Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
77 MicroMOUSR
 Andrew Betbadal
Katelyn Schoedl
Nicholas Radler
 Amr Martini design_document3.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
other1.pdf
photo1.pdf
presentation1.pdf
proposal1.pdf
Background Information:

Mousr is a robot mouse toy developed by the startup Petronics, located in Champaign, Illinois. Petronics creates these toys for pet loving households around the world, and Mousr was named as the 2018 Best Cat Toy Award by Pet Guide.

Mousr is a rather advanced and high cost toy at a commercial price point of $149.99 USD. With several features such as a speaker system, LEDs, and encoders to help drive the control algorithms, Mousr is a product designed to be the best in the business.

After meeting with Petronics, we learned that the Mousr team is looking to design a more compact, less technically advanced product called the MicroMOUSR. This product will be based on their original Mousr toy, but will require an entirely new design, both internally and externally.

Solution / Implementation:

There are several changes that need to be made in order to hit the company's ideal price point for a final MicroMOUSR product. In the head of the robot, we need to replace the flex PCB with a stiff board, as stiff boards come at a much lower cost. We will be removing the speaker and LED systems entirely during this process. Due to the simplistic nature of the desired product, we will also be replacing a 6 axis IMU with a 3 axis IMU in the head, and connecting it directly to the microprocessor in the body of the toy. Combining these will allow us to completely remove one of the two microprocessors in the final product.

The microprocessor in the head currently drives control algorithms based on data input from encoders on the wheels of the toy. Because we will be removing this microprocessor, we will also be removing the encoders on the wheels and designing a PWM motor control circuit instead. Because this system needs to be as low cost as possible, they have also asked us to look at redesigning the charging system as well in the body. The combination of a new motor control circuit and power delivery system will require a holistic approach to redesigning the PCB in the body. We will also have to rewrite the control algorithms of the product, as we will no longer have the data from the encoders or the 6 axis IMU. This robot will feature bluetooth connectivity to the existing Petronics app.

We will be able to give a detailed list of components after further meetings with Petronics which will allow us to determine the ideal price estimate for the final device.

Success Criteria:

Our end goal for this project is to create a functioning MicroMOUSR product at a low price point.

BusPlan

Aashish Kapur, Connor Lake, Scott Liu

BusPlan

Featured Project

# People

Scott Liu - sliu125

Connor Lake - crlake2

Aashish Kapur - askapur2

# Problem

Buses are scheduled inefficiently. Traditionally buses are scheduled in 10-30 minute intervals with no regard the the actual load of people at any given stop at a given time. This results in some buses being packed, and others empty.

# Solution Overview

Introducing the _BusPlan_: A network of smart detectors that actively survey the amount of people waiting at a bus stop to determine the ideal amount of buses at any given time and location.

To technically achieve this, the device will use a wifi chip to listen for probe requests from nearby wifi-devices (we assume to be closely correlated with the number of people). It will use a radio chip to mesh network with other nearby devices at other bus stops. For power the device will use a solar cell and Li-Ion battery.

With the existing mesh network, we also are considering hosting wifi at each deployed location. This might include media, advertisements, localized wifi (restricted to bus stops), weather forecasts, and much more.

# Solution Components

## Wifi Chip

- esp8266 to wake periodically and listen for wifi probe requests.

## Radio chip

- NRF24L01 chip to connect to nearby devices and send/receive data.

## Microcontroller

- Microcontroller (Atmel atmega328) to control the RF chip and the wifi chip. It also manages the caching and sending of data. After further research we may not need this microcontroller. We will attempt to use just the ens86606 chip and if we cannot successfully use the SPI interface, we will use the atmega as a middleman.

## Power Subsystem

- Solar panel that will convert solar power to electrical power

- Power regulator chip in charge of taking the power from the solar panel and charging a small battery with it

- Small Li-Ion battery to act as a buffer for shady moments and rainy days

## Software and Server

- Backend api to receive and store data in mongodb or mysql database

- Data visualization frontend

- Machine learning predictions (using LSTM model)

# Criteria for Success

- Successfully collect an accurate measurement of number of people at bus stops

- Use data to determine optimized bus deployment schedules.

- Use data to provide useful visualizations.

# Ethics and Safety

It is important to take into consideration the privacy aspect of users when collecting unique device tokens. We will make sure to follow the existing ethics guidelines established by IEEE and ACM.

There are several potential issues that might arise under very specific conditions: High temperature and harsh environment factors may make the Li-Ion batteries explode. Rainy or moist environments may lead to short-circuiting of the device.

We plan to address all these issues upon our project proposal.

# Competitors

https://www.accuware.com/products/locate-wifi-devices/

Accuware currently has a device that helps locate wifi devices. However our devices will be tailored for bus stops and the data will be formatted in a the most productive ways from the perspective of bus companies.