St. Cloud State University
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Session A AbstractsHome Intercom SystemAlex Krueger, Bridget Bethke, and Ray Melberg Wireless home intercom systems are an excellent solution for in-home communication. They are not only portable, but are a cost effective way of providing communications between different rooms or floors within a house. The purpose of our Senior Design Project is to design and construct a Wireless RF (Radio Frequency) Home Intercom System. It incorporates a number of Electrical Engineering fields, including communications, analog circuitry, digital circuitry, signal processing, and microcontrollers. This system is designed for use in any situation where short-range communication between up to three parties is desired. It is easy to use and include power supplies operated by a 120V AC wall outlet. Our intercom devices have a number of features not present on most other marketed intercom systems. They include
Presentation Index: A1 BroadBand 3G Wireless CommunicationsNadeem Chaudhry and Fahd Habeeb The revolution in wireless communication is bringing fundamental changes to data networking, telecommunication, and integrated networks. Some of the most common implications of wireless technology are wireless LAN, mobile radio networks, and cellular systems. The wideband wireless communication system, third generation (3G) wireless, provides Internet accessing ability to a portable device. The 3G systems provide up to a bandwidth of 2MHz mobile applications. Considering that it is applied in a moving environment with a small device with an omni antenna, 2MHz is wideband comparing to current small portable devices with a bandwidth at KHz ranges. The 3G technology is still in the research development stage and may be implemented in the next few years. The objective of our Senior Design project is to design and develop a mobile broadband wireless communication system, operating at 2.4GHz, using most advanced wireless communication technologies including Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). OFDM is a relatively new technology, which transfers band-limited signals to orthogonal signals for multi-channel transmission, with the minimized Inter-Channel Interference (ICI), and Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI). Our system sends data from a PC via USB bus to a digital signal processing board and code the data in T1 format. T1 signal will be sent to a transmitter that codes the data by the QAM and CDMA and transmit the coded as radio frequency (RF) signal at 2.4GHz. Simulation for OFDM code will be done in the PC or the digital signal processing board prior to the transmission. At the receive terminal, the data will be decoded and converted from T1 to binary format and send to a receiving PC through the digital signal processing board and the USB interface. The final goal of the project is to transmit data from PC to PC, through our wireless system at a rate of up to 1.544 Mega bits per second. The project will evaluate the performances of the QAM, CDMA, and OFDM for wideband wireless communication systems and its applications for the 3G technologies. Presentation Index: A2 Car Audio MP3 PlayerMike Schock, Jason Langfield, and Matt Ethen We are on the verge of a blooming digital music revolution. In the music industry we have seen CD's replace cassettes and LP's. Now we see the advancements of digital music, such as the MP3 format, which can store 650 MB of digital music from a CD in approximately 10% as much space without loosing music quality. The purpose of this project is to construct a car audio device to play MP3 music, allow the user to store music on a removable storage device, and also construct a docking station, which will allow the user to change the music that is on that storage device. To accomplish this task we not only must construct working hardware and software, but also take into affect the variety of automobiles available, and the extreme weather and temperature conditions encountered by an automobile in everyday operation. Presentation Index: A3 Economical Scrap HandlingTodd Carlson There is an average of 250,000 pounds of aluminum chips produced annually by Alexandria Extrusion Company. Approximately ¼, or 75,000 pounds, of the chips produced are machining chips from the 15 CNC machining centers. The remainder of the chips is saw chips from the Oliver saws at the presses, and the Metlsaws in the saw shop, plus the addition of two miter saws. These chips are currently loaded into an enclosed semi-trailer, and sold to our scrap customer for $0.06 below the premium price for clean and dry turnings. AEC has expressed an interest in increasing the price obtained from the chips, lowering the labor costs associated with chip handling, and reducing environmental liability resulting from the current system. Presentation Index: A4 Improving Vertran's DrivabilityAaron Bisek and David Tax Fena Design Incorporated, the makers of a standing/seated wheelchair, called Vertran, sponsored a design project to improve the drivability of the wheelchair in the seated position. Vertran has been designed and developed to be optimally driven in the standing position. Currently when the wheelchair is in the standing position the center of mass is closer to being over the drive wheels compared to when the wheelchair is in the seated position. Weight shifting occurs due to seat positioning of the operator between the seated and standing positions. Tracking and traction, in the seated position, was a concern for Vertran's current design. This makes it difficult for the operator to drive with ease. We wanted to find a way to eliminate the effects allowing the operator to have the same amount of control while driving in either the seated or standing position. The mobility that has been currently established in the standing position was maintained during any design changes. Some areas that were tested to improve the drivability included the use of different drive wheels, mechanical changes in the caster positions, and changing the weight distribution on the drive wheels. Final design changes were made based off the data collected from multiple tests to obtain improvements in the drivability. Presentation Index: A5 Evaluation of the Letter Setting Process For The Production of Bronze PlaquesJacob Stock and Benjamin Munt Several manufacturing processes in industry require the use of manual labor. One such labor intense practice is the production of patterns, which are to be used to make sand molds for the casting process. Cold Spring Bronze, a division of The Cold Spring Granite Company, produces bronze plaques, which are used as building and headstone memorials. To account for the large variety of words used on the memorial plaques, patterns are produced by securing letters in place on a blank pattern. This process is known as the letter setting process. Cold Spring Bronze is currently experiencing a large return rate due to letter setting errors. Cold Spring Bronze is also in the process of building a new manufacturing facility. It was the goal of this project to increase the quality of the plaques being produced while increasing the efficiency of the letter setting process to reduce floor space in the new facility. Seven options were evaluated: rapid prototyping, CNC milling of sand and wax, overhead projection, UV liquid polymerization, automated pick and place cell, adhesive dissolvable paper, and sandblasting. It was determined that the best solution involved a combination of 3 concepts: UV liquid polymerization, CNC milling in sand, and overhead projection. The UV liquid polymerization process will be used to produce patterns with large amounts of letters and/or very small font sizes. The CNC milling process will be investigated further for the use of producing letters with flat surfaces. The overhead projection process, which projects images of the letters onto a blank plaque, will be used on the remaining manual letter setting cells. Presentation Index: A6 |
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