Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
7 Garden Guardian
 Aleah Gacek
Claire McGrath
Nick Hartmann
 Jason Zhang design_document1.pdf
design_document2.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
presentation1.pdf
proposal2.pdf
proposal1.pdf
video
Problem:

Gardens are an easy and fun hobby that a lot of people have in their backyard. One issue when it comes to gardens is being able to protect them. Gardens grow many different fruits and vegetables that are prone to getting attacked or eaten by different animals. Having a hindrance would improve the garden's quality and protect your plants.

Solution Overview:

Our solution for deterring animals away from one’s garden is a portable battery-powered (most likely solar) device that can be mounted above one’s garden. It uses a passive infrared sensor that notices movement in the garden area.

Solution Components:

Sensor System:

Passive infrared system for detecting movement in the area which triggers a high signal to the 5-volt relay (connect to 120V compatible noise/light deterrent)

Power System:

Solar panels -> battery storage -> PCB -> 5-volt relay (5-volt to 120 AC conversion) -> light/noise deterrent

Processing System:

PCB sends signal to light/noise deterrent and can determine night=light deterrent and day=noise deterrent; compatible/controlled with Arduino

Criterion for Success:

Our device can pick up on animal movement in the area around the garden and turn on the light/noise deterrent to scare the animal away and protect the garden while running on solar power.

Alternatives:

An easy deterrent against large animals is putting a wired fence around your garden. This doesn’t work against birds or smaller animals. This also is quite annoying for the garden owner to have to move the fence each time they want to work on the garden.

Another alternative is using an ultrasonic animal repeller. This device emits a certain frequency that deters animals away while also not at a frequency that humans can hear. A problem with this is that there is not a ‘general frequency’ that deters all animals away. You can only set it to one frequency that deters certain animals. We think our device would be better because it would deter all animals.



Covert Communication Device

Ahmad Abuisneineh, Srivardhan Sajja, Braeden Smith

Covert Communication Device

Featured Project

**Partners (seeking one additional partner)**: Braeden Smith (braeden2), Srivardhan Sajja (sajja3)

**Problem**: We imagine this product would have a primary use in military/law enforcement application -- especially in dangerous, high risk missions. During a house raid or other sensitive mission, maintaining a quiet profile and also having good situational awareness is essential. That mean's that normal two way radios can't work. And alternatives, like in-ear radios act as outside->in communication only and also reduce the ability to hear your surroundings.

**Solution**: We would provide a series of small pocketable devices with long battery that would use LoRa radios to provide a range of 1-5 miles. They would be rechargeable and have a single recessed soft-touch button that would allow someone to find it inside of pockets and tap it easily. The taps would be sent in real-time to all other devices, where they would be translated into silent but noticeable vibrations. (Every device can obviously TX/RX).

Essentially a team could use a set of predetermined signals or even morse code, to quickly and without loss of situational awareness communicate movements/instructions to others who are not within line-of-sight.

The following we would not consider part of the basic requirements for success, but additional goals if we are ahead of schedule:

We could also imagine a base-station which would allow someone using a computer to type simple text that would be sent out as morse code or other predetermined patterns. Additionally this base station would be able to record and monitor the traffic over the LoRa channels (including sender).

**Solutions Components**:

- **Charging and power systems**: the device would have a single USB-C/Microusb port that would connect to charging circuitry for the small Lithium-ion battery (150-500mAh). This USB port would also connect to the MCU. The subsystem would also be responsible to dropping the lion (3.7-4.2V to a stable 3.3V logic level). and providing power to the vibration motor.

- **RF Communications**: we would rely on externally produced RF transceivers that we would integrate into our PCB -- DLP-RFS1280, https://www.sparkfun.com/products/16871, https://www.adafruit.com/product/3073, .

-**Vibration**: We would have to research and source durable quiet, vibration motors that might even be adjustable in intensity

- **MCU**: We are likely to use the STM32 series of MCU's. We need it to communicate with the transceiver (probably SPI) and also control the vibration motor (by driving some transistor). The packets that we send would need to be encrypted (probably with AES). We would also need it to communicate to a host computer for programming via the same port.

- **Structural**: For this prototype, we'd imagine that a simple 3d printed case would be appropriate. We'd have to design something small and relatively ergonomic. We would have a single recessed location for the soft-touch button, that'd be easy to find by feel.

**Basic criterion for success:** We have at least two wireless devices that can reliably and quickly transfer button-presses to vibrations on the other device. It should operate at at *least* 1km LOS. It should be programmable + chargeable via USB. It should also be relatively compact in size and quiet to use.

**Additional Success Criterion:** we would have a separate, 3rd device that can stay permanently connected to a computer. It would provide some software that would be able to send and receive from the LoRa radio, especially ASCII -> morse code.