to determine the customer preferences between buying produce from local farmers’ markets verses buying produce from supermarkets within San Luis Obispo County and determine if the application of a delivery service of said produce would be successful. Surveys were conducted with one hundred and sixty individuals in San Luis Obispo County. Participants were asked a series of questions about purchasing preference, interest in a produce delivery service, and about other information they may want to know before purchasing produce. Student responses were compared to non-students from the San Luis Obispo County for contrasts of …

Recognizing Specific Errors In Human Physical Exercise Performance With Microsoft Kinect, Ryan Staab

Master's Theses

The automatic assessment of human physical activity performance is useful for a number of beneficial systems including in-home rehabilitation monitoring systems and Reactive Virtual Trainers (RVTs). RVTs have the potential to replace expensive personal trainers to promote healthy activity and help teach correct form to prevent injury. Additionally, unobtrusive sensor technologies for human tracking, especially those that incorporate depth sensing such as Microsoft Kinect, have become effective, affordable, and commonplace.

The work of this thesis contributes towards the development of RVT systems by using RGB-D and tracked skeletal data collected with Microsoft Kinect to assess human performance of physical exercises. …

Stabilization Of Horseradish Peroxidase Using Epoxy Novolac Resins For Applications With Microfluidic Paper-Based Analytical Devices, Cory A. Chaplan

Master's Theses

Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (microPADs) are an emerging platform for point-of-care diagnostic tests for use by untrained users with potential applications in healthcare, environmental monitoring, and food safety. These devices can be developed for a multitude of different tests, many of which employ enzymes as catalysts. Without specialized treatment, some enzymes tend to lose their activity when stored on microPADs within 48 hours, which is a major hurdle for taking these types of devices out of the laboratory and into the real world. This work focused on the development of simple methods for stabilizing enzymes by applying polymers to chromatography …

The Effect Of Pretreatment Methods On Methane Yield And Nutrient Solubilization During Anaerobic Digestion Of Microalgae, Alexander Scott Hill

Master's Theses

Microalgal biomass is a candidate feedstock for biofuel production. To improve the sustainability of algae biofuel production, following biofuel recovery, the biomass nutrients should be recycled for additional algae growth. Anaerobic digestion of algae or oil-extracted algae is a means of recovering carbon and other nutrients, while offsetting algae production electricity demand. The major limiting factor in microalgae digestion is the low biodegradability of the cell walls. In the present study, various pretreatment technologies were tested at bench scale for their ability to improve raw, non-lipid-extracted algae biodegradability, which was assessed in terms of methane yield, volatile solids destruction, and …

Benefits And Obstacles To Smart Packaging In Food Labeling, Emmalyn H. Goulden

Graphic Communication

This project explores the reasons why food spoilage indicators are not yet sold in grocery stores for consumer use. Food spoilage indicators, or time-temperature indicators as they are more widely known, are used to determine whether or not products are safe for consumption. There are several potential barriers to the wide market usage of packaging containing indicators including lack of consumer interest, additional cost, and manufacturing difficulties. However, the benefits that the product offers in the way of consumer safety cannot be overlooked.

Extensive research was augmented by a survey of 119 shoppers at local grocery stores in the central …

Where Does It Hurt? A Cultivation Theory’S Perspective On Domestic Violence, Kendra Grace White

Communication Studies

This study investigated Cultivation Theory and its role in the issue of domestic violence. I hypothesized that people who are exposed to larger quantities of pop culture mediums will have less negative attitudes towards the issue of domestic violence. My study also posed research questions about the relationship between the attitudes towards domestic violence with both basic domestic violence knowledge and personal experience with the issue. I gathered my data through a thirty-question survey and distributed it online, using convenience and snowball samples. My results did not support my hypothesis; however, I did find statistical significance for a negative correlation …

Aged 539 Graduate Project, Clint C. Cowden

Agricultural Education: Graduate Internship Reports

This internship report contains documented evidence required in meeting the quality criteria used to evaluate Community College Programs. These criteria were established by the Agriculture/Natural Resources Advisory Committee and are used to evaluate Community Colleges throughout California. In addition to documented evidence, the internship report also includes a special project on Program Effectiveness. The project created a degree qualification profile for the Agriculture Science and Technology degree at West Hills College, Coalinga which was approved by the DQPP committee at West Hills College, Coalinga. The DQP describes five basic areas of learning: Broad, Integrative Knowledge; Specialized Knowledge; Intellectual Skills; Applied …

Characterization Of Corynebacterium Pseudotuberculosis Biovar Equi Isolates Obtained From Cal Poly Horses And Review Of Application Of Transposons To Better Prevent Pigeon Fever In Horses, Irene Hasen

Animal Science

No abstract provided.

Beef Cattle Lesson Plans: For Use In The Education Of School-Age Children In The Beef Cattle Industry, Katherine M. Halloran, Cheyenne H. Love

Animal Science

This project was initially created for use at Fort Hope in Arroyo Grande, California. It designs lesson plans created to teach children about the beef cattle industry. The project consists of lesson plans for three age groups: 7-9, 10-12, and 13-15. Each age group will learn various aspects about beef cattle, and lessons will increase in complexity as the children advance age groups. The groups will spend six days in lecture completing worksheets and activities, and on the seventh day, after completion of a review game, the children receive certificates. While the project was created specifically for the Fort Hope …

Endothelial And Smooth Muscle-Dependent Vascular Reactivity In Immature Arterialized Collateral Capillaries, Caitlin Koeroghlian

Biomedical Engineering

Peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD) occurs due to the build up of atherosclerotic plaque and reduces blood flow to cause chronic ischemia. Patients with PAOD may experience intermittent claudication, or the pain in limb skeletal muscles due to a decease in blood flow. Collateral arteries can act as a natural bypass and improve blood flow to hypoxic tissue by creating an alternate route for blood to flow, but not all patients with PAOD have pre-existing collateral networks. Animal studies indicate that tissues without pre-existing collateral networks can form de novo collaterals from capillaries following occlusion of a feed artery. Unfortunately, …

From Print Culture To Digital Culture: Effects On Communication, Culture, And Technology, Brent Weber

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Functional Vasodilation Is Impaired In Arterialized Capillaries In The Spinotrapezius, Joshua P. Cutts

Biomedical Engineering

Ischemic diseases are the result of atherosclerotic plaques, which occlude conduit arteries. Ischemic disease in different tissues leads to different conditions, such as coronary artery disease (CHD), cerebrovascular disease (CVD), and peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD). Patient vasculature architecture is variable; some patients having many collateral vessels, which are connect one arterial branch to another, and readily serve as natural bypass routes to atherosclerotic occlusions, to enlarge and provide blood flow to tissue distal to the occlusion. Patients with many natural collateral vessels are ischemia protected. Unfortunately, not all patients have collateral arterioles to remodel into conduit vessels and provide …

Child Life Specialists’ Facilitation Of Family-Centered Care: The Importance Of Sibling Support, Carissa L. Lane

Psychology and Child Development

Certified Child Life Specialists’ understanding of family-centered care, and their beliefs and practices involving siblings of chronically/critically ill children were examined using an online survey. Participants were Certified Child Life Specialists recruited form the Child Life Council Forum. Relationships between utilization of certain words and support programs offered to siblings, were examined. Findings revealed a relationship in one area of coded language and support program for siblings, but not the other. Findings also revealed that all CCLS believe in the inclusion of siblings during the treatment process, however they are offered less support services than parents. Diverse results regarding multiple …

Designing A Modular Dsp Core For Real-Time Audio Performance, Kevin Richard Brewer

Computer Engineering

This project provides an overview for building a Digital Signal Processing (DSP) core on a Digilent Nexys2 FPGA board. The DSP core is designed to give Cal Poly students interested in DSP and its applications to audio engineering a usable platform to perform signal processing and analytics. The processes of the DSP core are modular, allowing students to design their own implementations of various adder and multiplier functions. Infinite impulse response (IIR) filters and finite impulse response (FIR) filters using both cascade and parallel implementations are the primary processing tools in the core, and all output can be visually and …

Design, Construction And Analysis Of A Conveyor System For Drying Seasoned Snack Almonds, Nick Civetz

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

No abstract provided.