Electrical and Electronics Commons^™

Adaptive Light Dimmer, Jonathan Sato, William Xiong

Electrical Engineering

This project, the Adaptive Light Dimmer for the DC House, senses a room's light content and adjusts a lamp's light intensity accordingly, thus regulating the room's light content. The device is designed to work with renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy. This would be useful in less developed countries where AC electricity is not well spread and renewable DC, such as solar, can be better utilized. It functions by using the TSL2561 light sensor to sense light, ATTiny85 microcontroller to output PWM to the LED driver, LT3795 LED driver to output current to an LED and LT3014 …

Music Synthesizer Senior Project: Individual Report, Bryan Bellin

Electrical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Wax Bee Gone: A Safe, Effective Solution To Ear Wax Removal, Robert G. Shenon, Shanvir S. Dhinsa

Electrical Engineering

This project sought to combine conventional methods such as scraping and water pressure to removal ear wax, but with electronic automation to removal the potential for human error as much as possible. Through the use of a 9V battery, and Arduino microcontroller, DC motors, and other circuitry, this project has developed a prototype for a device that can properly remove ear wax without any discomfort or risk to the user. Much of this project involved learning how to properly manipulate and provide the necessary power requirements DC motors from an Arduino and a 9V battery. Additionally, creating a 3D printed …

Student Experimental Farm Smart Pathway Lighting System, Emily A. Whitaker, Vineal S. Singh, Edith Rodriguez

Electrical Engineering

This project works together with the Student Experimental Farm (SEF) and the DC House in order to install a smart lighting pathway system. This system will run off of DC power supplied by the solar panels connected to the DC House. This project tested and explored the group’s abilities to design and implement a full system run off of 48V DC. By installing this system it will greatly improve the ease for students to work at the SEF beyond daylight hours. The system will allow continuous dull lighting and will switch to full brightness once a person is detected. This …

Make Scents: Senior Project Report, Bruce Edward Mitchener Iii, Dennis Tsuker

Electrical Engineering

The purpose of this project was to create a smart air freshener. A complete user-friendly system that is programmable and simple to use for customers of all ages. Many constraints were met in order to achieve the final product and the necessary requirements. This Senior Project helps maintain a clean scented room of any size with its programmable functions to set spray times per the user’s request. Final system incorporates a user operated remote controller that catches the signal using an infrared sensor. The ease and simplicity of this air freshener makes it stand out in the competing market of …

Blend It Wine Blending Distribution System, Connor Clarry, Russell Temple, Matt Moren

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Design Of An Active Harmonic Rejection N-Path Filter For Highly Tunable Rf Channel Selection, Craig J. Fischer

Master's Theses

As the number of wireless devices in the world increases, so does the demand for flexible radio receiver architectures capable of operating over a wide range of frequencies and communication protocols. The resonance-based channel-select filters used in traditional radio architectures have a fixed frequency response, making them poorly suited for such a receiver. The N-path filter is based on 1960s technology that has received renewed interest in recent years for its application as a linear high Q filter at radio frequencies. N-path filters use passive mixers to apply a frequency transformation to a baseband low-pass filter in order to achieve …

Complex Filters As Cascade Of Buffered Gingell Structures: Design From Band-Pass Constraints, Nicole M. Hay

Master's Theses

Complex filters are multi-input, multi-output networks designed to discriminate based upon the relative phase difference between input signals. Complex filters find application in modern wireless systems for single sideband transmission and image-reject reception. This thesis presents one active complex filter implementation using two operational amplifiers per stage, termed “type-II” topology. The “type-II” originates from the passive RC-CR polyphase topology presented by Gingell in his 1973 paper, “Single sideband modulation using sequence asymmetric polyphase networks.” This new topology gains several advantages over existing complex filter implementations, namely “cascadability” (multiple sections placed in series to create a higher-order response) without altering the …

Dc-Dc Converter Control System For The Energy Harvesting From Exercise Machines System, Alexander Sireci

Master's Theses

Current exercise machines create resistance to motion and dissipate energy as heat. Some companies create ways to harness this energy, but not cost-effectively. The Energy Harvesting from Exercise Machines (EHFEM) project reduces the cost of harnessing the renewable energy. The system architecture includes the elliptical exercise machines outputting power to DC-DC converters, which then connects to the microinverters. All microinverter outputs tie together and then connect to the grid. The control system, placed around the DC-DC converters, quickly detects changes in current, and limits the current to prevent the DC-DC converters and microinverters from entering failure states.

An artificial neural …

Baserock Bluetooth: Bi-Directional Bluetooth And 3.5 Mm Headphone Jack Compatibility Device, Jonathan A. Falco

Electrical Engineering

This project was proposed by a startup company from downtown San Luis Obispo called BaseRock. BaseRock sells a backpack containing subwoofers to allow the user to feel low frequencies of music. It is intended for concerts or personal use, listening to songs on an MP3. The main way the BaseRock backpack communicates with MP3s is via the headphone jack. With the introduction of the Apple iPhone 7 in September of 2016, BaseRock realized it was at a disadvantage. Millions of iPhone 7 owners and potential customers around the globe would no longer possess a headphone jack. BaseRock needs a Bluetooth-to-headphone …

Portable Dac And Headphone Amplifier For High Impedance Headphones, Kevin V. Thai

Electrical Engineering

The following paper contains an in-depth report on the design process of a portable DAC and Amplifier for high impedance headphones. The project brings portability into an audiophile’s world. This portable DAC and Class D amplifier takes USB data from a phone, converts it to analog, and amplifies the signal for high impedance headphones. First, the document contains motivations for the project: such as the necessity for such equipment, and who would use this product. Next, discussions of marketing considerations and customer needs bring together specifications. After, the report examines the project plan, overall functionality blocks, and estimated costs. Finally, …

Cubesat Data Transmission And Storage Throughput Optimization Through The Use Of A Zynq Soc Based Cubesat Science Instrument Interface Electronics Board, Caleb Mosby Munsill

Master's Theses

The CubeSat standard sprang from the desire to create a satellite standard that would open the doors for universities and other lower budget research institutions by making it more feasible to get their work into space. Since then, many other institutions and industries have been adopting variations on the standard for their own use. As more people are seeking out to use the CubeSat standard as their main bus, the standards and practices of the community have grown and expanded and with this growth, new challenges have been created. One such challenge is the bandwidth limitation in the RF-downlink. When …

Contactless Charging Adapter, Kevin Nguyen, Emmett Stetz, Joseph Pacheco

Electrical Engineering

Currently, most cell phones utilize wired adapters to charge, which cause a minor hassle when one frequently needs to unplug and replug their device whenever they pick it up to use while it is charging. The charging adapter is a pad that phones can be placed on to wirelessly charge the device. The charging adapter consists of two components: the wireless charging platform to supply and transmit the power, and the wireless charging receiver for phones that do not already have an internal receiver included, specifically targeting newer generation iPhones that utilize a lightning port (i.e. iPhone 5, 6, 6s, …

Implementing Occupancy Sensor Lighting Controls In Cal Poly Cic Lab Classrooms, Mitchell Packard

Construction Management

Occupancy sensors are lighting control devices that automatically turn lights on when they detect motion, and off when motion is not detected for an allotted time period. These sensors can be applied virtually anywhere, indoor or outdoor, and can provide substantial energy savings. One application that does not utilize occupancy sensors often enough is classrooms. Cal Poly currently utilizes an outdated toggle switch system that students do not maintain properly, wasting a large quantity of energy. This paper will examine the maintaining of the current lighting control system in Cal Poly’s Construction Innovation Center (CIC) lab classrooms; the operating cost …

Silent Communication Device, Christopher Wayne Schutter

Master's Theses

Oral communication has constituted as a necessary aspect of how people interact with one another, but there are always situations where this form of communication can create distractions, irritation, or even danger. Take for example, a student in a laboratory who needs to communicate effectively with a lab partner without creating a distraction to those trying to work around said student or a soldier on a battlefield who needs to relay information effectively to his or her comrades without revealing his or her position to the enemy. It becomes apparent that people need a more exclusive form of communication in …

Energy Management System Modeling Of Dc Data Center With Hybrid Energy Sources Using Neural Network, Khalid Althomali

Master's Theses

As data centers continue to grow rapidly, engineers will face the greater challenge in finding ways to minimize the cost of powering data centers while improving their reliability. The continuing growth of renewable energy sources such as photovoltaics (PV) system presents an opportunity to reduce the long-term energy cost of data centers and to enhance reliability when used with utility AC power and energy storage. However, the inter-temporal and the intermittency nature of solar energy makes it necessary for the proper coordination and management of these energy sources.

This thesis proposes an energy management system in DC data center using …

Electric Smart Load Meter, Johnny Tran

Electrical Engineering

This project details the design of an electric meter that reads the signals of any device plugged into an outlet and displays cost readings that may potentially reduce power consumption. The sensor monitors whether a plugged in device continuously consumes power after completely charging up. For a charging device, the current remains constant until the device reaches 100% charge. Once the device becomes fully charged, the current discontinues for proper power usage. A unique aspect of the meter is that it displays cost per hour, day, and year. Displaying the cost per unit of time creates awareness for customers, potentially …

Accumulator Volume Sensor Final Project Report, Chris Naughton, Kinwei Yu, Michael George

Mechanical Engineering

Accumulator Volume Sensing Team has developed two sensor designs aimed at detecting the position of the piston within a 4024 accumulator. The two designs include the use of a Renishaw LMA10 magnetic encoder and a SpectraSymbol HotPot linear potentiometer. The magnetic encoder solution drastically increases the accuracy of sensing the piston position compared to the current solutions of both a string-pot and linear variable differential transformer while costing slightly less. The linear potentiometer seeks to provide a solution that drastically decreases the cost compared to the present sensing methods. Both designs call for a modification to one half of the …

Isopropyl Alcohol Pump For Printed Circuit Boards Using An Arduino, Lawrence Zhu

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Final Design Report: Grasp Data Acquisition Project Axon Vr, Michael Erberich, Jack Schultz, Tyler Yeaman

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Active Contact Lens - Low Power Backscattering Sensor-To-Antenna Integration Circuitry, Caleb B. Porter

Electrical Engineering

The Active Contact Lens measures the cornea-scleral radius of the wearer’s eye, which correlates to intraocular pressure (IOP), Glaucoma’s primary indicator. IOP varies throughout the day, and is drastically different from person to person, so constantly measuring it over a period of a few days can provide individualized tracking of the disease’s development and will help doctors develop personalized treatment schedules to treat the disease more precisely.

The Active Contact Lens sensor measures strain, based on the cornea-scleral radius, and reports the results wirelessly, to allow monitoring of an individual’s IOP over time. The lens is powered similarly to a …

Design, Analysis, And Simulation Of A Jitter Reduction Circuit (Jrc) System At 1ghz, Run Bin Yu

Master's Theses

The clock signal is considered as the “heartbeat” of a digital system yet jitter which is a variation on the arrival time of the clock edge, could undermine the overall performance or even cause failures on the system. Deterministic jitter could be reduced during the designing process however random jitter during operation is somehow less-controllable and unavoidable. Being able to remove jitter on the clock would therefore play a vital role in system performance improvement.

This thesis implements a 1GHz fully feedforward jitter reduction circuit (JRC) which can be used as an on-chip IP core at clock tree terminals to …

Scaled Synthetic Aperture Rader Development, Jason Garvey Schray

Master's Theses

Several previous Cal Poly thesis projects involve synthetic aperture radar (SAR), automatic target recognition (ATR), and tracking. SAR data was either accessed from a publicly available database or generated using complex computer modeling software. The motivation for this dual thesis project is to design and construct a scaled SAR system to support Cal Poly radar projects. Ideally this is a low-cost, high resolution SAR architecture that produces raw range Doppler data for any desired target area. To that end, a scaled SAR system was successfully designed, built, and tested. The current SAR system, however, does not perform azimuthal compression and …

Cal Poly Supermileage Electronic Fuel Injection, Alexander Pink

Electrical Engineering

Cal Poly Supermileage is a student-run engineering club that builds prototype gasoline vehicles optimized maximum fuel-efficiency. To power their vehicles, the Supermileage team makes use of single-cylinder, 4-stroke, electronically fuel-injected (EFI) gasoline engines. This report details the development, iterative design & test cycles, and integration of an EFI system for the Supermileage club. This project develops an EFI system that interfaces to the most common types of sensors found in the low-power Supermileage-range of engines, including throttle-position sensors, manifold absolute pressure sensors, gear-tooth hall-effect sensors, variable-reluctance position sensors, engine coolant temperature sensors, intake air temperature sensors, and exhaust oxygen sensors. …

Camera Stabilizer, Nathaniel Bryan, Sean Chappell, Danielle Williams

Electrical Engineering

The goal of this project is to create an affordable camera stabilizer (the “stabilizer”) for consumers to use with cell phones or GoPro cameras. The stabilizer compensates for two axes, pitch and roll, as well as vertical movement. The system (currently only compatible with one cell phone model) is handheld and uses a combination of brushless DC motors, an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), and a microcontroller to compensate for the operator’s movements, stabilizing the phone for nonshaky, high quality video recording. The stabilizer provides a lowcost alternative to professional stabilization solutions employed in the production of featurelength films; the system …

Exertion Control, Travis Taylor

Electrical Engineering

Current wearable fitness devices give the user after-the-fact fitness data, but little real-time feedback. Exertion Control, a new wearable device, continuously measures the user’s heart rate, creates a heart rate target, and helps the user reach it. This project completes the senior design and master’s thesis requirements and contains two milestones. The senior design product continuously measures the wearer’s heart rate and logs it with a user-friendly interface. This data models the heart’s exertion response and recovery response. The master’s thesis device refines the closed control loop with the user to give them a workout optimized to fit their needs.

Robotic Overbed Table, Jonathan Lantz

Electrical Engineering

Traditionally overbed tables have simple and cheap designs, yet contain many disadvantages compared to the design proposed in this report. Disabled or bedridden persons, often require the use of a bedside table either in hospital environments or at home. Unfortunately, many modern overbed tables require the user to get out of bed and move in order to adjust and position the table. Incorporating a singlebutton control panel that allows the user to make adjustments and access other features independently, creates more accessible product. Integrated subsystems must control all motors and interfaces with an easy access control panel in order to …

El Capitán: Cal Poly Rose Float Digital Drive System, Gregory Raffi Baghdikian

Computer Engineering

In today’s world of smartphones, self-driving cars, and internet-connected coffee makers, it seems as if computers are contained in everything around us. These “embedded systems” have become critical components of our lives, improving everything about the things they control, from cost, to speed, to simplicity. One area that embedded systems has hardly gained a foothold is in the world of floatbuilding. Most of the floats in the Tournament of Roses Parade, including the one built jointly by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly Pomona, are technologically very simple, using mostly analog components and rudimentary discrete digital logic to …

Musictrakr, Benjamin Lin

Computer Engineering

MusicTrackr is an IoT device that musicians attach to their instruments. The device has a start and stop button that allows users to record their playing sessions. Each recorded session is sent wirelessly to a cloud database. An accompanying website displays all of the recorded sessions, organized by date. After picking a specific date, the user can view graphs showing total practice time and average session length as well play back any recordings during that date. In addition, the user may add comments to any specific date or recording. Lastly, the user may tag a specific date with a color …

Design Of Inexpensive And Easy To Use Diy Internet Of Things Platform, Samuel R. Jaffe

Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on the design and implementation of a new, inexpensive, and less complex system for a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Internet of Things (IoT) platform. The hardware aspects focus on a new chip called the ESP8266 which contains both microcontroller and WiFi connectivity capabilities in an extremely affordable package. The system uses the Arduino IDE to program the ESP8266, which is known to be an extremely user-friendly environment. All other software is both free and easy to use. Past methods of creating IoT projects involved either expensive hardware, often ranging from $50-$100 per node, or complicated programming requiring a full …