Engineering Commons^™

Electronic Prototype Of A Smart Window System, Kelly Pennington

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

As demands and cost for energy increase, the importance of energy saving devices will increase. Yet, as of now, the potential of such devices has yet to be fully realized. The Santa Clara University Smart Window considers the importance of energy saving devices and examines the potential of saving energy through a fully automated window. Ultimately, the Smart Window establishes a more efficient use of outdoor and indoor "energy" to create a more comfortable and user-friendly environment. This paper discusses the electronic design and implementation portion of the Smart Window research project. In particular, it focuses on the sensing, communications …

Low Power Tinyml For Image Recognition, Robb Chun, Anonna Hasan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

TinyML is a rapidly developing field of machine learning that focuses on deploying complex neural networks on to edge devices such as microcontrollers and phones. The goal of this project is to train and deploy an image classification neural network on top of a Raspberry Pi Pico4ML that can be used in an application to assist the visually impaired. In this project, we will use the TensorflowLite for Microcontrollers platform in order to train and convert a convolutional neural network from Keras into a lightweight tflite model that can be deployed to the Pico4ML. Our tasks include training the image …

Santa Clara Radio Astronomy Project Ii (Scrap Ii), Logan Barnes, Michael Quang, Aria Rouzmehr

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

The Santa Clara Radio Astronomy Program (SCRAP II) is the continuation of the previous year’s radio astronomy project. Building off of last year’s proof-of-concept, the goal of this project is to design and build a parabolic radio telescope that will boast improved antenna performance, more efficient data acquisition, and cleaner post-processing. These improvements in design strive toward a larger goal of enabling the students of Santa Clara University to explore the depths of our universe from Earth. In this paper, we improve upon a horn antenna design that was used in the previous year with a parabolic antenna. This, combined …

Microgrid Control System, Sofia Brumbaugh, Nathan Kehl

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

As a result of many factors, microgrids are an emerging technology in today’s world, gaining popularity all over the globe. Each microgrid requires a controller that makes sure the microgrid functions properly. In this paper, we will design and simulate a controller which consists of primary and secondary control, and is able to disconnect, stabilize and reconnect the microgrid to the main grid in accordance with IEEE Standard 1547. We first tested our design in Simulink, then with OPAL-RT, and see that it meets all our requirements. By looking at the successful results we obtained, it is proven the controller …

Open Source Implementation Of Cortex M0, Sean Shao, Devin Hill

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

The Cortex-M series is an immensely popular family of processors optimized for low cost, size, and power. The smallest of the M-family, the Cortex-M0, uses a 3-stage pipelined design. Despite their popularity, however, no publicly available open-source designs exist for the Cortex-M series. Thus, for our senior design project, we chose to create an open-source implementation of the Cortex-M0 processor in Verilog. This enables users to learn more about, experiment on, and make changes to the design of the processor.

Though our goal for this project was to support all the functionality of the Cortex-M0 processor (as defined in the …

Project Hermes: The Socially Assistive Tour-Guiding Robot, Aly Khater, Justin Sun, Fernando Camou

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

With the reduced amount of availability of a labor force for non-technical tasks, service robotics has grown to be used in place of human labor to handle these tasks. There have been various studies on the impact of using robotics in a sociological context. The use of service robots in a social and labor environment recognizes the need of cohesive Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). In this senior design project, we delve into the thought process of using a service robot in place of a human for tasks that are normally reserved for humans. These tasks outline design considerations when performing emotional-centric …

Inter-Abled And Adaptable Arcade Controls And Cabinet, Emma Berry, Raquel Macias

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

A considerable void exists in the digital gaming space, with a distinct lack of feasible control solutions for disabled gamers. The project aims to bridge this gap via a proof-of-concept arcade machine with interchangeable control surfaces, each catering to a different physical disability. In particular, the control boards aim to address the lack of accessibility of individuals with arthritis, as well as those with the use of only a single arm. To such an end, we design and implement STM32-based controllers which connect and interact directly with the host computer. Despite technical hardships, our results show that comprehensive control solutions …

Theia: The Handheld Eye-Tracking Interface For All, Christian Garcia, Edward Ghazarossian, Pranav Grover

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Eye tracking is a burgeoning technology that has found applications in market research, accessibility, and as an add-on to games. However, this technology still has room to grow in the consumer space, where touchscreens, keyboards, and mice dominate our interactions with technology. Interfaces that are primarily controlled using eye tracking are less common, and are not found in a handheld form factor. This paper explores the possibility of creating a handheld device that is primarily controlled using eye tracking. Our proposed system performs real-time filtering on eye tracking inputs in order to improve the accuracy and usability of the device. …

Biomimicry In Solar Energy Applications, Terrin Cramer, Yicheng Kang, Ryan Ogino

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

While solar power is one of the leading renewable energy sources today, current solar farms produce an amount of byproduct heat that is contributing to rising global temperatures and the deaths of many birds. Furthermore, solar panels that use water as a coolant through a sprinkler system use up a great amount of water that could be allocated somewhere else. Our project seeks to address both of these issues through a biomimetic design. Drawing inspiration from the ghost plant, our proposed solar panel cooling system is expected to reduce the amount of byproduct heat produced by panels, increase the overall …

Air Conditioner Fail Safe Detector, Jonathan Li

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Air Conditioners are essential to human life. In an age of sudden temperature changes, moving systems, particularly HVAC (Heat Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems, are the primary source to physically and financially protect the health of all workers, employees, and students. Air Conditioners are prone to mechanical and electrical malfunction/breakdown due to excessive use. Regular maintenance and service intervals are helpful but do not guarantee free-malfunction systems. When the systems break down, especially commercial systems, the repair cost can be highly expensive and time-consuming. Can we detect early signs of potential problems in the systems to minimize the repair cost …

B2b2: Lidar 2d Mapping Rover, Laurence Kim, Isaiah Youngblood, Quintion Turner

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Autonomous machines are becoming more popular and useful with even self-driving cars being a thing of the present. Most of these machines navigate using cameras and LiDAR which does not detect glass, therefore the machines give misleading results when objects and obstacles are transparent to the wavelengths of the light used. This is problematic in modern building floor plans with glass walls. A solution is to build a ROS system that fuses ultrasonic sensors with LiDAR sensors in order for a robot to navigate in a building that has glass walls. Using both sensors, the final product is a robot …

Emergency Hot Car Alert System, Alexander Lopez, Ryan Marquis, Christopher Park

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Children and pets are often forgotten in vehicles, and on hot days this can lead to heat-stroke, coma, and death. To avoid such preventable deaths, we designed a device that would be able to detect the presence of a vulnerable entity, such as a baby, with a temperature sensor and volatile organic compounds sensor. Once occupancy is recognized while the vehicle engine is off, the device will monitor the ambient temperature and will respond in real-time if the environment is deemed unsafe by triggering our alert system. The anticipated outcome is to avoid preventable deaths due to heat-stroke inside a …

Hardware And Software Infrastructure For An Agricultural Sensor Network, Bennett Dorsey, Mariela Zuniga

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

With the rise of low-power processing and the availability of cheap solar, our project aims to create a low-power sensor network that can gather and report data with little oversight. The project will use a bluetooth mesh network to create a generalized solution where the network can start up regardless of the environment or number of nodes. Our tasks include designing algorithms that tackle redundancy in the face of node failure, self test and diagnostics, and power on and off strategies. The project aims to solve the problem of timing and communication when power is inconsistent and not shared. Our …

Hardware-Accelerated Ecg-Based True Random Number Generator, James Burrill, Sunjit Jayam

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Developing and proving the effectiveness of ECG-based TRNGs for use in cryptography applications related to implantable medical devices (IMDs) offers a novel approach to securing IMDs. Current ECG-based True Random Number Generators (TRNGs) are software orientated and computationally heavy with hardware implementations being suggested as one possible solution to make such TRNGs useful for the medical device industry. Hardware offers the opportunity to increase power efficiency through algorithmic optimization while maintaining device security. In this paper, we use Verilog design and FPGA simulation tools to demonstrate the potential for hardware-accelerated ECG-based TRNGs for use in low power cryptographic applications. This …

Cost Efficient Radio Telescope, Nick Arroyo, Brian Benedicto, Tyler Ikehara

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

This project aims to construct a smaller and less expensive radio telescope compared to traditional radio telescope designs by utilizing a Software Defined Radio (SDR). This is the first stage of a multi-year effort to bring radio astronomy capabilities to Santa Clara University. The implementation of this project includes designing and building a pyramidal horn antenna centered around the hydrogen line frequency of 1420 MHz. The project will also be comparing specifications of low noise amplifiers (LNA) and designing band-pass filters. Lastly, this project implements an SDR to process the signals received by the telescope to recreate a map of …

Remote Crop Disease Detection Using Deep Learning With Iot, Ivy Chung, Anoushka Gupta

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Agriculture is such a vital part of our society, and according to the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), plant diseases are considered one of the two main causes of decreasing food availability. This paper explores not only the methods and findings of building a CNN-based disease detection model, but that of building a deployable remote crop disease detection system incorporating IoT technology. By using transfer learning with AlexNet, we were able to predict with 89.8% accuracy tomato plant images into one of the ten pre-defined disease classes. Our proposed system tracks plant health throughout the day by using …

Microgrid For Scu With Vehicle-To-Grid, Kurt Williams, Cameron Refaee

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Santa Clara University is a large loads in Santa Clara needed two finders and a maximum of over 8MW peak demand; however, this consumption will only increase as the student body and electric vehicles on campus continue to grow. To meet this rising demand in both a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner, we proposed and simulated a complete energy management system with cost analysis of energy savings of a microgrid capable of reducing the power supplied to Santa Clara University’s campus from the grid by 40% using renewable energy, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) functionality, and real SCU energy data. The project further …

Healthy Hive: A Beehive Health Management Tool, Kwadwo Amoako

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Honeybees are important pollinators and are essential in the preservation of ecosystems as well as agricultural production. They are crucial to the pollination of 85% of the world’s food crops. However, honeybee populations have been in decline over the past decade, due to external environmental conditions such as diseases and pests (invasive varroa mite), pollution (insecticide), or inadequate forage/poor nutrition. These conditions can have a severe impact on the health of hives. This project will serve as a tool for the monitoring system of tracking the activities of honeybees entering and exiting their beehive. The health condition of the bee …

A Low-Cost, Long-Range, And Solar-Based Iot Soil Quality Monitor, Salvador Garcia, Trina Nguyen, Julian Wong

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

The project objective is to create a low-cost, long-range, and solar-based IoT soil quality monitoring system. The system must transmit packages of data gathered from separate nodes, consisting of two different types of sensors, to a centralized gateway receiver to be displayed to the user in an elegant and readable manner. The end goal of the project is to supplement produce grown by large agricultural bodies around the United States without the misuse of water resources. This report presents the need for this system, details the components of the system, and the rationale behind design choices. It serves as a …

Radio Frequency Direction Finding System, Jacob Taub, Austin Colon

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

In certain terrain types It is difficult to locate people, objects, animals, etc. In particular, using one’s eyes and ears to locate something has certain disadvantages. Visible light propagates at high frequencies and is easily stopped by terrain. Also, sound waves do not propagate as effectively as electromagnetic waves in open air because they are mechanical waves. Therefore, our goal is to create a system that can locate emitters that output electromagnetic waves in the radio frequency (RF) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS). RF operates at a lower frequency than visible light and will diffract around mountains and pass …

Automated Mixed-Dose Pill Dispenser With Image Verificaton, Nairu Garcia-Acevedo, Rohan Bhatt

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

With the unfathomable number of medications that are available today due to medicinal advancements, there is room for error in the distribution of such medication even within proper pharmaceutical settings. Our primary goal is to reduce the overall contribution of a wide range of human errors in the dispersion of medication which is found to be an extremely large industry in today's age while doing so in a cost effective manner. This is to be executed first using a robotic arm, to automate and create mobility, and second, including image verification, to classify and select pills based on certain characteristics. …

Attacking Logic Locked Circuits Using Reinforcement Learning, Allen Shelton, Jake Mellor

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Logic Locking is an emerging form of hardware obfuscation that is intended to be a solution to many of the trust issues associated with the modern globalized IC supply chain. By inserting extra key-gates into a circuit, the functionality of the circuit can be locked until the correct order of bits or “key” is applied to the key gates. To assess the strength of new logic locking techniques, we propose a new attack that uses deep reinforcement learning. This attack aims to test logic locking as well as evaluate reinforcement learning as a possible attack against logic locking. By using …

Adaptive Deposition Of Difficult Materials, Abel Daniel, Emily Holden, Gabriela Sanches Carvalhocarval Silva

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

When using a robotic arm, the path that the arm follows is typically unique to the task it completes, but not to the object upon which the task is performed. Additionally, when extruding materials, those materials are typically easy to work with (i.e. smooth and uniform). In this paper, we discuss our three-pronged approach, focusing on the imaging of the cupcake, the robotic arm’s movement about the cupcake, and the extrusion method, to achieve this goal of, simply-speaking, decorating a cupcake. While our results were not optimized or as broad as we’d initially hoped that they would be, we were …

Machine Learning-Based Side-Channel Analysis On The Advanced Encryption Standard, Jack Edmonds, Tyler Moon

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Hardware security is essential in keeping sensitive information private. Because of this, it’s imperative that we evaluate the ability of cryptosystems to withstand cutting edge attacks. Doing so encourages the development of countermeasures and new methods of data protection as needed. In this thesis, we present our findings of an evaluation of the Advanced Encryption Standard, particularly unmasked and masked AES-128, implemented in software on an STM32F415 microcontroller unit (MCU), against machine learning-based side-channel analysis (MLSCA). 12 machine learning classifiers were used in combination with a side-channel leakage model in the context of four scenarios: profiling one device and key …

Telehealth Sensor Authentication Through Memory Chip Variability, Calvin Kimbro, Holden Gordon, Thomas Lyp

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

In light of the COVID-19 world-wide pandemic, the need for secure and readily available remote patient monitoring has never been more important. Rural and low income communities in particular have been severely impacted by the lack of accessibility to in-person healthcare. This has created the need for access to remote patient monitoring and virtual health visits in order for greater accessibility to premier care. In this paper, we propose hardware security primitives as a viable solution to meet the security challenges of the telehealth market. We have created a novel solution, called the High-Low (HiLo) method, that generates physical unclonable …

Powering Iot Sensors With Rf Energy Harvesting, Austin Rothschild, Kristi Nguyen

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

There is a need to power Internet of Things (IoT) applications that require frequent, expensive, and/or dangerous battery replacements. Radio-frequency energy harvesting (RFEH) is a possible alternative source of power for select IoT sensor applications. In comparison to other methods of energy harvesting, RFEH has the smallest incident power densities and therefore comes with many design challenges.

In this project we implement a novel RFEH system powered via a dedicated transmitter. A planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) and voltage doubler circuit form the designed rectenna (rectifier + antenna) and the system is implemented on a custom PCB to carry out RF-to-DC …

Delay-Based Physical Unclonable Function Implementation, Abigail Aguirre, Michael Hall, Timothy Lim, Jonathan Trinh

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

As we venture further into the 21st century, it becomes much clearer that hardware security is at the forefront of many challenges that we face today in ensuring that data is protected. “Keys” (a sequence of bits) can be used to unlock pieces of data and is a concept that is pervasive throughout cryptography, but storage in memory makes this sole method nonviable. To make the approach more practical, one can dynamically generate a key through a Physical Unclonable Function (PUF). PUFs are circuit primitives that use intrinsic variations of microchips created during the manufacturing process to generate a unique …

Disaster Relief Communications Box, Kyle Johnson, Karter Naito

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

This report showcased a project from Santa Clara University's Senior Design Showcase. Current senior electrical engineering students Karter Naito and Kyle Johnson have created a Natural Disaster Relief Communications Box that they hope will have a big impact on natural disasters. The device had three different power sources to provide power to operate the device : plug-in wall charger , solar panel, and a handle crank. Powered by a Raspberry Pi 4, it could set up a local Wi-Fi network for people to connect to and receive and send important information. To increase the reliability of the device , it …

3dscanner, Thomas Heckman, Robert Kalb, Shreyes Nallan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

This project entails designing, prototyping, and testing a 3D scanner. The device that we are building uses LIDAR to take position data of a 3D object, then analyze and encode the sensor data as an STL file that can later be 3D printed out at the same resolution. We aim to build an affordable, high-performance 3D scanner that takes advantage of the falling cost of LIDAR in order to bring 3D scanning capabilities to individuals, the maker community, and even small businesses.

We begin this process by choosing a sensor, the YDLIDAR X4, as our primary method of taking position …

Solar Panel Monitor And Data Logger, Ryan Murray, Sharan Singh

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

When deploying systems halfway across the world, having some system for monitoring their performance and status is essential. All We Are, in their mission to build solar panel installations in Uganda, encounters this problem daily. For our project, we worked with All We Are to deliver a system to monitor these solar installations. Building an embedded solution that can communicate with the solar installations and upload the data to the cloud allowed us to accomplish this goal. Our system connects data from the existing solar panel infrastructure to the cloud. The platform of our system is a Raspberry Pi microprocessor. …