Engineering Commons^™

Orbital Constellation Design And Analysis Using Spherical Trigonometry And Genetic Algorithms: A Mission Level Design Tool For Single Point Coverage On Any Planet, Joseph R. Gagliano

Master's Theses

Recent interest surrounding large scale satellite constellations has increased analysis efforts to create the most efficient designs. Multiple studies have successfully optimized constellation patterns using equations of motion propagation methods and genetic algorithms to arrive at optimal solutions. However, these approaches are computationally expensive for large scale constellations, making them impractical for quick iterative design analysis. Therefore, a minimalist algorithm and efficient computational method could be used to improve solution times. This thesis will provide a tool for single target constellation optimization using spherical trigonometry propagation, and an evolutionary genetic algorithm based on a multi-objective optimization function. Each constellation will …

Metrology Computer Redesign, Natalie Lizama, Melinda Ong, Mitchell Aiken

Electrical Engineering

We are M[EE]² and our project is to redesign Micro-Vu’s metrology computer (the Q16) with modern components and updated firmware. Metrology machines take high precision and high accuracy measurements, and a computer attached to each machine reads out the measurements. We will be redesigning the logic and display circuit boards on the Q16. The ports and communication methods with the machine will stay the same as it must be a drop-in replacement.

The motivation behind the redesign stems from the age of the current design. The current design was created in 1986, and has not had significant modifications since. …

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 …

Iridium Adc, Bill Blakely

Electrical Engineering

Today's modern digital audio systems are pushing performance boundaries. Most high quality audio digital to analog converters are capable of 24 bit, 96 kHz conversion. Professional audio interfaces frequently use 24 or 32 bit 192 kHz sample rates. These systems are able to achieve dynamic ranges greater than 100 dB, and distortion on the magnitude of single parts per million. This project proposes a high resolution analog digital converter (ADC) to measure and characterize these types of devices.

The proposed system will be capable of 24 bit conversion and an extended frequency range compared to the typical 20 Hz to …

Electric Upgrades - Supercapacitor Electric Bicycle, John Chen, Wilson Fletcher, Spencer Esparza

Electrical Engineering

Supercapacitors provide high current capabilities compared to conventional lithium-ion batteries, allowing for fast charging and discharging of electrical energy. This project seeks to test the benefits of supercapacitors in an electric bicycle unit in order to gain higher regenerative energy. The main components of the bicycle are its regenerative motor, supercapacitor array, and motor controller. Developing the project will provide data on the feasibility of using alternative battery storage and charging.

Passive Balancing Battery Management System For Cal Poly Racing's Formula Sae Electric Vehicle, Alvin Joseph Ha

Electrical Engineering

This senior project aims to replace the current battery management system (BMS) on Cal Poly’s Formula SAE electric vehicle with a more versatile, advanced, and reliable system. A BMS manages a rechargeable battery by ensuring the battery device operator’s safety, protecting battery cell integrity, prolonging battery lifetime, maintaining functional design requirements, and sending optimal usage information to the application controller. Passive balancing maximizes a battery pack’s capacity by dissipating excess energy through heat to regulate cell state of charge.

Induction Coil Power Generator, Steven Chi Li

Electrical Engineering

Over the years, society has evolved technologically to the point where we become dependent on technology. Today, nearly everybody have smartphone devices. This leads to the popularity of portable chargers since portable devices do not have a constant source of power. Even most portable chargers share the same problem as portable devices, which they both share a finite amount of battery power before needing to recharge at a power outlet. Ultimately, they are just temporary solutions to the problem of the lack of power. However, society assumes the abundance of electric power sources where they view them as an infinite …

High-Bandwidth Iop Sensing Backscatter Transceiver, Mark Manuel

Electrical Engineering

This document describes the design and build of a mobile phone attachment that communicates with an ASIC embedded smart contact lens. The portable device enables patients and clinicians to conveniently and instantaneously measure intraocular pressure (IOP). The device replaces bulky and expensive benchtop RF synthesizer and signal analyzer machines required for communication to the smart contact lens into a portable and convenient device. The transceiver transmits VHF ISM band radio and can capture reflected backscatter On-Off-Keying modulated message signals at bandwidths from DC to 130MHz.

Wind/Hydro Generator Simulator, Michael Timothy Djaja, Christopher James Rotsios

Electrical Engineering

The intention of this project is to make it easier for people without reliable access to electricity to implement their own sources of electrical generation. The ability to simulate different sources of generation allows people in need to find what source of generation will most properly meet their electricity needs. The goal of this project was to provide a wind or water flow profile from any area in the world and output a corresponding amount of power that would be expected from a small-scale wind or hydro generator. Due to difficulties with the microcontroller and incorrect sizing of components, this …

Microgrid Protection Student Laboratory: Human-Machine Interface And Scada Database, Nathan P. Martinez

Electrical Engineering

The electric utility system, a ubiquitous and fundamental component of modern life, has changed more in the last 20 years than the last 100. With more homes and businesses installing distributed energy resources (DERs) such as solar panels, battery storage, and other intermittent sources, massive changes need to take place in the electric transmission and distribution systems. Engineers must develop a new skill set for a modern utility industry. This project summarizes a component for a new laboratory class aimed at power engineering students at Cal Poly which supports the laboratory through the creation of a human-machine interface (HMI) and …

Career Path Web Application, Annamarie Roger

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This web application provides a new approach to organizing career advice. It allows a prospective student to outline career priorities and receive suggestions drawing from a repository of reports from professionals in their respective fields. This gives the student access to advice from individuals who do not know the user personally and aims to remove the possible bias that may exist on that level. Furthermore, the system is periodically updated to include recent reports.

Transient Heat Storage Systems, Ian M. Sweeney, Brock M. Johnson, Todd K. Lundberg

Mechanical Engineering

Phase change materials (PCM) have many applications in transient cooling systems, including those with high transient heat loads and low duty cycles. These materials allow a system to remain within a narrow temperature range with a relatively low weight compared to conventional heat sinks or high-power cooling systems. This senior capstone project includes the design of a PCM based thermal energy storage system to integrate into an existing cooling loop, as well as a determination of viable PCM’s for the application. This report contains the necessary information to build the test apparatus.

Wheelchair Tire Change, Vincent Aguilar, Martin Perez-Guzman, Spencer J. Solano

Mechanical Engineering

This project consists of a rear wheel wheelchair lift to be designed and created by a Cal Poly senior project team. This project was created for injured veteran Ms. Landeen who has the trouble of tracking mud into her house because of dirty wheelchair tires. The project was presented by the non-profit organization The Quality of Life Plus (QL+) Program. Much like when you remove your shoes coming into your home, Ms. Landeen needs a way to exchange her outdoor wheels for her clean indoor wheels.

The expected outcome of this project is a fully functioning device that will safely …

Verification Of Brand Authentication Technology Using Infrared Light And Image Processing, Thomas Fenner, Kevin Whalen, Josh Oliver

Mechanical Engineering

Statement of Confidentiality: The complete senior project report was submitted to the project advisor and sponsor. The results of this project are of a confidential nature and will not be published at this time.

Theatrical Turntable, Liam R. Martinez, Isaac Becker, Robert R. Reed, Caroline A. Whelan

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Beach Wheelchair Attachment, Abbey Jo Scholle, Jackson Dallas Wiley, Jackson Cole

Mechanical Engineering

This document includes the problem that is under scrutiny, the background research towards finding a solution, the objectives, scope of the project, the planned overall design process, the preliminary design we have produced and analyzed, the critical design we have manufactured, the testing and results, and the final assessment of the produced design. The problem is lack of easy access and movement for wheelchair users on the beach. Other solutions and designs have been logged under background research. With this information, the scope of work was designed to meet all the needs specified and describe how the specifications will be …

Retractable Hammock, Collin J. Richardson, Jesse Bryn Mandell, Owen Alle Guenther

Mechanical Engineering

This Final Design Review will recap the objectives, background, design ideation, and concept development of the Retractable Hammock senior capstone project and continue to report on the final design and manufacturing that resulted in the final iteration of the Retractable Hammock.

Fpga-Based Dsp System, Aaron Nguyen

Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project is to create a modular FPGA-based filtering system for audio in VHDL. The final implementation has a working input, output, and filtering system but the filtering system still must be fine-tuned.

Iot Power Bank And Control System, Dannick Liudzius

Computer Engineering

The project aims to target the growing Internet of Things (IoT) market with a lightweight and cost effective IoT control system with a mobile power bank. Currently there are no easy to use battery-powered systems set-up for Internet of Things interactions. This project is an iteration of such a system that would be able to be installed in a desired home or business environment even if the location is not in reasonable distance from a power outlet. The rapidly expanding IoT market is ideal for the development of a device that can be molded for use with various chosen peripherals, …

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 …

Home Weather Station, Jarrett William Corr

Computer Engineering

This senior project implements a mobile weather station that can relay weather data to an indoor module with an LCD display. The outdoor module utilizes a temperature, humidity, and pressure sensor to collect atmospheric weather data and a radio transceiver to transmit the data to a display station via radio frequency communications. The indoor station displays the temperature, humidity and time with an LCD display. The indoor station has a settings menu which allows the user to configure the unit of measurement for the temperature and time where the device is located.

Abbott Alarm System, Galen Wu

Computer Engineering

In order to improve production efficiency of implantable cardioverter defibrillators, the Sylmar’s Abbott product manufacturing team requested assistance from the Sylmar hardware development team to construct a system to monitor a UB25, a resistance welder. This system shall monitor the welder for false welds, regulate the number of welds the operator executes, and alerts the operator and floor supervisor of these events. These tasks will ultimately improve the quality of the product and decrease the risk and cost to the customer.

Learning Management Website, Brendan A. Baronia

Computer Engineering

The following system was developed as a basic course management system for use by teachers and students. The project started as an alternative to existing platforms, such as Moodle, though because of a two quarter time constraint the complexity of the system was reduced to a more reasonable level. The resulting system requirements included a simple course creation/enrollment system, with separate sections, topics, and resources including videos, files, and a basic graph problem.

Anaerobic Digestion Of Wastewater-Grown Algae Biomass With Optimized Biogas Yields And Nutrient Solubilzation, Tiffany A. Racz

Master's Theses

Whole-cell algae biomass grown on nutrient-rich wastewater can be anaerobically digested to produce renewable heat and power, and to solubilize nutrients to grow additional algae biomass in a biorefinery system. In this study, algae biomass was grown on clarified primary wastewater in 33-m² ponds at a 4-day residence time with sedimentation harvesting of the biomass. Lab digesters were used to test biogas yields and nutrient solubilization from the anaerobic digestion of algal biomass with and without mixing and with sonication as a pretreatment. Additionally, algae were fed to unheated and unmixed 1135-L pilot digesters to determine the effects of …

Funqual: User-Defined, Statically-Checked Call Graph Constraints In C++, Andrew P. Nelson

Master's Theses

Static analysis tools can aid programmers by reporting potential programming mistakes prior to the execution of a program. Funqual is a static analysis tool that reads C++17 code ``in the wild'' and checks that the function call graph follows a set of rules which can be defined by the user. This sort of analysis can help the programmer to avoid errors such as accidentally calling blocking functions in time-sensitive contexts or accidentally allocating memory in heap-sensitive environments. To accomplish this, we create a type system whereby functions can be given user-defined type qualifiers and where users can define their own …

Towards A Strawberry Harvest Prediction System Using Computer Vision And Pattern Recognition, Andreas M. Apitz

Master's Theses

Farmers require advance notice when a harvest is approaching, so they can allocate resources and hire workers as efficiently as possible. Existing methods are subjective and labor intensive, and require the expertise of a professional forecaster. Cal Poly’s EE department has been collaborating with the Cal Poly Strawberry Center to investigate the potential in using digital imaging processing to predict harvests more reliably. This paper shows the progress of that ongoing project, as well as what aspects could still be improved. Three main blocks comprise this system: data acquisition, which obtains and catalogues images of the strawberry plants; computer vision, …

Towards Autonomous Localization Of An Underwater Drone, Nathan Sfard

Master's Theses

Autonomous vehicle navigation is a complex and challenging task. Land and aerial vehicles often use highly accurate GPS sensors to localize themselves in their environments. These sensors are ineffective in underwater environments due to signal attenuation. Autonomous underwater vehicles utilize one or more of the following approaches for successful localization and navigation: inertial/dead-reckoning, acoustic signals, and geophysical data. This thesis examines autonomous localization in a simulated environment for an OpenROV Underwater Drone using a Kalman Filter. This filter performs state estimation for a dead reckoning system exhibiting an additive error in location measurements. We evaluate the accuracy of this Kalman …

Design, Simulation, And Hardware Construction Of A 600 W Solid State Dc Circuit Breaker For The Dc House Project, Calin Matthew Bukur

Master's Theses

DC circuit breakers must be able to arrest overcurrent conditions to prevent electrical equipment and wiring from causing building fires or other hazards from occurring. With more DC renewable sourced structures such as Cal Poly’s DC House, an inexpensive and reliable protection system is necessary to ensure safe energy transfer to the loads. One method of protecting a system is preventing excessive amounts of current to be drawn by the load when the surrounding components are rated at a lesser value. DC circuit breakers act as a monitoring system and barely presents an effect on the voltage or power. With …

Defect Detection In Selective Laser Melting, Moira Foster

Master's Theses

Additively manufactured parts produced using selective laser melting (SLM) are prone to defects created during the build process due to part shrinkage while cooling. Currently defects are found only after the part is removed from the printer. To determine whether cracks can be detected before a print is completed, this project developed print parameters to print a test coupon with inherent defects – warpage and cracking. Data recorded during the build was then characterized to determine when the defects occurred.

The test coupon was printed using two sets of print parameters developed to control the severity of warpage and cracking. …

Logging And Analysis Of Internet Of Things (Iot) Device Network Traffic And Power Consumption, Ryan Joseph Frawley

Master's Theses

An increasing number of devices, from coffee makers to electric kettles, are becoming connected to the Internet. These are all a part of the Internet of Things, or IoT. Each device generates unique network traffic and power consumption patterns. Until now, there has not been a comprehensive set of data that captures these traffic and power patterns. This thesis documents how we collected 10 to 15 weeks of network traffic and power consumption data from 15 different IoT devices and provides an analysis of a subset of 6 devices. Devices including an Amazon Echo Dot, Google Home Mini, and Google …