Engineering Commons^™

Learn Piano With The Piano Trainer, Jay Mattinson

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project was to help make learning the piano easier.The Piano Trainer is a simple bar of lights that sits above the keys on any piano. It lights up the lights to help you know which key you should play next. You can plug in a USB drive and play any song you like.

Noise Cancellation, Golden Money

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Noise cancellation is a technology that utilizes adaptive filtering and can be found in many different applications. This technology is used to cancel out unwanted sound waves by producing a similar wave with an inverted phase. When done properly the volume of the unwanted sound can be greatly reduced and sometimes entirely removed. This project analyzed how noise cancellation can be achieved through signal processing and attempts to show in the real world how this type of adaptive filtering works.

Perfect Stryde, Tyler Johnson, Taylor Hansen

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Over striding occurs when an athlete overextends their stride. Over striding reduces reduces the athlete's forward momentum and can increase risk of running related injury. Perfect Stryde provides feedback to the athlete while they are running to allow them to correct their stride.

Personal Cloud: A Better Way To Store Files, Jeffrey Heilbut

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Cloud storage is like a hard drive you can access over the internet. One example is Google Drive. The purpose of the Personal Cloud is to:

• Allow larger cloud storage for less money
• Better security for cloud files

The Personal Cloud allows users to store as much data as they want, without the yearly subscription fee from other cloud options. The Personal Cloud also gives the users management of the security of their files.

The Personal Cloud implementation is in the “Materials” and “Methods” sections. The final outcome of the Personal Cloud is in the “Results” section.

Real-Time Camera Array Lecture Capture System, Clint Ferrin, Daniel Mortensen

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Distance Education programs are rising in popularity, and classroom lectures are commonly recorded to host both in-person and online students. However, technical lectures that rely on several whiteboards are inhibited by current lecture recording techniques that reduce a teacher’s workspace.

The Camera Array Lecture Capture (CALC) System enhances the learning of both in-class and online students by sending a real-time, video of multiple white boards stitched together. The system allows a teacher to utilize every whiteboard in the classroom and send a complete replica of the whiteboard notes to distance education students.

Remote Control Boat With Camera And Depth Sensor Capabilites, Emerson Udy

Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Climate change, urbanization, and agricultural runoff increase destabilization of aquatic ecosystems.
• Monitoring shoreline ecosystems can be very invasive to aquatic life.
• This monitoring can also require a lot of man hours and equipment.
• A system allowing minimal economical impact and man hours will greatly improve shoreline management
• Implementing reclamation in lake ecosystems requires adequate monitoring that gives up-do-date feedback on ecosystem improvement without impacting reclamation efforts
• An RC boat equipped with a built-in camera allows for effective monitoring with minimal disturbance and man power.

Smartsmoker, Nathan Tipton

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The SmartSmoker is an automated meat smoking device that controls the smoking environment based on sensor data. The controller adjusts feed rates for the wood pellet dispensing auger and the liquid dispensing peristaltic pump to maintain desired environmental conditions. The heating element is used to maintain the optimal meat smoking temperature.

Rpi Cluster: The Affordable Supercomputer Solution!, Cameron Frandsen, Joel Meine

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Problem:

Supercomputer systems in use today are...

• Expensive to develop, operate, and maintain
• Vulnerable to malfunctions
• Limited to non-scalable resources
• Large in physical dimensions
• Immobile to prevent relocating the system

Solution:

The RPi Cluster supercomputer system is...

• Affordable to acquire, operate, and maintain
• Adaptive to malfunctions
• Scalable to allow more resources
• Small in physical dimensions
• Mobile to allow relocating the system

Spectre Battlezone: Laser Tag Without Lasers, Evan Boren, Devin Gillespie, Taylor Spencer

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Spectre Battlezone is a twist on traditional laser tag without using lasers. Each player is provided a rifle configured for gameplay. The rifle is equipped with a digital display showing a real-time map and current player statistics along with location of teammates, opponents, and in-game upgrades

The goal of the project was to design a system comprised of smaller embedded systems. The design was to include embedded linux development tools, modern communication protocols, and to make laser-tag more like an Arena Shooter!

Thermoelectric Cooled (Tec) Central Processing Unit, Tyler Lindsay, Landon Wilcox

Electrical and Computer Engineering

There are no Intel processors that run at 5GHz stock. Breaking the 5GHz barrier is equivalent to joining the 150 MPH club out on the salt flats.

Thermoelectric coolers are used because they are solid state heat pumps that have low thermal resistance when they are inactive.

Design, Synthesis, And Characterization Of Monometallic And Bimetallic Catalysts, Sonia Eskandari

Theses and Dissertations

Supported catalysts are used extensively in a variety of heterogeneously catalyzed reactions for industrial processes. Techniques for preparing supported noble metal catalysts are typically chosen to achieve high metal dispersions in order to obtain high activity for a given metal loading. Enhancing the catalytic performance of heterogeneous catalysts can be done by increasing active site count as well as modification of the physico-chemical characteristics of the catalyst material. For supported metal nanoparticles this can be achieved by decreasing particle size, thus increasing dispersion or metal utilization on the surface of the particles, while modification of metal properties can be attained …

An Integrated System To Design Machine Layouts For Modular Special Purpose Machines, Uday Hameed Farhan

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis introduces the development of an integrated system for the design of layouts for special purpose machines (SPMs). SPMs are capable of performing several machining operations (such as drilling, milling, and tapping) at the same time. They consist of elements that can be arranged in different layouts. Whilst this is a unique feature that makes SPMs modular, a high level of knowledge and experience is required to rearrange the SPM elements in different configurations, and also to select appropriate SPM elements when product demand changes and new layouts are required. In this research, an integrated system for SPM layout …

Image Processing: Iris Detection, Samuel Jungert, David Spencer

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project is to use image processing techniques to detect the eye’s iris center. A camera with a wide angle lens and near Infrared (IR) sensitivity is used as input. An algorithm processes the input image data and distinguishes features such as face, eye region, and iris.

Auto-Locking Knee Brace, Kareena Hudson

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Auto-Locking Knee Brace provides a support system for those with weak or otherwise unreliable knees. It functions by detecting sudden changes in direction and locking the brace into place to help prevent a fall. The knee brace is worn regularly and programmed to be able to identify the difference between normal movement and a fall risk. When a fall risk is detected the knee brace is programmed to lock into place preventing the fall. If a fall is falsely detected, or after stability is regained, the knee brace contains a lock-release mechanism. All the user has to do is …

Open Eyes Smart Application, Austin Goddard

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Open Eyes is a smart home application that combines machine learning and computer vision techniques into an Alexa smart home app that works through your Amazon Echo device. The application will fulfill several purposes. It will notify the home user when unknown guests have entered, track commonly lost objects and communicate a catalog of objects detected. Open Eyes uses deep learning neural networks and computer vision to observe its surroundings and provide users with information they require. It is operated by simple voice commands such as “Who is in my living room?” or “Where is my phone?”. The system should …

The Pocket Generator A Self-Charging Backup Battery, Cadin White

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project was to provide a personal external power source for small electronic devices such as smart phones. The objective was to use triboelectric effects between materials with different electron affinities in order to store energy from mechanical movement. This effect allowed the pocket generator to collect energy as it was carried by a person throughout their daily routine. Directing that energy into a rechargeable battery allowed that energy to be used later for powering a personal electronic device.

Ahoy Aggies! | College Of Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

In landlocked Utah, freshmen engineering students at Utah State University got a hands-on lesson in sailing the open seas.

3d Printing – An Insider’S Perspective, Siddharth Sah

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The 3D printing market globally is still at its infancy, - or some might argue that there isn’t really a market yet. The knowledge of 3D printing design is still largely limited to engineering design – not product design. At MakeWhale, we are constantly pushing the boundaries of the application of 3D printing technology to consumer products resulting in a beautiful mix of technology and art.

Whitespace Exploration, Jason Lloyd Daniel

Master's Theses

As engineering systems grow in complexity so too must the design tools that we use evolve and allow for decision makers to efficiently ask questions of their model and obtain meaningful answers. The process of whitespace exploration has recently been developed to aid in engineering design and provide insight into a design space where traditional design exploration methods may fail. In an effort to further the research and development of whitespace exploration algorithms, a software package called Thalia has been created to allow for automated data collection and experimentation with the whitespace exploration methodology.

In this work, whitespace exploration is …

A Vertical Axis Rotor For Wave Energy Conversion, Yingchen Yang, Joab Soto, Francisco Salazar

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The present work augments vertical-axis unidirectional wave energy converter (WEC) designs with a new approach. The enabling technique is the hydrodynamic design of a special rotor, which consists of a series of uniquely shaped blades in a certain formation. Specifically, individual blades are realized by revolving a two-dimensional symmetric hydrofoil about its chord line. Then the blades are arranged around a vertical shaft in a desired formation to form the rotor. When driven by an approaching flow through interaction, the rotor naturally rotates about the vertical shaft in a predefined direction. The approaching flow could be from any spatial direction, …

Computational Materials Characterization, Discovery, And Design With High Performance Computing, Qunfei Zhou, Xiaotao Liu, Tyler Maxwell, Thomas John Balk, Matthew J. Beck

Commonwealth Computational Summit

No abstract provided.

Usu Opens State-Of-The-Art Idea Factory For Aggie Engineers | College Of Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

The College of Engineering at Utah State University is debuting its brand new Idea Factory, a state-of-the-art design and fabrication facility on the Logan campus.

Pulsed Laser Beam Welding Of Pd43Cu27Ni10P20 Bulk Metallic Glass, Ling Shao, Amit Datye, Jiankang Huang, Jittisa Ketkaew, Sung Woo Sohn, Shaofan Zhao, Sujun Wu, Yuming Zhang, Udo D. Schwarz, Jan Schroers

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We used pulsed laser beam welding method to join Pd₄₃Cu₂₇Ni₁₀P₂₀ (at.%) bulk metallic glass and characterized the properties of the joint. Fusion zone and heat-affected zone in the weld joint can be maintained completely amorphous as confirmed by X-ray diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry. No visible defects were observed in the weld joint. Nanoindentation and bend tests were carried out to determine the mechanical properties of the weld joint. Fusion zone and heat-affected zone exhibit very similar elastic moduli and hardness when compared to the base material, and the weld joint shows high …

Space Access Systems Design: Synthesis Methodology Development For Conceptual Design Of Future Space Access Systems, Loveneesh Rana

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The early Conceptual Design (CD) of a Space Access System (SAS) is the most abstract, innovative, and technologically challenging phase throughout the entire aerospace product development life-cycle. While it is the most important life-cycle phase which influences around 80 percent of the overall life-cycle-cost, it is also the least understood design phase. The history of space access vehicle design provides numerous examples of projects that failed due to lack of a proper technology-hardware-mission assessment in the CD phase. The present dissertation addresses this crucial phase and develops a prototype best practice solution process to advance the current state of the …

Cal Poly Table Top, Kelsey M. Ishimatsu Jacobson, Andrew J. Whitney

Mechanical Engineering

Since many tables currently used at Cal Poly are not ideal for active design situations, we have designed, built and tested to be used in design classrooms with an emphasis on using the tables to quickly prototype ideas. This table is a standing height table in a trapezoidal shape which can comfortably seat four people. The modular design of the table allows multiple tables to be use to create different shapes so that the tables can be used in multiple ways.

Board # 113 : Eegrc Poster: Characterizing Trade-Off Decisions In Student Designers, Molly Goldstein

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Although design and decision-making are intertwined for practicing engineers, students from elementary school through college and graduate schools are not taught to think through uncertain situations (Howard, 2007) in which information is limited or outcomes are not guaranteed. Trade-offs are a complex element of decision, as the decision-making weighs possible outcomes against their respective costs (Otto &Antonsson, 1991). Although much is understood about how professional designers’ behaviors as compared to novice designers and students (Atmen et al., 2007; Crismond & Adams, 2012; Cross, 2003), there is little research regarding making trade-off decisions from middle school and high school to college. …

Benefits From Constructability Reviews, Nikiforos Stamatiadis, Roy Sturgill, Kiriakos Amiridis

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Constructability review is a process used during project design to infuse construction knowledge into the design process. There is industry impetus encouraging early construction involvement in project development. State transportation agencies often have to abide by legislation restricting these procurement methods leaving construability review as the only opportunity for early construction involvement. Staffing and budgetary constraints lead to state transportation agencies being very cautious in the practices and processes they implement that seemingly lie outside the main missions of project development and delivery. Without straightforward and documented savings of constructability review processes, these methods may also be eliminated. After streamlining …

A Survey Of Addictive Software Design, Chauncey J. Neyman

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The average smartphone owner checks their phone more than 150 times per day. As of 2015, 62% of smartphone users had used their phone to look up information about a health condition, while 57% had used their phone to do online banking. Mobile platforms have become the dominant medium of human-computer interaction. So how have these devices established themselves as our go to connection to the Internet? The answer lies in addictive design. Software designers have become well versed in creating software that captivates us at a primal level. In this article, we survey addictive software design strategies, their bases …

Stochastic Adc Using Digital Standard Cells, Zachary Baltzer

Journal of the Microelectronic Engineering Conference

No abstract provided.

Stochastic Adc Using Standard Cells: Design, Implementation And Eventual Fabrication Of A 4.7-Bit Adc, Zachary Baltzer

Journal of the Microelectronic Engineering Conference

As process nodes shrink, analog design increasingly becomes difficult due to space, signal, and noise concerns. With highly synthesized digital design, analog design innovation lags as these specific considerations are to be accounted for. The analog to digital converter, proposed by Weaver et al., is a completely digital design relying on comparator offsets to produce a digital counter that tracks the difference between the input voltage and a reference voltage. To soon be fabricated on GlobalFoundry’s 130 nm CMOS process, the proposed 5-bit ADC uses approximately 90,000 transistors with 1,500 comparators and a full-adder tree consisting of 1,500 adders to …