2008 Electrical Engineering Senior Design Projects

Ermin E. Arias

Advisor: Prof. Hassib and Prof. Hedrick

The Baby Protector "A Baby Monitor to protect Against Pets"

For my senior project, I developed a baby monitor that protects infants against pets, dogs and cats in particular. This device consists of a monitor with a transmitter that may be placed near the baby’s crib. This transmitter sends signals to a receiver placed in a collar worn by the pet. When the dog gets too close to the crib, the receiver is able to recognize the signal and as a result sends a warning or “correction” to the dog. The correction is sent in the form of a mild shock to the pet. At the same time, once the correction has been sent to the dog, a notification is sent to the parent’s unit notifying them that the pet has crossed the pre specified area.

Unlike the already existing monitors, once completed, this monitor will help keep the dogs away from a specify area, for example the baby’s crib, without the parent’s immediate assistance. Further, this device will make sure that the pet is not on the crib, regardless if the infant is on it or not. Essentially this device is the combination of two already existing products, the typical baby monitor and the invisible wireless dog fence. The method in which I have implemented these two devices however is unprecedented. Instead of having two different devices, my project brings these two devices together, resulting in a device that meets the following project criteria: The dog collar will produce a shock if the dog is within 12 ft and it wirelessly notifies the parent’s unit up to 600 ft away when shock is triggered. Below I describe this project, along with the existing products to more details.

Steven Boddorff

Advisor: Prof. Catravas

Bass Synthesizer Interface

In order to liberate bass guitar players from synthesizers that require a knowledge of piano, this project allows the user to create synthesized music using a synthesizer that plays like a bass guitar to produce musical notes. The strings are replaced by phototransistors at each fret to determine which note is pressed and on the body to to simulate the plucking of the string. The software is done in Labview, which receives a voltage signal through the PCI 6115 DAQ and then plays the specified .wav file.

Joseph M. Ciaburri

Advisor: Prof. Catravas

Teaching Tool For French Language Pronunciation

For foreign language students, pronunciation can be one of the most frustrating aspects of mastering the language. The art of correct pronunciation is more difficult to encapsulate into a set of rules than grammar. As a result, students must either rely on instructor critiques, or their own aural judgment. In language laboratories, the student typically hears a native speaker, speaks into a recorder and listens to his or her voice replayed. Such an approach does not take advantage of the potential for facial movement to provide feedback. In this work, the introduction of a video monitor of facial movement into a pronunciation software tool, along with traditional aural and signal processing based techniques, is investigated. Much like a language laboratory, a native speaker reads a phrase, which the student repeats. Matlab acquires the student response via a webcam and microphone, which replays the student's attempt, allowing the student to self-diagnose. The audio signal is analyzed and displayed in the frequency domain as Short-time Fourier Transform in the form of a spectrogram and in the quefrency domain as the cepstrum. The initial focus is on vowel sounds. Future work will include efforts to provide a bull's eye comparing a numerical figure of merit with a target reference. A software tool that focuses on both audio and video for language learning has the potential increase pronunciation skill while decreasing the learning time. This project can also provide a platform to enable testing of the effectiveness and significance of the different feedback mechanisms employed for language pronunciation.

Daniel V. Harkenrider

Advisor: Prof. James Hedrick

Amateur Radio Repeater

Wireless radio-frequency communication forms the basis for such technologies as cell phones and wireless internet access. There are a number of factors which affect the range of wireless RF communications, including antenna height and gain, transmitter power, and receiver sensitivity. Union College’s amateur radio repeater, begun as a student project two years ago but not completed, provided a platform to study several of these issues. A high-gain antenna had to be acquired and installed in a high enough location to transmit and receive signals adequately. The sensitivity of the repeater’s receiver had to be improved, and this was done by adding a high-gain, low noise preamplifier to the receiver front end. A noise source was constructed, calibrated and used in order to test the performance of the receiver with and without the preamplifier. Results from the modified receiver show a significant improvement in sensitivity and range from the original.

David B. Harwood

Advisor: Prof. Spinelli

Hand-held Color Scanner for the Colorblind

We live in a world of color, but for some of us, that world has limitations. This project aims to present those with color vision deficiencies a means to decode their colorful surroundings. The goal: to create a handheld device capable of scanning a surface and generating a text output indicating the color of the surface in question.

Project Link     Poster Link

Long Nguyen

Advisor: Prof. Shane Cotter

Principal Component Analysis of the Color Spectra from Natural Scenes

Light in nature reach a visual system in combination of reflectance and illumination spectra. L( λ)=I(λ)S(λ), where L( λ) is the color signals, I(λ) is the illumination spectrum, and S(λ) is the reflectance spectrum( Chiao et al). A lot of knowledge already exists about colors. Our experiment just confirms another fact about the color spectral data of natural scenes. Previous study using Principle component analysis (PCA) by Daniel Osirio et al., to analyze both forest and coral reefs suggested that three basic function is enough to described 98% of the total variance of reflectance spectra and color signals in the scenes. Similarly, in this experiment, we have come up with similar result using the intensity of color spectral data collected from natural scene in Jackson Garden.