Electronics

Pedal-n-Play

This was my group project for ECE Capstone. It's a conversion kit which allows the user to convert a regular bike into a stationary bike in order to play games on a laptop. We custom made controllers to sit on the handle bars and created a system to have automatic pedal resistance adjustment, haptic feedback, and handlebar steering in game. We also created a custom game to showcase these features.

Capstone 2 Final Presentation

Our slide presentation

Full bike setup

Controllers PCB

Handle bar controllers

Motivation:

Stationary biking is a great form of exercise and already very popular, but it lacks engagement and can be boring
Wanted to design a more interactive bike experience

Constraints:

$700 budget
5 month timeline

Approach (my contributions):

Designed custom PCB in Altium for controllers taking inspiration from the classic Xbox controller
- Split into a left and right controller to be more ergonomic on the handle bars of a bike
- Each side had a joystick, 4 buttons on the top, and 2 buttons on the back
- Halves were connected with a cable and left side connected to the laptop through USB
Chose I2C peripherals to go with the STM32 microcontroller to achieve haptic feedback and handlebar steering via IMU
Designed original pixel art for the game (characters, backgrounds, simple animation frames)

Results:

Tied for 1st place out of 19 groups in the ECE Capstone Competition
Achieved automatic pedal resistance adjustment, handlebar steering, and haptic feedback in controllers
Delivered reliable live demos, with many attendees playing the game during the capstone showcase

Remote Control Light

Motivation:

Would be nice to be able to turn my lamp off without getting out of bed

Constraints:

Remote should be small

Approach:

Initially wanted to use the IRArduino library
- Only boards I had that would run it were too large
Made an IR remote using a 555 timer on a mini breadboard since I didn't need to encode info anyway

Results:

Read signals with Seeduino XIAO to control 2 alternating servo motors to turn the light on and off

SolidWorks servo mount

IMG_7940.MOV

Alternating servos

IMG_7936.MOV

Goal reached!

ECG

Motivation:

Class project in Circuits and Signals to read and ECG signal and filter noise

Approach:

Original signal directly from the electrodes was very noisy
Reduced noise with an instrumentation amplifier, low pass filter, and high pass filter
Chose resistor and capacitor values to amplify the signal and achieve appropriate cutoff frequencies

Results:

Successfully read the reduced noise ECG signal on a scope

Guitar Tuner

Breadboarded circuit

LTSpice

Motivation:

Had just learned about op-amps and signal processing in class and wanted to do something with that by making a real-time guitar tuner

Approach:

Input audio with an electret microphone (voltage was very small)
Amplified signal with an lt1490 op-amp to peak at around 1.5V
Processed signal with Feather M4 Express
- Shifted the signal with a summing amplifier to 0-3V to avoid negative voltages
Ran an FFT on the input sound and returned the fundamental frequency

Results:

Determined the frequency of the closest string on a guitar from FFT
Programmed 5 LEDs to indicate flat, sharp, or in tune to provide real-time tuning feedback

Four Wheeler

car.MOV

Motivation:

Cornerstone class challenge: add more motors to original design
Original project: Redboard with a distance sensor and two DC motors to drive the wheels
- Drove straight until obstacle detected, then, backed up, turned right, and drove straight again

Approach:

Added two more DC motors and wheels with another motor driver on an additional Redboard
I replicated the original project but took off the distance sensor
Communicated between boards with I2C
Improved the code to have the car back up to the left in addition to turning right going forward to create quicker, sharper turns

Results:

This robot had the most wheels in the class
Learned what I2C was

Kinetic Tile

Motivation:

Cornerstone final project: Create a sustainable energy focused product

Approach:

Created a tile that generated electricity when stepped on through electromagnetic induction
- Tile with springs underneath that compressed when stepped on
- A magnet in middle of tile moved through a wire coil and created electricity
Designed the tile in AutoCAD and laser cut it from 6mm wood
Bought springs that were too tall and tile had a tendency to slip out when stepped on
- No tools to shorten springs
Designed a box for the tile to sit in using Solidworks and 3D printed it
Made spring stabilizers in Solidworks to be 3D printed ensuring the springs stayed in the same position all the time
- Allowed us to remove the tile from the box for maintenance as opposed to gluing the springs to the box
Sparkfun redboard measured the voltage produced by the tile and graphed in MATLAB

Results:

We had a tile that successfully generated a (minimal) voltage

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