Senior Design Capstone Project

This is as good a place to post this as any.  As some of you may know, as of May 2013 I completed my BS in EE at UTA.  At the end of such a degree, there is inevitably a project assigned in the last semester, designed to allow students the chance to demonstrate what they have learned.

The project I was assigned was:

Design a wireless perimeter security system capable of differentiating the difference between a small animal and a human, utilizing solar energy as a power source.

This was a three person project, and I was very fortunate to be teamed up with two other outstanding students, Simon Donahue & Brandon Kamphaus.  Brandon wound up handling the interfacing b/n the computer and base station, as we referred to it, as well as mountains of code.  Simon was in charge of the solar power harvesting, and I handled the circuit layout, sensors, and wireless communication.

I'm not going to go too much more in depth, but I will post a link to our final paper here, our presentation, and pictures of the circuits I built for this.  I think that will do more just than I could in this brief blog post.

The paper (This is the interim report)
The presentation (Keynote)
The presentation (PPT)
Tested Results (Video)

And some pictures of the system:
Base station circuit top:

Base station circuit bottom:

 One of the remote modules, along with the sensor:

4x4x4 LED Display

This may have been done to death at this point, but I decided that I wanted to build my own LED cube.  At the point that I started this process, I really had no idea what I was getting into, as I had almost now experience in programming in C (Outside of an introductory course I had taken almost 18 months before starting this project), I had done very little soldering, and have never done anything with a 16-bit µC.  So I guess I could say that this was a very daunting project when I started.

The first step was to build the cube itself.  After some research, I found someone who had come up with a pretty good idea how to go about building an evenly spaced cube.  Based on this, I bought a board from Lowe's, and drilled some holes in it as such:

Just as an aside, this board has managed to continue on as a bench top for several projects since this project, and may be in the background of several pictures you see in the future. 

More pictures of the project developing:

You can get a good idea of how I connected each of the LED's looking at the above picture.  The next three pictures are the LED cube built and breadboarded.

 After using the breadboard to test out each LED to ensure they worked, I then put it on a perfboard, and tested out my design using a number of switches to go between LEDs.

 Below is the underbelly of the beast!

I have to say, at this point, I wouldn't mind doing a rebuild of this, because I think I could do a significantly better job then before!  But I suppose I could say that for every first time project I have or will have ever tackled.

I posted a video next demonstrating each light being tested:

And as usual, the links to my code & schematic:
Project file
Schematic (You will need Multisim to open this)
A brief, informal write up

7 - 10 Digit Sequence Display

This project was a project that assigned to me as the final project for my introductory course in digital circuits.  It required the use of a 8-bit microcontroller programmed in assembly to display a 7 or 10 digit sequence of numbers, based on if the microcontroller has a high or low input.  I usually post the code for these things, but that is on the Windows side of my computer, I won't be turning on Parallels just to grab this code.

The video of the project working:

The circuit design:


The PDF:
Project Write Up
Circuit Schematic

As always, if you have any questions, fire away!

Regards,
George Burrows

20 LED Multiplexer

The second project in the tips & tricks document is to control 6 LED's with only 3 GPIO pins.  I decided to take it a little further, and control 20 LED's with only 5 GPIO pins, and to use a sixth GPIO pin to use as an interrupt.
Video:

Code:
Second_Delay
Main Code

Math, design, etc...:

Dual Frequency RC Oscillator

This is what I consider my first real post.  This particular circuit allowed me to explore RC oscillators as external timers for micro-controllers.  If you want to see where I got the idea from, just go to the microchip homepage, and search their website for "Tips 'n Tricks'.  This was tip #1, and it had the same title that I titled this post.  I think I did a half-way decent job discussing this, between the video, code, and dry-erase board picture.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Video:

Code:

MATLAB Code

MPLAB ASM Code (Main)

Math and other boring stuff:

Workspace upgrade

So I found a 4-channel, 100 MHz oscilloscope for 150 dollars that is in working order.  I think I may need to get it calibrated, but otherwise, I can't find anything wrong with it.  I also found a variable power supply supply for 50 dollars that only needed a little soldering to fix up!  So now I have rearranged my desk, and turned it into a permanent work station.

Introduction

Hey guys,

The whole purpose of this blog is to allow me to show some of the projects that I have worked on (or am currently working on). 

At this point, the blog is likely going to focus on some of the embedded projects I have worked on / completed.  I started working with embedded systems in late November / early December of 2011, and have come a long way since then.  The only microcontrollers that I have used are those made by Microchip, but at some point I am planning on branching out.

I hope you enjoy what I have done here, and if you have any questions, I would love to help!

Regards,
George Burrows