Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
14 Bird Box
Honorable Mention
Chang-Wei Chang
Megan Roller
Weihang Liang
Yangge Li appendix1.zip
appendix2.pdf
appendix3.zip
design_document3.pdf
final_paper2.pdf
other2.docx
other3.pdf
other1.pdf
other4.pdf
photo2.pdf
presentation2.pdf
proposal2.pdf
video
This idea was pitched at the second lecture by Shelby Lawson. https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/lectures/FA_2019_Lectures/Pitches/shelby_ECE_pitch.pptx

# Problem
Birds communicate with each other with different sounds and frequencies. Sometimes they have similar responses to different sounds. Other times, researchers can only understand what the birds hear by observing the surrounding environment. Researchers need better ways to know what can a bird actually hear and what frequencies can it distinguish.

# Solution Overview
Our solution for determining what the birds can hear is to create a bird box. The bird box is a container that has a speaker to play test sounds, choice buttons for birds to make choices when responding to the test sounds, camera to monitor the bird, a food reward dispenser when the bird makes the correct choice, and a light to be turned off for punishment. The box can also be controlled by an automated computer program that runs trials autonomously. The bird box can provide an ideal experiment environment for researchers to test the bird’s ability to recognize sounds.

# Solution Components

## Reward and Punishment Subsystem
- Food reward dispenser for giving the birds food as rewards
- LED light that can be turned off for punishment

## Output Subsystem
- Speaker for playing specific test sounds and frequencies

## Sensor Subsystem
- Choice buttons for the birds to push to make a choice
- Camera for monitoring the bird’s activity
- Microphone for monitoring the bird’s activity

## Processing Subsystem
- Internal microcontroller on custom PCB for detecting button pushes and controlling the food reward dispenser and light. (Atmel ATmega328)
- A low power single board computer that can run programs, process camera and microphone data, and communicate with the microcontroller. (Raspberry Pi 4)
- The internal microcontroller will be communicating with the single board computer through UART serial communication. It will send which button is pushed in response to the sound played.

## Power Subsystem
- The system will be powered by a single 5V USB power supply. All the components will be rated at 5V. However, if the food reward dispenser is available, we will potentially use a different power supply for that.

# Criterion for Success
- Must have a training course to teach the bird how to participate.
- The box itself must be able to withstand multiple birds without needing to replace components and must be easy to clean between subjects.
- If the correct button is pressed, food should be dispensed as a reward.
- If the incorrect button is pressed the light will turn off as negative feedback.

Low Cost Distributed Battery Management System

Logan Rosenmayer, Daksh Saraf

Low Cost Distributed Battery Management System

Featured Project

Web Board Link: https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=27207

Block Diagram: https://imgur.com/GIzjG8R

Members: Logan Rosenmayer (Rosenma2), Anthony Chemaly(chemaly2)

The goal of this project is to design a low cost BMS (Battery Management System) system that is flexible and modular. The BMS must ensure safe operation of lithium ion batteries by protecting the batteries from: Over temperature, overcharge, overdischarge, and overcurrent all at the cell level. Additionally, the should provide cell balancing to maintain overall pack capacity. Last a BMS should be track SOC(state of charge) and SOH (state of health) of the overall pack.

To meet these goals, we plan to integrate a MCU into each module that will handle measurements and report to the module below it. This allows for reconfiguration of battery’s, module replacements. Currently major companies that offer stackable BMSs don’t offer single cell modularity, require software adjustments and require sense wires to be ran back to the centralized IC. Our proposed solution will be able to remain in the same price range as other centralized solutions by utilizing mass produced general purpose microcontrollers and opto-isolators. This project carries a mix of hardware and software challenges. The software side will consist of communication protocol design, interrupt/sleep cycles, and power management. Hardware will consist of communication level shifting, MCU selection, battery voltage and current monitoring circuits, DC/DC converter all with low power draws and cost. (uAs and ~$2.50 without mounting)