Description: Our project is intended to help a child learn his/her multiplication table. The child's problem ("three five equals", "nine one equals", etc) will be received by a microphone and run through an A/D converter. We will write and upload speech recognition software to a DSP chip which will decipher and solve the given problem. The solution will then be displayed on dual seven segment displays. The numbers one through nine will be valid inputs for the multiplication table.

Team members: Jeff Cullinane, William Li

Description: This project involves the design of DC-DC buck converter using a newly developed GaN MESFET (from Prof. Kim/Chapman's groups) as the switching element. The project will involve the design of the converter circuit, the feedback loop, and (if time allows) we may also test our circuit with a special capacitive/inductive filter also developed in Prof. Kim's group by Huichan "Chandler" Seo. Traditional Si MOSFETs have a limited switching frequency in high power applications. This means that inductors and capacitors in the circuit will need to be larger to compensate and thus take up more circuit area. We believe that the GaN MESFET will provide much higher switching frequency and allow us to greatly decrease the circuit area of a typical DC-DC converter.

Team members: Alexander Kaplan, Craig Keasler

Description: Our project is to design or improve upon an existing design of an electromechanical device to produce 120 V ac 60 Hz at power levels up to 100 W for emergency home use. This device is driven by water flow from a household faucet. The intent is short-term backup power when electricity is out for lighting usage.

Team members: Hector R Herrera, Renata A Revelo

Description: We propose to build a solar battery charger that will charge a variety of batteries: NiMH, NiCd, Li-ion, lead acid. Although there are solar battery chargers on the market, most are only for one application: cell phone, NiMH batteries, etc. Our charger will have the user input the battery type, capacity, and voltage. It will display the charge status and incorporate various safety systems, including temperature monitoring and battery polarity checking.

Team members: Phil Gonski, Christine Placek

Description: This design will consist of a Windows-based application, running on a PC, which can control a DC motor drive via Bluetooth wireless. The controller will allow the user to start, stop and adjust the speed of the motor from 0% to 100%. This application could be useful in wireless robotics or a process operation setting.

Team members: Abhay Jain, Reid Vaccari

Description: Our project will be to create a golf driving range monitoring device. This device will measure force, velocity, and position of contact on the driver club. We will be using a force or acceleration sensor to display the force and velocity of the golf swing on a LCD display. Additionally, we'll have pressure sensors to show how centered (or off-centered) the point of contact the ball is with the face of the club and will display this with an LED array. We believe that this is a very marketable product geared toward golf enthusiasts who don't have time to make it out to the golf course or for poor weather conditions. This product will be able to be used indoors and will also be able to be used in the real golf course for those who simply want to see the status of their golf swings. It will be another economical resource to help golfers with their golf swings in their own personal time.

Team members: Xi Luo, Xuan (Tony) Tang

Description: Our project is to build a dc-dc converter used in the Maharshtra Project, India. It serves to convert the 40 - 70 VDC produced by wind power generator to 15 VDC, 10 A regulated. The converter then charges 12V lead-acid batteries. There would be cut-off sensors when the battery is fully charged.

Team members: Mark Wong, Joel Lau, Liu Qian

Description: This project will use a buck converter, in combination with an encoder or tachometer, and feedback control, to produce a motor system that runs at an adjustable speed. This control may be used for a small electric vehicle application. This is a 12 V application that draws currents from 0 to 16 A. The controller should be at least 90% efficient for motor loads in the range of 10 to 50 W. It should be able to deliver 50 W continuously, 100 W for at least one minute, and should deliver up to 16 A at 10 V or more for a least 5 seconds without damage. If it is overloaded for a longer period, it should shut off automatically and require a reset by the user. Total parts should cost $12 or less (includes all electronics and boards, but not the motor itself).

Team members: Joe Puzey, Leo Linares

Description: We propose to harvest human power by designing and building a spring mounted backpack that is mechanically bound to a DC motor in some sort of rack and pinion setup. The oscillatory nature of human locomotion should drive the motor producing an AC current. We will implement a special circuit to optimize DC power output which will be efficient, not just a four diode rectifier. The outputed power will be used to charge a general purpose battery, or a electronic device's battery unit. We have discussed this with Professor Patrick Chapman and he directed us to a biology paper on the subject. The biologist designed a similiar backpack setup but did not do much in the way of utilizing the power output which we plan on doing. We will test different weight backpacks for different scenarios. 10 pounds for a student, 30 pounds for a hiker, and 40-70 pound for military persons.

Team members: David Dralle, Jeewan S Ghuman

Description: This project proposal describes the basic requirements for a device that will be integrated into the Attested Metering Project currently pursued by University of Illinois departments of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. The main goal of the project is to improve the reliability and stability of the electric power grid and securely empowering consumers in the energy market. One main structure of this project is to design an advanced metering system that can at least be read remotely. However, in the future, the advanced meters will include many other capabilities beyond this basic requirement. As an example, advance meters could have the capability of not only sending useful information about the power usage of a certain appliance, but also receive control demands to able or disable the power flowing to the appliance.

Team members: Ehsan Safavinejad , Steven Choi

Description: We are interested in making an inexpensive and simple power monitor that could be placed either on individual circuits. Each power monitor would measure RMS current and voltage and determine the real power and power-factor at some reasonable sampling rate, such as once or twice per second. Each monitor would have either local memory (some sort of flash card) and wireless communication back to a central host(Computer terminal). We will be providing a LCD screen to obtain on the fly information about power consumption at the load. Our final implementation would aid one to interpret power consumption from various sections of a building/different appliances in a room and take appropriate steps to conserve power/use it more efficiently. We could also analyze the collected data to suggest possible solutions to solve power related issues. We believe that our design could replace existing antiquated power monitors. It could potentially be used in the Solar Decathlon competition for finalizing preliminary design strategies by providing accurate power consumption data over a long period of time.

Team members: Srivatsan Jayaraman, Amitvikram Das, Sairaj Dhople

Description: This system can be widely installed on ambulances. The system recognizes the patient’s identity by RFID, which will be sent to the computer that the reader is connected to and the computer will match the identity of the patient with his unique identification number. Then the number will be sent back to the patient medical record database of the hospital that the ambulance is going to, in order to retrieve the patient’s medical record. Very often the patient will be unconscious due to various medical conditions, so this system significantly reduces the time and difficulty in recognizing the patient’s identity, so that on the way to the hospital, the hospital will be able to prepare the appropriate medical treatments based on the patient’s medical record before the patient arrives, provided that in the patient medical record there is also the picture of the patient.

Team members: Jerry Lau, Allan Siu, Ching Kit Wu

Description: Our goal is to make a host-end adapter for the PC that will simultaneously and wirelessly connect with several device-end adapters. The device-end adapters should be able to transmit data at a minimum of USB1.0 speeds. The host-end adapter should seamlessly connect with the user's PC as well as the USB devices such that the adapter will look like a traditional wired USB hub.

Team members: Steven Li, Mathews Antony, Charles Hsieh

Description: The project goal is to implement a more complete cruise control system for vehicles. Rather than having just a set speed system, our project will use a GPS system to be able to determine the speed limit for the road the vehicle is currently on. This will need to be implemented using a look-up table using the current coordinates of the vehicle. In addition, our system will also use radar sensors mounted in the front of the vehicle to slow down the vehicle in case it senses vehicles up ahead.

Team members: Roger Serwy, Sundeep Kartan, Lawrence Han

Description: This project idea is for a heads up display for cycling. In the sport of competitive cycling, all the data a cyclist is interested in (Heart Rate, Speed, Cadence, etc) is displayed on the handlebars. This requires them to both take their eyes off the road while racing, and put their head down, resulting in a less aerodynamic position. The device should be wireless, so it would basically involve the sensors mounted on the bike, a Linx wireless communications chips, a PIC microcontroller, and an LCD. Another important component of the project would be the packaging of the system. Our current plan is to mount the LCD off to the side on a set of sunglasses to be worn by a rider. If the scope of the project needs to be broadened, we are also considering building our own cadence and speed sensors.

Team members: Joan Lee, Derek Lin, Craig Erbach

Description: Our team will design, build and implement a wireless elevator remote control intended to be used by people in wheelchairs. This idea was motivated by an incident in Altgeld Hall where a person in a wheelchair was not able to push the elevator call button. The design will consist of two parts namely:

• A control box that will act as a transmitter.
• A relay box that will act as a receiver.

The control box will be small enough such that it can be mounted on a wheelchair while the relay box will be wired parallel to the elevator control system. Once completed, a person can simply control the elevator from a distance by using the portable control box.

New Mobility magazine ranks the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign first among "disability-friendly colleges" in America. We intend to keep it that way.

Team members: Patrick Goh, Hamed Asghari

Description: We are designing a wireless elevator control system for the disabled people who have difficulties reaching the elevator buttons. The control box attached to the wheelchair would have a LCD screen showing the available floors which can be selected using either buttons or a joystick. This information would be sent using a transmitter and this in turn would be received by an antenna or a receiver which controls the relay switch, connected in parallel to the elevator's circuitry.

Team members: Khine Han, Young Ki Kim, Hita Padia

Description: We want to start a new gaming craze by developing a non-contact boxing-like sport. Each person will wear gloves fitted with IR transmitters, controlled by accelerometers which measure how hard a punch is thrown. Each player is fitted with target points (i.e. IR sensors) which detect when a punch is “landed”. When a punch is landed, the target point will send a hit signal to a local microcontroller. The microcontroller handles all of the inputs from the multiple target points and relays this information back to a main controller. The main controller will receive information from both players and compute scores accordingly.

Team members: David Jun, Yitao Liu, Robert Chen

Description: Our idea is to develop an interface between the serial port of a PC to control RF transmitters that would send signals/control an RC car. This would involve programming either an FPGA or a PIC to decode the signals sent from the PC and sending the required signals to either Linx RF transmitters or interface to the tranmitters in the remote that came with the car in order to control the car wirelessly. After successfully implementing this, we would like to add a wireless camera (probably an off the shelf 802.11b D-Link webcam or something similar) to the car to be able to see where the car is going. This way, we could log into the host computer remotely from another computer and see where the car is going on the PC screen.

Team members: Juan M. Navarro, Deniz Kilic

Description: When a person speaks, the brain sends signals to the vocal aperture to prepare for the production of speech. Ambient's Audeo device will sample these signals and use them to control other devices, such as a wheelchair, without physical movement. Currently, the Audeo has to be wired to a PC for data processing. The PC has to be carried along with the wheelchair and this greatly restricts the mobility. We would like to develop a Bluetooth communication interface between the Audeo and the PC, so that the Audeo can have better mobility. Moreover, the current design of the Audeo is very large in size. Our design of the communication interface has to be small enough so that the Audeo can be made into a button-shaped sensor, in the size of a penny. One challenge for this project is to minimize the size of the design. Because the device will be attached to skin and half of the wireless signal will potentially be blocked off, we have to deal with associated transmission problems.

Team members: Leo Chan, Nixon Fok, Jeffery Wang

Description: Abnormal cardiac rhythm can be an indicator of a serious health risk such as heart disease. Many people suffering from arrhythmia do not know they are living with it. Our project is a low-cost monitor for home use that detects missing EKG pulses. The device will connect to a home PC to provide the user with statistics such as the number of dropped beats per unit time and average heart rate during the measurement interval, which should be a period of a few minutes. This will be useful to people who have a personal or family history of heart problems and to those experiencing noticeable heart irregularities. A high incidence of missing beats will indicate that the person needs to seek medical attention. Data stored on the PC can then be reviewed by a doctor.

Team members: Brooks Lindsey, Youn Seok Heo

Description: The basic idea is to visually provide the user with a note that needs to be played via the computer screen. The user would then play this note on a real guitar, either acoustic or electric. This sound will then be input to a DSP where the note played is determined. If the note played matches the requested note then a "point" is rewarded to the user. An accuracy will be reported to the user based on these points. Based on our success we may include chord recognition or a more involved graphical interface. We will also build a microphone and amplifier to fulfill the circuit design requirement.

Team members: Bryan Yocom, Karan Singh

Description: We want to design a system that will overcome the problems of the mechanical key and lock for houses and apartments. Some of these shortcomings include: risk of being locked out if the key is lost, struggling to open the door when carrying a bulky load (i.e. groceries), and most importantly, the lack of a robust security system. Voice recognition especially improves security, since it is extremely easy for someone’s keys to be stolen, but emulating an individual’s voice is much more challenging. Our project idea is a door operator system where the user speaks a command (such as “lock”, “unlock”, “open”) into a wireless transmitter. The command is then transmitted to a receiver unit on the inside of the door. Once the command is obtained by the receiver, the microcontroller (PIC) will serve as the main control system for processing the command and carrying out the desired action. Specifically, the microcontroller will interface with the following components: - DSP to perform the speech processing/recognition - Electric motor for opening the door - Electro-mechanical system for door lock/unlock

Team members: Aditi Mathur, Xuan Li, Christopher Siebens

Description: The goal of our project is to harness the excess heat energy produced by a CPU and to turn it into electrical energy. This will be accomplished by using thermal generators, which in turn will be used to charge a battery source. The power stored in this source will then be used to provide backup energy to the system in case of a power failure, basically acting like a UPS. The circuitry involved will be to store the power in the battery in addition to the power circuitry needed to detect when the power from the wall socket is broken and when the backup power needs to be used.

Team members: Eric Lee, Riswanto Riswanto, Leon Truong

Description: Our project would be to design a module that could be attached to any type of writing utensil such as chalk, dry erase board marker, pen, pencil, etc, which would monitor movement to record what is being written without inhibiting the user. The data would be sent by Bluetooth to a computer which could then process the data into a practical format. It would need to be possible to calibrate the device so that multiple users could use different types of writing devices. The module would also need to have some type of trigger to avoid recording random hand movements. Additional functionality could also be added such as the ability to control a powerpoint presentation. This application would be great for teachers, traveling professors, etc. to easily digitize notes and diagrams directly from the board or paper to their own personal computer where the necessary expensive equipment to record lectures is not available or impractical.

Team members: Andrew Lee, William Kras, Dustin Hatton

Description: The purpose for our project is to facilitate those people who already have heated driveways or are thinking of getting one, by activating the heated driveway automatically. Therefore, if there is snow fall or ice rain occuring while the consumers are unable to switch on the heated driveway system manually, the driveway will activate and prevent accumulation or ice formation. In addition, when temperatures are above 36 degrees, the entire system will shut down except for one temperature sensor to keep the use of electricty at a minimum. The system will consist of three sensors; two are temperature sensors, of which one will detect the air temperature while the other detects the ground temperature. The reasoning behind this is to prevent black ice during the condition when the ground temperature is still below freezing, but the air temperature is above freezing. This will also avoid shutting down the system when the air temperature is still below the freezing point and snow, water, or ice is present since the ground sensor will detect the driveway temperature as above freezing. The third sensor will consist of a light emitting diode and a photodiode to detect the presence of snow, ice or water. The sensors will be connected wirelessly(such as RF) to the microcontroller(PIC). Therefore, the system can be used on a project of greater scale than a driveway, eg parking lots.

Team members: Arjun Sen, Gary Milam Jr., Muaaz Elhag

Description: A catalytic converter is a device in a car that is used to treat exhaust before it is released into the air. However, one problem with the converter is that it needs to be heated to be effective. For the first 90 seconds after the driver starts the car, the converter is useless because it is too cold to operate efficiently. We propose to solve this problem by monitoring the driver and the driver’s proximity to the car. If the driver is detected to be within a set distance from the car, a heating system around the converter will turn on and begin slight heating. When the door is opened, the heat will be more vigorous. When the car is started, the heat will be most vigorous and will augment the engine in heating the converter. When it is detected that the temperature around the converter has reached the appropriate temperature, the heating system will turn off.

Team members: Eric Yen, Piyush Goel

Description: Our idea is to create a device for use in one’s vehicle that will detect the RF signal emitted by emergency vehicles on the road similar to how traffic light control works. After detecting the emergency signal, the device will alert the driver that an emergency vehicle is approaching and indicate the direction of origin of the signal. This warning system could be composed of an audible warning along with a visual indicator (e.g. LED display). If feasible, we would also like to devise a method by which the device mutes the car radio in the presence of an emergency signal.

Team members: Christian Homero Silva, Nicholas Giannopoulos

Description: Our goal is to be able to send text messages to a device such as a pre-paid cellphone which will communicate with a controller which in turn will be able to start the car, roll up and down the windows and lock/unlock the doors.

Team members: Mark Lempicki, Joshua Herzig

Description: Near-field communication (NFC) is a short-range wireless technology. It can be compared to the widely available blue-tooth technology. The near-field devices communicate when they are brought very close to each other. NFC works by magnetic field induction i.e. the transmitter and the receiver are magnetically coupled. It operates at a frequency of about 13.56 MHz. The communication can be active or passive as the receiver may draw its power from the available electro-magnetic field produced by the transmitter or it may have its own power supply. NFC can be used to transfer data between two computers or any other consumer devices. Our project involves making an NFC transmitter. We would be operating it at the standard frequency of 13.56 MHz. Modulation type would be Frequency-shift keying (FSK) (which may be changed if some other technique proves to be better). To electro magnetically couple the transmitter and the receiver we would be using the loop antennas. Demodulation of the received signal would be software based.

Team members: Keshav Bansal, Daniel Hvala, Tyler Rossi

Description: Music is often recognized not by its name, but rather by a familiar melody. It is often difficult to search for a particular song when we only remember a particular tune. For this reason, we are designing a music search engine where a user can find an unknown song by inputting either an electronic keyboard sequence or hum a tune into a microphone.

Team members: Li Cao, Tiffany Yeh, Jason Chang

Description: We're interested in designing, building, and testing a GPS antenna that would be implemented on the body or inside of a vehicle. This antenna would be different than others on the market in that it would not only utilize the L1 frequency, but also the L5 frequency to be introduced in the future. Our goal is to also make it interoperable with the European counterpart to GPS, Galileo. Although all of this adds more complexity to the overall project, the benefits of the finished product would more than outweigh the challenges of the design, the time spent on carrying the project from scratch to the finished product, as well as the higher cost. Our antenna could be used presently because it would be utilizing the L1 frequency. However, it also looks to the future in that it would use the L5 frequency of the GPS system and be interoperable with the Galileo system. The end consumer would not have to buy new receivers for either the GPS or Galileo once the changes of those respective systems takes place in the future. Antennas need to have low noise amplifiers (LNA)to amplify the signal to a workable level for the receiver system. We intend to also gather the specifications for the LNA that would be needed for our specific antenna based on its gain, impedance, and other characteristics. If time allows, at the end we also intend to design and simulate the LNA using Agilent's Advanced Design System software package.

Team members: Emal Latifzai, Tim Horan

Description: Our project idea is to take the physical fuse that is used in today's power systems and create a mutli-use electronic fuse. By the use of sensors the fuse will be able to detect current and voltage, and based on these values the fuse will open up if the current is too high, cutting off the flow of current. While this method will work for lower voltage tranmission lines, for higher voltage lines it will not react fast enough. For the high voltage lines one of the segments of the fuse will burn out. Either of these actions will send an RF signal to the operator alerting them that the fuse has been opened, and which segment was burned. This will allow the operator to keep track of much longer the fuse will last before it has to be replaced. The operator will be able to reclose the fuse remotely after the current returns to safe values. Once the operator wishes to reclose the fuse the microprocessor will determine if a segment was burned, and if there wsa, that segment will be cut off, and the fuse will then reconnect. Our fuse will be comprised of two sections, while each section will have multiple segments. The two sections, along with the cutting device will be operated by motors that are controlled by the microprocessor. This project has the ability to save the power industry revenue by cutting down on the number of times the fuses will have to be replaced and on man-hours in the field.

Team members: Philip Marry, John VanderVennet

Description: The goal for this project is to build a device for vaporizing tobacco. The nicotine in tobacco can be released without burning by passing heated air through the tobacco. This heated air, carrying the nicotine, can be inhaled by the user and give a 'buzz' similar to smoking while reducing detrimental health effects. Our system will monitor the temperature at various points within the heating element and send the data back to a micro controller to change the temperature accordingly.

Team members: Adley Hemphill, Brian Lynn

Description: We will be creating a lightweight, efficient, and easy to assemble generator to power the front and back LED lights on a bicycle. Our main goal is to make the product marketable.

Team members: Carl Brandon, Andy Lamplot, Mike Yelin

Description: We plan to create a wireless programmable timer that you would put between an appliance and the wall outlet. It will turn the appliance on and off according to a schedule. The idea would be to program the timer using a computer over some form of wireless (potentially even powerline) technology instead of using the dial and pins present on traditional timers. The goal would be to simplify using timers as they can be difficult to program, and to add a battery backup so the time would be correct in the event of a temporary power failure.

Team members: David Winkler, Jonathan Bitzer

Description: The goal of this project is to design and build a device that will aid in visual presentations that utilize a projector and a computer. The device will improve upon current laser pointers and presentation clickers by allowing the presenter to point at a location on the screen with the laser, push a button, and affect a mouse click at that location. With this device, the presenter will be able conduct full presentations and even click hyperlinks and open new files without ever having to revisit their computer.

Team members: Howard Luo, James Lin, Samir Desai

Description: Our goal this semester is to first test to see that the high-speed data measurer from last semester is working, and if not help to fix it. Once that is finished we are to find a way to get this to use the random attribute of the time measurement taked from the device, and apply it such that it corrosponds to a digital representation of a random number. We are to ensure that each random number, of a given range, is equally probable, and various test-of-randomness checks will need to be implemented in order to ensure the machine is functioning as desired.

Team members: Jason Agne, Jwo-Shiun Yang

Description: An audio analyzer for display and manipulation of an audio signal. A high time-resolution frequency response will be displayed on a small graphic LCD. The device will also have equalizer, compressor, and expander funtions. All signal analysis for the display and manipulation of the sound will be done in a DSP. This module will be useful in recording or perfomance situations for simple monitoring and control of sound levels.

Team members: Cristina Vasco, Adam Krzesinski

Description: Software Defined Radio (SDR) is a powerful new technique for implementing digital communications systems, in which the modulation/demodulation, filtering, and other signal processing of data can be done in software. This gives enormous flexibility to the engineer to create, without the inherent difficulties of implementing and fine tuning intricate signal processing with hardware. My project is the implementation and testing of a wireless meduim access protocol (i.e. the method that the comm. device uses to access the wireless meduim) that opportunistically changes its frequency and bandwidth of transmission/reception according to free regions in the E&M spectrum. Since bandwidth is such an important commodity, such a method of access could be extremely attractive as a method of better management of such a valuable (but luckily not depletable) resource.

Team members: Ben Olsen

Description: The project that I named is Self-Utilized Blutooth Dongle under PAN environment. I have a base unit device (it will possibly be PDA) and it calculates the whole amount of storage space for other devices (such as digital camera, i-pod, and thrum flash memory) and then distributes files intelligently. For example, we are getting out of Memory in digital camera by taking so many pictures, we can transfer some files to other devices which have enough memory on it throughout the PDA. Otherwise, a running daemon in PDA, it can transfer some files automatically. The PDA only just helps to connect other devices from one to another based on peer to peer method via the Bluetooth. So basically, I will put Linux on PDA first, and using a Linux based on bare born PC which will connect other devices. Since it’s very difficult to make small device which have a master USB and Bluetooth module, I will use PC theoretically. And make network programming with Bluez that can make transferring data possible. Finally put User interface program on PDA and other program on PC and make them work

Team members: Jaeho Lee

Description: We are building a power amplifier/controller for an antenna system that enables a particular user to accurately control the vertical and the horizontal movements of a radar to point towards any desired and valid direction. This system takes the required input signals and produces 4 distinct output signals to the antenna’s azimuth and elevator motors. The azimuth motor circularly moves the antenna horizontally around a fixed point while the elevator motor does the same thing but vertically around the same fixed point. The key challenge will be to provide a slew rate of 100 deg/sec for the azimuth and 45 deg/sec for the elevation. We will use a D/A converter or a digital amplifier itself to process the input signals.

Team members: Tunde Costa