Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

ECpE Students Present Final Senior Design Projects to Industry Representatives This Week

 

Contact:
Dana Schmidt, communications specialist, (515) 294-3071, schmidtd@iastate.edu

Ames, Iowa  — The Iowa State University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering senior design student teams are gearing up to give their final presentations to an Industrial Review Panel, a group of engineers from industry, April 30 and May 1. Students in senior design, a two-semester capstone design course in which students work on mostly industry-sponsored projects, have been working throughout the year on projects from unmanned aerial vehicles and robots to radio telescopes and wind turbines. Three of the student projects are highlighted below.

Smart Remote Thermostat Controls

Scott Penick, an electrical engineering senior, and his senior design team have designed Remote-stat, a thermostat capable of controlling a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system remotely via the Internet.
    
“The way it works from the user’s perspective is to simply connect to the Web site hosted by the thermostat and set the desired temperature for the desired time period. The system then takes care of the rest and regulates the temperature accordingly,” Penick says.
        
Penick’s senior design team worked on this project for their client, Ben Weatherman (BSCpE ’03), a software engineer at National Instruments. One of the team’s biggest accomplishments was finding a way to considerably reduce the cost of this device from similar systems on the market. Penick says they were able to reduce the cost because his team’s device stands alone, while most other similar devices are part of a larger suite of home automation or home security products.
    
“What we have designed is a stand-alone product that is relatively simple, but still has all the functionality of a regular seven-day programmable thermostat and has a sleek Web interface rather than a clumsy physical interface,” Penick says.
    
Given the increasing proliferation of smart appliances and home area networks, Penick says there certainly will be market demand for the capability to control a household thermostat via a Web interface in the future.  
    
“We’ve all learned a lot about microcontrollers and HVAC systems. Knowledge is power, and within our careers, knowledge of HVAC systems almost certainly will be useful,” Penick says.

Improving MRI Speed and Accuracy

Another senior design team created a reconstruction algorithm designed for use in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The goal of this senior design project was to create a faster version of a MATLAB prototype that the team’s client and adviser, Assistant Professor Namrata Vaswani, discovered and implemented.
        
Dylan Reid, an electrical engineering senior working on the project, says that currently once an MRI is completed it takes a long time to put the images together.
    
“The reconstruction algorithm Vaswani proposes does this much faster, which saves a lot of time in hospitals,” Reid says.
     
In addition to the reconstruction algorithm, Reid’s team also designed a system to automatically highlight a region of interest in an image. For example, it would outline a tumor if one appeared in an MRI scan of the brain.
    
“Working on this project has taught me a lot about the design process in relation to a software design project, and also how frustrating it can be. I also think this project helped me develop more advanced skills in MATLAB, language C, and debugging techniques,” Reid says.

Green Design

A third senior design team tackled two projects: an eco-friendly deicing system and consulting for the ISU Solar Decathlon house. The team’s first project—the deicing system—proved to be more challenging than originally thought.

“We first developed a plan to build a deicing system that used a rubber mat using induction heating powered by photovoltaic panels,” says Michael Anderson, an electrical engineering senior. “We also developed the idea of using a wind turbine to generate electricity needed to power the mats. Both ideas were proved financially infeasible. Because of this, we focused on researching other ideas for deicing the client’s steps. Out of all the ideas, purchasing Heat Traks Snow Melting Mats was found to be the most cost effective idea that still met the client’s needs.”

With the team’s deicing project finished, the team began its role as consultants for electrical aspects of the design of the ISU Solar Decathlon house.     

“The project was started mainly by architects in the College of Design, and we were brought on along with other engineering disciplines to help with some of the technical details,” Anderson says.
        
The biggest challenge the team has faced with the Solar Decathlon house has involved differing project deadlines between the senior design project and the Solar Decathlon project.
    
“This semester, the deadline issues have been really difficult, but despite the difference in schedules, we have accomplished the original scope of both of our projects, as well as extended our consulting to do more than was required,” Anderson says.  

For more information on senior design projects, visit the ECpE senior design Web site.

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