Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
30 Friend Finder Armband
 David Drake
Timothy Capota
 design_document0.pdf
final_paper0.pdf
presentation0.presentation
proposal0.pdf
Many times GPS devices can not be used to locate a person in a big crowd. They are not accurate enough to tell you exactly where a person is within close distances,and sometimes the signal is unreliable.The friend finder armband aims to fill this void in the market by creating an intuitive tool to easily find others which works where GPS does not. Our product would be useful in a myriad of situations including concerts, malls, and any other
events where large gatherings of people make getting separated easy.

Our goal is to develop a compact armband that will allow the users to easily locate each other in any situation. The armbands will use a system of antennas to locate each
other. There will be increasing vibration with increasing proximity. Moreover, the armbands will have LED's to point the user in the right direction.

Assistive Chessboard

Robert Kaufman, Rushi Patel, William Sun

Assistive Chessboard

Featured Project

Problem: It can be difficult for a new player to learn chess, especially if they have no one to play with. They would have to resort to online guides which can be distracting when playing with a real board. If they have no one to play with, they would again have to resort to online games which just don't have the same feel as real boards.

Proposal: We plan to create an assistive chess board. The board will have the following features:

-The board will be able to suggest a move by lighting up the square of the move-to space and square under the piece to move.

-The board will light up valid moves when a piece is picked up and flash the placed square if it is invalid.

-We will include a chess clock for timed play with stop buttons for players to signal the end of their turn.

-The player(s) will be able to select different standard time set-ups and preferences for the help displayed by the board.

Implementation Details: The board lights will be an RGB LED under each square of the board. Each chess piece will have a magnetic base which can be detected by a magnetic field sensor under each square. Each piece will have a different strength magnet inside it to ID which piece is what (ie. 6 different magnet sizes for the 6 different types of pieces). Black and white pieces will be distinguished by the polarity of the magnets. The strength and polarity will be read by the same magnetic field sensor under each square. The lights will have different colors for the different piece that it is representing as well as for different signals (ie. An invalid move will flash red).

The chess clock will consist of a 7-segment display in the form of (h:mm:ss) and there will be 2 stop buttons, one for each side, to signal when a player’s turn is over. A third button will be featured near the clock to act as a reset button. The combination of the two stop switches and reset button will be used to select the time mode for the clock. Each side of the board will also have a two toggle-able buttons or switches to control whether move help or suggested moves should be enabled on that side of the board. The state of the decision will be shown by a lit or unlit LED light near the relevant switch.

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