Course Overview

Introductory Material

Objectives and Approach

The Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering Senior Capstone Project Laboratory (a.k.a. "Senior Design" or SD) is a three semester sequence required by all undergraduate curricula in the ECE department. There are numerous educational objectives. Probably the single most important of these is to teach the students to use rock-solid logic to make engineering design decisions. We enforce this from the macro (e.g., the initial selection of a suitable project) to the micro (e.g., selection of the tolerance rating of one particular resistor). If we randomly select any module, component, signal line, data bus, algorithm, line of code, mechanical linkage, schematic, chemical reaction, sensor, etc. in their project, the student must be able to tell us everything about that particular item, what alternatives were available to them, why they selected a particular alternative, how critical the decision was to meeting overall system level requirements, etc. Such questions easily differentiate a logical and informed design process from the all-too-common student or technician approach in which the person will simply try one thing after another (e.g., component values, circuits, sensors, etc.) until something finally works for them. If a student can't immediately answer questions such as, "What would happen if this resistance was 10% too low?", "What would happen if the signal turned out to be twice as large as expected?", etc., they will not do well in this course.

Another major objective of Senior Design is to improve the effectiveness of written and oral engineering communication. All students who pass SD must be able to present technical material at a professionally acceptable level. To achieve proficiency in oral communication, all students must attend the presentations given by their classmates. In addition to learning by direct critique, each student will hopefully learn by example, i.e., listening to the critiques of their classmates and generalizing to themselves. Students are asked the type of questions they would likely be asked if they would be presenting their work to a manager for initial or continuing funding.

One of the strategies we use to achieve the educational objectives is to provide each student a full, realistic, project-based engineering design experience. To do so, each student, over the course of their project, assumes multiple engineering roles including those of project manager, hardware/software/test engineer, technical writer, plus minor amounts of other specialties (e.g., mechanical/optical/chemical/etc.) as required by their project. Modest competence in non-ECE specialties is typically needed for BME projects which are often multidisciplinary.

A second strategy we use to achieve the educational objectives is to emphasize the utility of top-down design. The students start from an overall set of system requirements. They then decompose their project into a set of functional modules, which, when working in concert, will meet those requirements. Obviously, each of these modules must themselves meet other requirements, and can be decomposed into lower level modules. This leads to a conceptual recursive decomposition of the project into very simple elements, the design of which is straightforward.

Senior Design differs from other courses in two major ways. First, in SD, students are doing synthesis -- they are coming up with a new design to accomplish some goal. This contrasts dramatically with the more typical undergraduate laboratory experiment in which students are often presented with a complete, guaranteed-to-work design, asked to build and test it, and then figure out why it works. Second, the logical rigor required to recursively decompose a project, combined with the need to have each design decision made on a strictly logical basis is a new skill for most students. These two differences make SD challenging for many students. However, experience shows these features of SD to be incredibly valuable preparation for real-world engineering design assignments.

Overall Organization and Milestones

ECE-156: Students should prepare for Senior Design by having at least three well-defined, appropriate projects in mind before they begin ECE-156. All three project ideas are submitted to the instructors for evaluation and selection between 1 December and the 2nd week of the spring semester.

Each must be submitted on a separate Project Submission Form but they must be emailed to us as a group. The deadline for submission is 9 AM on Tuesday of the 2nd week of classes, but early submission (even before ECE-156 begins) is strongly encouraged. The project submission forms should not be emailed directly to the instructors, but rather, to the course gmail account, 200x.spring.ece156@gmail.com, where x = 7, 8, etc.. The name of the file(s) you send must conform to the following file naming convention: ECE156-LastName_FirstName-PSF_Proj01.doc. Please make project #01 your personal first choice, #02 your second, and #03 your last choice. We will try to honor your preferences, but selection within the group will be based on our judgement of suitability. Resubmissions will be accepted only if none of the three are acceptable.

Acceptability of a concept as a SD project is subject to many common-sense constraints (e.g., the project must not be too difficult), but the implications of such constraints are often not immediately obvious to students. Before submitting any project for approval, students should carefully read the sections below on selecting appropriate projects. The goal is to get a project approved, and its scope well defined as early as possible in ECE-156, but not later than the first 2 - 3 weeks of the semester.

Students spend the second part of 156 performing a small proof-of-principle project and present their results and conclusions at a Proof-of-Principle Project Review (POPPR). The instructors devise appropriate mini-projects to give the students hands-on experience with what are likely to be the most difficult aspects of the proposed projects. For example, if a project involves detecting a small signal buried in noise, the POP project will likely involve measurements of the characteristics of the desired signal and the interfering noise. If the project involves RF techniques, but the student has not yet completed our Fields & Waves course, we will likely assign a POP mini-project in this area.

Students spend the final month of ECE-156 preparing their first version of a top-down design, thereby preparing for the end-of-semester Preliminary Design Review (PDR).

In summary, there are three deliverables in 156:

A set of three project submission forms

A few page report on their POP experiment; and,

The much longer set of documents for the final Preliminary Design Review.

ECE-157: This is the core of the SD experience. Over the summer, students are expected to dramatically refine their PDR. A second project review, the Critical Design Review (CDR) is held early in the fall semester. By mid-November, the projects undergo a final design review (FDR). Logic and depth of understanding are paramount, but the critical measure of success for the FDR is that if the FDR documents were given to a competent engineering firm, that firm should be able to successfully build and test the student's project without further discussion with the student. The level of detail needed to achieve this goal is much more than most students realize when they begin SD. The final deliverable in ECE-157 consists of detailed engineering drawings and the parts list. This allows students to begin the purchase of long lead-time items over winter break.

ECE-158: This is the last semester of Senior Design. Students assume the role of the engineering firm mentioned in the preceding paragraph, and build and test their project. If the design they submitted in ECE-157 is thorough and correct, conceptual difficulties in ECE-158 should be virtually non-existent. However, it is in this semester that the students face real-world difficulties such as ensuring parts are fabricated in a timely fashion, selecting parts and packaging that are available without a 3 month lead time, finding vendors who are willing to sell only a small quantity of a particular item, etc. The course concludes with a final report, presentation, and project showcase open to the public.

Selection of a suitable project

Typical sources of project ideas include hobbies (e.g., DJ'ing, skiing, etc.), perceived medical, humanitarian or entrepreneurial needs (e.g., a new sensor for a prosthesis), formal RFPs (Requests for Proposals) published by NIH, DoD, other government agencies and industrial organizations, improvements on previous senior projects, articles in technical journals or professional magazines (e.g., IEEE Spectrum) suggestions, discussions, or even formal proposals by course instructors, other faculty members, family and friends, internships, etc.

Descriptions of a limited number of projects suggested by SD instructors and other ECE / BME faculty members can be downloaded from this directory. Currently (12/03/06) the directory contains only a few files (in two different formats), but we anticipate receiving several more in the required "Project Submission Form" (PSF) format in the next week from Profs. Kay and Zderic.

Because the number of students who want to work on faculty-suggested projects is often greater than the number of projects available, selection of students for these projects will be completely at the discretion of the faculty member leading the project. Superior academic standing, specific technical skills and knowledge, strong self-motivation, and an interview with the concerned faculty member are usually the minimum requirements. Students working on faculty-suggested projects are expected to show even more independence than those working on student-suggested projects. The faculty member can be expected to provide access to specialized equipment that already exists in their labs, but the student must expect to purchase the supplies and services necessary to complete the project, exactly as they would do for a project they conceived themself.

The initial submission of suitable projects profoundly effects everything the student does in all three semesters of SD. Many students come to SD thinking that they must have a completely original project idea, that it should have real-world commercial potential, be exciting, be publishable, and that they should be brimming with enthusiasm to complete a particular project. While all these things are highly desirable, they are not essential. Unfortunately such projects often involve concepts and skills well above the current level of preparation of the student, and even worse, the students are completely unaware of this. An original approach, and/or an original design for a relatively mundane engineering problem is completely acceptable. In commercial or government engineering organizations, young engineers are often assigned to such projects, and such projects are acceptable in SD as well. The reason behind the above comments is that historically, vastly more students propose projects that are too difficult for them compared to the number that propose projects that are unacceptably easy.

The minimum requirement is simply the demonstration of significant creative, valid, and logical engineering output from the student, and that various common-sense constraints are met. For example, acceptable SD projects must be neither be too easy nor too difficult from a technical point of view. Projects should not cost too much, require too much time, or require resources that may not be available to the student when needed (e.g., needing a fully operational mini-Baja car to road-test the new electronics package you designed for it).

Projects should not force the students to learn an entire new academic discipline on their own. However, one of the goals of the course is to teach students HOW to learn on their own. This is in preparation for real-world engineering environments in which engineers are regularly asked to learn enough about another field (e.g., optics, hydraulics, medicine, mechanics, etc.) to be able to complete a particular project on their own. Thus, all SD students are expected to have some component of their project in which their technical knowledge will be pushed and they can demonstrate the ability to independently learn a reasonable amount of new material. It is difficult to give a quantitative expectation for this, but independently learning a half of a semester of new material over the three semester duration of SD is quite reasonable.

SD projects must be design projects, not research projects. There are several ways to distinguish between the two. If a project idea can be titled, "Design of a system to ... ", most likely it truly is a design project. On the other hand, if the project is better described by a title such as, "Experiments on...", "Study of ...", "Investigation into ...", "Optimization of ...", etc., it almost certainly is a research project and will not be acceptable. Titles beginning with the phrase, "Development of ...", can be either, so it's best to mentally re-state the title in one of the forms mentioned above. Design projects are built from components, all of which are well-characterized, and probably available commercially. In a design project, if your design is logical and thorough, your system will likely work with little tweaking.

On the other hand, if a project contains one or more elements which are not well characterized, and/or not available commercially, it is likely to be a research project. For example, development of a new low-loss material for optical fibers is almost certainly engineering research, whereas designing a fiber communication system around a recently introduced fiber from Corning is more likely to be engineering design. The design of a device to be used in research is quite acceptable as a Senior Design project since this is design, not research. However, the use of such a device for its intended purpose is research, and hence, is outside of the scope of SD. Students who design and build such a device certainly can continue on to do research with the device they built, but this can not count towards their SD grade. Students with research interests should register for a research or independent study course such as ECE-198.

Team Projects

Team projects are encouraged, but the division of labor must be such that each student gets to experience multiple, significant engineering roles, and the work is divided fairly. For example, in a team project, if it appears that one person is doing the majority of the writing and another is doing all the design, development and bench work, we will require a change in roles. This restriction pushes most team projects towards the model in which there are a number of stand-alone subprojects with one person being completely responsible for each subproject, and integration of the subprojects occurs after the subprojects are separately successful. Division of a project in this way requires that each participant will separately test their subproject before integration. This almost always requires simulation of the data and/or control signals that would normally be provided by other subprojects. Requiring complete independence in testing ensures that if someone else's subproject does not work, you are not penalized.

The division of a team project into stand-alone subprojects also requires formal agreements between the participants specifying in full detail exactly what each subproject promises to do, and what signals, power, fluid flows, etc. are expected to be provided to and from other subprojects. Such specifications must be set down in a number of "interface control documents" which are essentially contracts between the participants. While team projects can be exciting, fun, and lead to very impressive results, the inherent added complexity of team projects unfortunately makes many students shy away from them.

Projects Suggested / Sponsored by Commercial Entities, Faculty Members, etc.

We strongly encourage projects for which there is a true, real-world need. Often, such projects provide motivation, access to equipment, financial support, and individual mentorship that can not be matched by student generated projects. Each semester, we encourage our faculty members to suggest projects in which they have a strong interest. However, externally-suggested projects often encounter some common pitfalls. The student must candidly discuss these with the potential sponsor before going forward.

Real-world projects are always subject to real-world pressures. Often, "requirements creep" is a virtually irresistible temptation for the sponsor. Seemingly simple changes in system-level requirements can have unexpected but profound engineering implications which then result in delays in project completion (i.e., graduation). Even complete changes in direction are common in real-world engineering projects. Such changes would be devastating to a SD student. Frankly discuss these possibilities with the potential sponsor.

Sponsored projects often require equipment or materials which is not available in ECE teaching labs. Make a complete list of such items, and get a guarantee that they will all be available when you need them (i.e., are not in use on another project).

Real-world projects often operate on a much shorter time scale than the three semester SD sequence. Make sure that any potential sponsor isn't expecting any significant results before the end of the third semester.

Project sponsors outside of academia often are used to working with engineers who have years of experience. They often can not accurately judge an appropriate level of technical knowledge and complexity for an undergraduate student project. Be candid about what you think you can learn and accomplish in 3 semesters. The SD instructors will evaluate externally suggested / sponsored projects just like any other SD project proposal, but it is the student's responsibility, not ours, to negotiate an appropriate project.

Project mentors who are not SD instructors often forget that SD projects must be design projects, not research projects. Be sure this distinction is adhered to before submitting a project idea for review.

To help the students focus on the above constraints, the Project Submission Form was designed to help clarify such issues. We do not expect students to be able to judge these issues completely on their own, but we do expect that the guidlines discussed herein will be considered carefully before a project is submitted, and the Project Submission Form is completely filled out with care and thought. The approval of a project is based primarily on the issues mentioned above, and whether the proposed project demonstrates the student's capability to independently practice engineering.

Grading

The grade that a student earns in Senior Design depends on their depth of understanding of all the design issues, alternative approaches that were considered and selected, the manner in which the work is presented, the logic and thoroughness of their testing procedures, the overall difficulty of the project, plus grading components which reflect steady progress through all three semesters, professionalism and technical credibility, etc. Each semester builds critically on the results of the previous semester. Thus, if an ECE-156 student does not execute a successful POP project and presents a reasonable and appropriately detailed PDR, they will not be allowed to progress to ECE-157. Similarly, if a 157 student does not present a final design and parts list by the end of the fall semester, they simply can not be allowed to progress into ECE-158. At the end of the course, achievement of a fully operational project is an important measure of success, but is not absolutely essential to receiving a good grade. For example, if a student has a project that consists of 40 modules, but they can not get it to work because of the failure of one module, they can still receive an excellent grade, provided they have thoroughly tested and documented that the remaining modules are functioning as per specifications.

More discussion of the grading policy (including approximate grading matrices) for each of the three courses are given in the three "Courses/15x/grading" pages of this website. The weights for the individual deliverables shown in the grading matrices are only approximate and can vary considerably from year to year. For example, if a class has generally made poor progress early in a semester, we will likely reduce the weight given to deliverables due early in that semester to give students a chance to catch up later in the semester. Another example is that the number of conventional homework assignments is small and varies greatly from year to year, so the contribution to the overall grade from HW assignments also varies, but is almost always less than 20%. This fraction typically decreases as the student moves through the three semesters.

Originality, citations, academic dishonesty

Every successful SD project must contain an adequate intellectual contribution by the student. An adequate amount and type of such material is set by mutual agreement with the instructors during the determination of the "scope" of the project. In addition, it is fully expected that every project will build on material that the student did not come up with by themselves. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, not making use of previous work is evidence of poor knowledge of the field, and, in itself could lower your grade. However, all material that is not the original idea or creation of the student must be properly referenced and cited. Failure to do so may bring academic dishonesty charges against the student in accordance with the Code of Academic Integrity. The students are strongly encouraged to consult with the course instructors in case they have any questions regarding the citation of any material.

Prerequisites and Course Substitutions

ECE 156: Second semester junior year (i.e., ~ 75 cr. hrs.) in one of the ECE curricula
ECE 157: Successful completion of ECE 156
ECE 158: Successful completion of ECE 157

Questions about possible course substitution, waiving prerequsites, study abroad, etc. periodically arise. Any proposed substitute course or course sequence must provide the student with essentially the same design experience as our SD sequence. While we always consider such proposals, it is our experience that it is impossible to find truly equivalent courses. If you intend to make such a proposal, you must base your proposal on a detailed course description (e.g., from their course website, not a 3 sentence listing in their course catalog), and present your academic advisor and the SD instructors with a table listing all of the points of similarity and difference between their course(s) and ours.

Funding Senior Design Projects

Students in Senior Design normally pay for and obtain all components, equipment and services for their own projects. This includes software, development kits, board fabrication, sensors, etc. In such cases, the student obviously owns everything and is fully entitled to take their project with them when they graduate.

However, the case of corporate or faculty initiated projects is somewhat different. The initiator of these projects almost always wants a working device developed, and which will remain in their lab after the student graduates. In such cases, the initiator/sponsor of such projects often purchases much or all of the equipment and supplies for the project. This is another reason why such projects are highly desirable and competitive among students. It is another reason why you should submit high quality PSFs as early as possible.

To risk belaboring the obvious, all aspects of project finances should be explicitly discussed with the project initiator (if not yourself) and your faculty mentor before you commit to any project (e.g., by submitting a PSF for that project).

Finally, there are rare cases when the student has an outstanding, innovative idea, perhaps with commercial or scientific potential, but there is no current faculty or external sponsorship for the project, and cost is the primary barrier to proceeding. Students should consult with the course instructor to find out if their project qualifies for such support, and whether funds might be available.

Awards

There are two prizes awarded for outstanding senior projects:

Senior Design Award - Electrical Engineering (D. C. Rohlfs Award)
Senior Design Award - Computer Engineering

These awards carry significant prestige, and the winning students are recognized at the SEAS Commencement ceremonies. In addition the Rohlfs award includes a modest monetary prize.

Safety

Safety is primarily the responsibility of each and every experimenter. This is particularly true when using electricity. As part of the prerequisite lab courses, a discussion of safety procedures was provided. What follows is a brief abstract of that material.

Do not work alone.
Learn First Aid.
Turn off power except when absolutely necessary before working on circuits.
Be sure the test equipment is working properly.
Do not stand on wet floors while working on electronic/electric circuits.
Remove jewelry when working on circuits.
Keep one hand in your pocket.
Know what to expect when energizing circuits.
Turn off power when replacing fuses.
Replace defective cords.
Operate equipment within its ratings.
Treat all circuits as if high voltage were present.

The circuits that are examined in this lab are by and large low voltage, consequently it is easy to become careless and ignore proper safety rules. Development of appropriate safety procedures is an important part of learning laboratory procedures. Remember respect electricity and its potential to inflict serious injury upon the individual.

Finally, appropriate precautions should be taken when using electronic equipment to avoid damage to the equipment and/or circuits under test. A major problem that inexperienced students make is errors in circuit wiring. Therefore, when first energizing a circuit, observe the power supply ammeter which, if it "pegs", indicates a short circuit. Obviously, this must be corrected prior to making any measurements.

Recent Senior Design Projects

May 2004

Error Detection and Correction for Digital Audio

Paul M. Gunia (Electrical Engineer)

Used Error encoding and decoding techniques to detect and correct bit errors in a transmitted serial bit stream.

Voice Encryption System

Ian A. D'Amelia (Electrical Engineer)

A real time voice band encryption telephone system using AES.

Badge Access Security System

Nuradeen N. Aboki (Computer Engineer)

Room Access control system based on magnetic card readers.

Autonomous Robotic Insect

Ryan J. Douglass (Computer Engineer)

A robot that mimics the movement of insects.

Multi-Track Recorder

John P. Arpino (Computer Engineer) and Rian W. Chung (Computer Engineer)

An inexpensive full-featured multi-track recording device thsat uses USB To connect to a PC.

Music Robot

Wei-shu Tsai (Electrical Engineer)

A remote Controlled Robot car that plays music with different color lights.

An Algorithm for an Autonomous Surveying Robot

John H. Curry (Electrical Engineer)

An algorithm for an Autonomous Surveying Robot (ASR) which when placed in an arbitrary room, using its own onboard sensors and own locomotive abilities, can traverse the room and compile a map of the room's dimensions and obstacles contained therein.

Control Measure Store & Display Software and Hardware Interface

Gabriel P. Getzie (Electrical Engineer)

Updates and improves NASA’s current truck mounted active radar system by providing new functionality to support the addition of a passive radiometer system.

The Loyal Pet

Andre T. Nguyen (Electrical Engineer)

A robotic vehicle that follows an individual wherever he/she goes.

Menu-Client System

Tien T. Nguyen (Computer Engineer)

The menu-client system improves upon graphical user interface (GUI) based embedded systems through the creation of a general-purpose platform for small display applications.

The Cableless Cable TV System

Joseph O. Schell (Computer Engineer)

Cable TV System that transmits a single NTSC channel from a user's cable box to television wirelessly.

Electronic Stethoscope

Christopher D. Stephens (Biomedical Engineer)

An electronic stethoscope that can record a patient's heart and breathing sounds.

Gesture Driven Remote Control

Widya A. Supriadi (Electrical Engineer)

A remote control that is gesture driven.

Guitar Practice Pedal

Jason F. Woytowich (Computer Engineer)

A guitar practice pedal that allows the user to quickly and easily record and play back music played on an electric guitar.

Dog Training Collar

Miriam H. Zimet (Electrical Engineer)

A device that serves as a dog training collar for large breed dogs.

May 2005

Node Hardware and Computer Interface For Distributed Sensor Network Based Intrusion Detection System

Manoj Ramia (Computer Engineer)

Designed and developed a nodal based hardware and software framework for a distributed sensor network based intrusion detection system that uses a wireless infrared (IR) cooperative sensor array.

Natural Sunlight Simulation Alarm

Nirav B. Sheth

An alarm clock system that simulates waking up at dawn by combining natural sounds and lights of the eco-system to awaken a user.

Electronic Peak Flow Meter

Jitendra Virani

The Electronic Peak Flow Meters (EPFM) monitors the peak respiratory flow of patients with obstructive respiratory diseases or conditions such as asthma.

Noise Sensitive Volume Control Device for a Telephone

Vanessa Pitch

A device for telephones that controls the volume of the incoming and outgoing voice signals proportionally to the amount of noise in the surrounding environment.

Dedicated System to Record and Parameterize the Acoustic Signature of Cough Signals

Eileen Park

A device that seeks to aid health care professionals in their diagnoses of patients through the analysis of an acoustical cough signal in an objective manner.

Digitally-Controlled Three Channel Audio Mixer

Patrick Opet

a device that provides an effective solution to those seeking to crossfade between three separate analogue audio inputs simultaneously, while being able to adjust each individual channel’s various equalization properties.

Enabling Technology for a No Contact Phosphor Thermometer

Robert Millheiser

A means for measuring temperatures in hazardous environments where an extreme environment or dangerous moving equipment can make temperature readings difficult to obtain.

An RF Driven Automatic Pet Door with Usage Monitoring Capabilities

Aaron Kandel

An application of radio frequency circuitry that can identify different household animals and allow them access to the home while keeping other animals out.

Prototype of Ultrasonic Doppler Alerting Device

Ashley Banh

Alerts a blind user to nearby objects using audio feedback. Target speed is nonlinearly mapped to alert audio frequency, direction (towards/away) is mapped to short or long audio pulses, and return signal strength is mapped to audio intensity. strength.

Accelerometer Based Computer Pointing Device

Anand Iyer

An alternative pointing device that provides those with certain disabilities the ability to control a computer much like an individual without a disability might.

May 2006 (photos here)

Recording Electrocardiograph

Nabila Hai (Biomedical Engineer)

FPGA based recording ECG machine.

Training System for Breast Self-examination

Fatemeh Razjouyan (Biomedical Engineer)

System which trains the user to follow national recommendations for spatial pattern and pressures during breast self-examination. Uses Labview, a novel mechanical sensor array, and an intuitive display of the areas properly examined.

Solar Cell Tracking Platform

Deepthi Pulugurtha (Electrical Engineer)

System to track the azimuth and elevation movements of a light source such as the sun. Used separate PID controllers for azimuth and elevation, stepper motors, a home-made quadrant detector and robust mechanical assembly.

Prototype Time-domain Reflectometry System

Arthur Nwokoye (Electrical Engineer)

Prototype of a low frequency TDR system.

Automated Blood Pressure Measurement System

Yash Ghandi and Rohit Duggal (Biomedical Engineers)

Computer controlled blood pressure measurement system (automatic inflation, deflation, emergency modes, etc.).

Musical Beat Extraction and Crib Rocking System

Huda Asfour (Electrical Engineer)

Three band system to extract the beat from music and rock a crib in time with the beat. Allows for abrupt changes in tempo, missed beats, mechanical resonance of the crib rocker, safety constraints, etc.

Robotic Garbage Collecting System

Syed Hasbullah Syed Adnan (Electrical Engineer)

System senses when a small trash bin is full, sends robot to collect trash; robot returns and transfers trash to large bin.

Remotely aimed light

Paul Collins (Electrical Engineer)

Prototype of a remote controlled system (RF) to aim a small light.

Remotely aimed projector

Mark Adam (Electrical Engineer)

Prototype of a remote controlled system (IR) to aim a ceiling mounted video projector.

Remote Indicating System for Mailboxes

Mohammed Kafood (Electrical Engineer)

Mailbox senses mail by optical obscuration and weight. Low duty cycle, low power consumption RF system transmits full/empty status to receiver in home.

Room Access Control System

Amr Al Thagafi (Electrical Engineer)

RF based access control system for multiple users and multiple rooms.

Portable AES Encryption Device

Brian Chan (Electrical Engineer)

Small, self contained device to send AES encrypted messages over unsecured POTS telephone lines.

Color Meter

Intal Aboullah (Electrical Engineer)

Measures tri-band (RGB) diffuse reflectivity.

Recorder for Emergency Broadcast System Alerts

Christina Bensor (Electrical Engineer)

Automatically records EBS alerts when owner (e.g., farmer) may not be at radio.

Shopper's Helper

Eric Leitao (Electrical Engineer)

Bar code scanner (home made), control system and small database to be mounted on shopping carts.

Digital Otoscope System

Brian Martel (Biomedical Engineer)

Optics, lighting, COTS camera, mechanicals, and custom image classification system for ear pathology.

Digital pH Meter

Rick Jay Brown (Biomedical Engineer)

Microcontroller based pH meter.

Magnetic Compass Add-on for PDAs

Jonathan Hus (Electrical Engineer)

Self-contained plug-in magnetic compass accessory for PDA.

Projects - Graduating Seniors

May 2007 (photos not yet available)

Respiratory Analysis System

Atiq Chowdhury (Biomedical Engineer)

Time resolved flow measurement system for pulmonary function measurements.

Prototype of 6 channel guitar effects processor

Wayne Jackson (Biomedical Engineer)

Compression, equalization and distortion are added to each string separately to prevent intermodulation distortion.

Prototype of a Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) reader

Rohini Battu (Biomedical Engineer)

MICR reader designed for checks.

Electronic Syringe Injector / Compressor

Paul Berardesca (Electrical Engineer)

Mechanical and electrical system to hold and operate insulin syringes.

Optical Guidance Cane

Rodney Bollie (Electrical Engineer)

Assistive device for the visually impared. Responds only to objects within strict range limits.

Prototype of Word Recognition System for Hospital Patients

Amal Daher (Electrical Engineer)

All hardware and software for a limited vocabulary, single user voice recognition system.

Prototype of a Linear Sensor Array Based System to Measure Surface Bending

John Farrell (Biomedical Engineer)

Used as a glove to measure and display the shape of the curved hand and fingers in real time.

Control and Data Acquisition System for L-band Dielectric Measurements

Jared Janiczek (Electrical Engineer)

Controls temperature to millidegree precision, and controls a network analyzer to perform precision dielectric measurements on seawater.

Design of a Mechanomyogram System to Monitor Muscle Fatigue

Vishal Khatri (Biomedical Engineer)

Uses a pair of three axis accelerometers to cancel gross movements.

Laser Microphone

Sam Lee (Computer Engineer)

Revisits the classic laser microphone for spy applications.

System for Gait Classification By Measuring Foot Contact Times

Peter Luong (Biomedical Engineer)

Sensor is a sock with imbedded pressure sensors to measure timing and strike point sequence data.

RFID-based Automated Parking Meter System

Hesham Mahrous (Electrical Engineer)

FPGA / RFID parking meters .

System To Translate "Hissed" Morse Code to Text

Joyce Ng (Biomedical Engineer)

Assistive device with faster throughput than current switch or pressure activated word look-up systems.

Container Integrity and Security Monitoring System

Matt Pepe (Computer Engineer)

Multi-modality distributed wireless sensor network for placement inside of shipping containers.

Mechanical Properties Testing System

Rochelle Reardon (Biomedical Engineer)

Measures the stress-strain characteristics of ultrasound phantoms.

System to Quantify Bruxism Events

Neal Viradia (Biomedical Engineer)

Force sensors placed in mouth-guard to measure number, duration and intensity of teeth clenching events.

Reverse Engineering a COTS Device To Add Control by Physiological Variables

Bayu Nugroho (Electrical Engineer)

As an example, retrofitted a CD changer to be controlled by pulse rate.

Coupled, Multi-Zone Lighting Control System

Anthony Dizon (Electrical Engineer)

Constructed and simulated a coupled 4 zone lighting control system to investigate optimization and stability issues.