Engineering Commons^™

Audio Dsp Amplifier, William Saba, Nicholas Barany

Electrical Engineering

The key concept of this project is to create a microcontroller system that serves as an interface between a DSP board and a total of 4 amplifier channels. The fully integrated system will provide a fully inclusive audio DSP amplifier for use in 2.1 or bi-amplified stereo speaker setups. The project will focus on developing an intuitive interface that is operable from the device or a computer that programs the DSP board for various speaker applications. The finished design will provide a custom computer sound amplifier in one package, eliminating the need for multiple components by interfacing two stereo amplifiers, …

Design Of A Multiple Input Single Output Dc-Dc Converter For The Dc House Project, Chad Santos, Siby James

Electrical Engineering

This senior project report describes the design and further development of the MISO (multiple input, single output) circuit. The MISO circuit harnesses power from four separate renewable energy sources (hydro, solar, wind and man) and converts it into a single DC output voltage. Though this circuit has been initially designed and tested in previous years, it was only developed enough to use as a test circuit. Further implementation will allow for the MISO to be available in a more practical setting. Professor Taufik will then take the newly designed MISO circuit to implement in a house in Indonesia.

Innovative Connectivity Ensuring Education (I.-C.E.E.), Luke Cole, Andrew Ma, Nicholas Ross, Daniel Williams

Electrical Engineering

This is the critical design review for the Telepresence/Telerobotic Technology for Children with Disabilities Project by team I.- C.E.E. (Innovative Connectivity Ensuring Education). This report details our telepresence system design for our client (Nathan Stilts) including design choices/justification, testing verification and procedures, and chosen components for implementation. There are seven chapters in total starting with introductory/background information followed by hardware and software design, verification, and testing and concludes with the current status of the project and what future work may need to be included.

U-Larm Bike Lock Accessory, Craig Cary

Electrical Engineering

Over the past few years, anti-pollution organizations and activists have encouraged society to use eco-friendly transportation like ride-sharing and biking. According to the San Luis Obispo Police Department, however, bike owners report approximately 269 bike thefts per year. This statistic illustrates the need for a more effective way to protect bicycle property.

The development of an alarm system for the U-Lock bike lock encourages bike owners to ride their bicycles by providing them with additional measures to protect their bicycle property. This U-Lock accessory, when cut, sounds an alarm to alert nearby persons of the theft-in-progress. In order to turn …

Smart Shot: Electronic Target With Smartphone Application, Tyler Stuart Pickett, Taylor Jacob Hutchinson

Electrical Engineering

The objective of this project is to develop an electronic system for recreational shooters that functions as a target with real-time feedback. The system provides a user-friendly alternative to paper targets and expensive competition scoring systems. One of the largest challenges presented by this project is balancing cost, durability, and sensitivity. The scope of this project includes the design and implementation of a target assembly, an electronic system, and a smartphone application.

The system is comprised of three main modules: the target, the control module, and the smartphone app. The electronic target communicates wirelessly with the smartphone via Bluetooth. Once …

Low Profile Guitar Tuner, Yaniv Goldobin, Christer Sundstrom, Samuel Cheng

Electrical Engineering

To develop an innovative guitar tuner with emphasis on low profile design

Stability Analysis Of Negative Resistance-Based Source Combining Power Amplifiers, Hannah S. Homer

Master's Theses

An investigation into the stability of negative resistance-based source combining power amplifiers is conducted in this thesis. Two different negative resistance-based source combining topologies, a series and parallel version, are considered. Stability is analyzed using a simple and intuitive broadband approach that leverages linear circuit stability criterion and two different linearization methods: linearization around the operating point and in the frequency domain. Using this strategy, it is shown that conditions for self-sustained oscillation exist for both topologies. For the series combining topology, self-sustained oscillation is prevented by means of injection locking.

Adaptive Automotive Lighting Systems, Marc W. Haeberlin

Master's Theses

Over the past few years, the use of LEDs within the automotive and avionic industries has increased due to their high efficiency, durability and wide range of light brightness. As the use of LEDs within these industries grows, a need for reliable, high performance drivers becomes more relevant. Companies are implementing LEDs for applications involving adaptive lighting or simple dimming features. This thesis shows implementation of various non-isolated analog converters integrated with digital dimmers to achieve these adaptive lighting systems. Adaptive lighting systems involve reading an input from an external source (brake pedal or steering wheel) and changing the brightness …

Ecg Classification With An Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System, Brad Thomas Funsten

Master's Theses

Heart signals allow for a comprehensive analysis of the heart. Electrocardiography (ECG or EKG) uses electrodes to measure the electrical activity of the heart. Extracting ECG signals is a non-invasive process that opens the door to new possibilities for the application of advanced signal processing and data analysis techniques in the diagnosis of heart diseases. With the help of today’s large database of ECG signals, a computationally intelligent system can learn and take the place of a cardiologist. Detection of various abnormalities in the patient’s heart to identify various heart diseases can be made through an Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System …

Design And Fabrication Techniques Of Devices For Embedded Power Active Contact Lens, Errol Heradio Leon

Master's Theses

This thesis designed and fabricated various devices that were interfaced to an IC for an active contact lens that notifies the user of an event by detection of an external wireless signal. The contact lens consisted of an embedded antenna providing communication with a 2.4GHz system, as well as inductive charging at an operating frequency of 13.56 MHz. The lens utilized a CBC005 5µAh thin film battery by Cymbet and a manufactured graphene super capacitor as a power source. The custom integrated circuit (IC) was designed using the On Semiconductor CMOS C5 0.6 µm process to manage …

Telepresence: Design, Implementation And Study Of An Hmd-Controlled Avatar With A Mechatronic Approach, Darren Michael Chan

Master's Theses

Telepresence describes technologies that allow users to remotely experience the sensation of being present at an event without being physically present. An avatar exists to represent the user whilst in a remote location and is tasked to collect stimuli from its immediate surroundings to be delivered to the user for consumption. With the advent of recent developments in Virtual Reality technology, viz., head-mounted displays (HMDs), new possibilities have been enabled in the field of Telepresence. The main focus of this thesis is to develop a solution for visual Telepresence, where an HMD is used to control the direction of a …

Sweep Stability Characterization Of A Vernier-Tuned Distributed Bragg Reflector (Vt-Dbr) All-Semiconductor Tunable Swept Laser System At 1550 Nm For Sensing Applications, Roric Christian Martens Biersach

Master's Theses

The short-term jitter and longer-term wander of the frequency sweep profile of a Vernier-Tuned Distributed Bragg Reflector (VT-DBR) laser at 1550 nm used in optical coherence tomography (OCT) and other sensing applications is characterized in this work. The VT-DBR has demonstrated success in source-swept OCT (SSOCT), performing both intensity and phase-sensitive OCT.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate one of the unique aspects of the VT-DBR laser that makes it successful in OCT: the stability of the linear optical frequency sweep. A highly stable linear optical frequency sweep implies benefits for further fiber sensing applications including fiber Bragg …

The Development Of A High-Performance Distributed Battery Management System For Large Lithium Ion Packs, Christopher B. Grasberger

Master's Theses

A high performance battery management system (BMS) for large capacity cells was designed, built, and tested in a cycle of three revisions. The BMS was designed for use in applications where the battery pack configuration is unknown: parallel, series, or any combination. Each of the cells is equipped with its own battery management system to allow a peer-to-peer mesh network to monitor the safety of the cell. The BMS attached to each cell also is equipped with a 25A DC/DC converter to perform active balancing between cells in a string. This converter can transfer charge to (or from) a cell …

Universal Programmable Battery Charger With Optional Battery Management System, Michael Duke Desando

Master's Theses

This report demonstrates improvements made in battery charging and battery management technology through the design of a universal programmable battery charger with optional battery management system attachment. This charger offers improvements in charge efficiency and unique battery charging algorithms to charge a variety of battery chemistries with variety of power requirements. Improvements in efficiency result from a synchronous Buck Controller topology as compared to previous universal chargers that use asynchronous Buck-Boost Converter topologies. This battery charger also surpasses current universal battery chargers by offering different charge modes for different battery chemistries. Charge modes provide the user an option between extending …

Analysis Of Mos Current Mode Logic (Mcml) And Implementation Of Mcml Standard Cell Library For Low-Noise Digital Circuit Design, Marcus Edwin Allan Heim

Master's Theses

MOS current mode logic (MCML) offers low noise digital circuits that reduce noise that can cripple analog components in mixed-signal integrated circuits, when compared to CMOS digital circuits. An MCML standard cell library was developed for the Cadence Virtuoso Integrated Circuit (IC) design software that gives IC designers the ability to design complex, low noise digital circuits for use in mixed-signal and noise sensitive systems at a high level of abstraction, allowing them to get superior products to market faster than competitors. The MCML standard cell library developed and presented here allows for fast development of mixed signal circuits by …

Ir-Depth Face Detection And Lip Localization Using Kinect V2, Katherine Kayan Fong

Master's Theses

Face recognition and lip localization are two main building blocks in the development of audio visual automatic speech recognition systems (AV-ASR). In many earlier works, face recognition and lip localization were conducted in uniform lighting conditions with simple backgrounds. However, such conditions are seldom the case in real world applications. In this paper, we present an approach to face recognition and lip localization that is invariant to lighting conditions. This is done by employing infrared and depth images captured by the Kinect V2 device. First we present the use of infrared images for face detection. Second, we use the face’s …

Forest Sign Maker, Victor Espinosa Iii, Kevin Ly, Lisa Yip

Mechanical Engineering

Executive Summary:

The Inyo National Forest is arguably one of the most beautiful locations in California, containing natural masterpieces such as Mount Whitney and the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Despite its magnificence, the Inyo National Forest can be a treacherous region. The Friends of the Inyo take pride in being able to facilitate the viewing experience for all outdoorsmen by maintaining the mountain trails, which includes providing adequate trail signage.

Unfortunately, there is a fundamental issue with the recent state of trail signage in the Inyo National Forest: the rate at which signs are being vandalized or naturally destroyed is …

Cal Poly Heliodon, Gregory Bucher, Lucas Carter, Jake Hamilton, Robin Hubilla

Mechanical Engineering

The purpose of the Heliodon project is to provide professors with a means to educate students about the movement of the sun and how that movement varies with location on earth and throughout the year.

Pier2pier: Final Report, Kevin Nelson, Anthony Miller, Paul Maalouf, Chahan Shah

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Characterization Of Two Vernier-Tuned Distributed Bragg Reflector (Vt-Dbr) Lasers Used In Swept Source Optical Coherence Tomography (Ss-Oct), Greg M. Bergdoll

Master's Theses

Insight Photonic Solutions Inc. has continued to develop their patented VT-DBR laser design; these wavelength tunable lasers promise marked image-quality and acquisition time improvements in SS-OCT applications.

To be well suited for SS-OCT, tunable lasers must be capable of producing a highly linear wavelength sweep across a tuning range well-matched to the medium being imaged; many different tunable lasers used in SS-OCT are compared to identify the optimal solution.

This work electrically and spectrally characterizes two completely new all-semiconductor VT-DBR designs to compare, as well. The Neptune VT-DBR, an O-band laser, operates around the 1310 nm range and is a …

Uav Avoidance System, Zachary Stargensky

Electrical Engineering

This is an ongoing design project being funded by Northrop Grumman in which Cal Poly SLO is working in collaboration with Cal Poly Pomona to complete a working design at the end of each academic school year. The project consists of two UAVs that can navigate around a given area without running into each other or other obstacles. There are sensors to be mounted on the vehicles that can detect objects within a given distance and a microcontroller is used to control how the vehicle responds to an object being detected. The avoidance code has been written for previous years’ …

Sun-Tracking Solar-Powered Led Street Light, Wesley Ballar, Harrison Wong

Electrical Engineering

Street lighting is an essential utility especially in urban and industrialized areas because it provides illumination and safety for vehicles and pedestrians throughout the night. However, street lights are relatively inefficient; they consume large amounts of power from electrical grids and have predetermined operation times that are often non-optimal for the surrounding environment. The Sun-Tracking Solar-Powered LED Street Lamp is a self-sustaining device, built to replace the current lighting sources. The device features sun-tracking capabilities for maximum energy gathering and darkness recognition to establish optimal operation times. The project provides a reliable and enhanced alternative to current street lighting systems.

Phase Locked Loop Integrated Circuit, Scott Buchanan, Jonathan Bonello

Electrical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Color Amplification, Jose Carrillo, Cynthia Barajas

Electrical Engineering

The goal of this project is to design and implement a hardware version of MIT’s and Cal Poly’s color amplification system. MIT created a software based system named the “Eulerian Video Magnification” that can reveal small variations that cannot be seen with the naked eye by processing the input sequence of the video. The process consists of using a Gaussian pyramid with a Gaussian kernel in order to do spatial decomposition. This process continues until there is one pixel left which then gets amplified and added back onto each pixel of the original frame for reconstruction. The reconstructed signal can …

Current Protection For The Energy Harvesting From Exercise Machines (Ehfem) Project, Colton Crivelli

Electrical Engineering

The Energy Harvesting from Exercise Machines (EHFEM) project intends to create an exercise machine that recycles the energy expended by an athlete operating the machine by sending it to the electric grid. The work done by the user goes through a DC-DC converter and an inverter in order to prepare it for delivery to the grid. A protection circuit ensures that the inverter does not try to pull too much current from the DC-DC converter. The project implements a current protection system that ensures the system doesn’t experience an overcurrent condition.

Voltage Protection System For Ehfem Project, Calvin Abshier, Calvin Xu

Electrical Engineering

The EHFEM project aims to convert the energy generated by exercise in a gym to electrical power and transport said energy to the grid. At the top level, this project includes several components including: a voltage and current protection system, a DC-DC converter, and an inverter. This project improves upon past voltage protection systems [1] [2]. The DC-DC converter takes the user-generated energy from the elliptical trainer and passes it to the grid. The user can generate voltage spikes upwards of 100V, far above the current DC-DC converter’s maximum limit. The voltage protection circuit sits between the energy harvesting machine …

The Dc House Project: Electrical System Design & Construction, John Bradley

Electrical Engineering

This project entails the design and assembly of the photovoltaic system, switchboard panel enclosure, and battery enclosure for the DC House’s main electrical system. The intended purpose of this project is to provide the electrical framework necessary for future students to easily modify and add to this rendition of the DC House. The principle design implements a variety of renewable energy sources, however this senior project only uses solar power in order to maintain a manageable scope. Each of these renewable energy sources are stepped down to a voltage of 24V and input to a Multi Input Single Output DC …

The Zephyr Charge: A Wind-Powered Usb Charger, James Dean Carson, John Pina Lopez Iii

Electrical Engineering

The Zephyr Charge project is to design and build a cell phone charger using a small wind turbine generator that can be useful to the fishermen community, namely fishermen of third world countries. The generator will output to USB for ease of charging capability. The size of the whole system should be light enough to move around, and the turbine itself will be mountable onto an edge of a wall. The goal of this project is to design and build a compact and easy to use cell phone charger, which is also efficient.

In order to be a practical product, …

Chipper: Capacitive Bed Occupancy Sensing For An Intelligent Alarm Clock, David Levi

Electrical Engineering

What if your alarm clock knew when you got out—and stayed out—of bed? Current alarm clocks happily let you go back to bed after turning them off. In this project, I build an alarm which only stops ringing when you get out bed, and starts ringing again if you lie back in bed.

This project uses capacitance to detect bed occupancy. A person on or near the bed creates a tiny, picofarads level increase in capacitance, as seen by a sensor placed under the mattress. A microprocessor interprets this signal, and also drives an audio alarm. Shielding of the sensor …

Smart Power Strip, Dannie Alfaro

Electrical Engineering

The Smart Power Strip revolutionizes all common power strips. Users have the ability to remotely toggle the individual outlets on the Smart Power Strip from a smart phone app and can also monitor how much energy the devices connected to the Smart Power Strip consume.