Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
7 Solar Cooler
Hanfei Deng
Karim El-Najjar
Kunjie Zhao
Mengze Sha design_document2.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
other1.pdf
presentation1.pptx
proposal1.pdf
Problem: During the summer, when we have a long drive or go for a picnic, we usually bring a box full of ice and put our drinks in it. The problem is that the ice in the box will not last long in the hot summer especially under the sun, and when we go for a picnic, we can't really find a gas station to get more ice.

Solution Overview: We want to build a solar-powered cooler so our drinks stay cool much longer. The big hot sun in the summer will not be a disadvantage to us---our drinks will not get warm, but will actually get cooler for a longer duration of time.

Solution Component
Power Subsystem:
Battery to store excess power and prolong device life
The solar panel will be the main power source to the system and it will charge the battery. Both battery and solar panel can be used to power the system.
Voltage Regulator to supply constant voltage and current to the thermoelectric cooler
Charge/micro Controller to protect the battery from overcharging and prolong battery life. Also used to collect data from the temperature sensor and display temperature on our 9 segment display.
Temperature Subsystem:
To control the temperature, we decided to use the thermoelectric cooling system over the compressor cooling system, since the cooler will get moved very often, and thermoelectric cooling system has advantages such as small in size, lack of moving parts or circulating a liquid, very long life, invulnerability to leaks.
The temperature sensor will be used to detect the internal temperature of the cooler.
Temperature Display to show the current temperature within the cooler.

Criterion for Success
The cooler will have to be able to safely supply temperature of 20 C below ambient temperature and keep food and drinks fresh (target under 10 Celsius). The Solar panel is able to charge the battery safely. The system should be able to simultaneously charge and cool the space. When solar power is not available, the system can be powered by a (non-toxic) battery. The overall rig should be light enough to carry to a picnic.

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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