Remote monitoring system of environment variables based on evaluation board

In this project work, a framework for remote monitoring of environment variables is presented. The remote access is based on the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) network. The framework allows to collect data from local systems, including environmental parameters and others, and send them by SMS (Short Message Service) to mobile devices. The framework was designed to be easily adapted and expanded to any kind of sensor, allowing to collect parameters like temperature, humidity, and others, from analog and digital sensors. It was also implemented based on the GSM network, using SMS, allowing to access the local systems from any kind of mobile device, and supporting long distances among the local systems and the users that want to monitor them. The design and implementation were also done to assure high energetic autonomy, high reliability and low production cost. With such versatility, the framework can be used in a wide range of contexts and problems, whenever is necessary to monitor systems or environments located on remote areas or simply whenever is necessary to have access, in almost real time, to the conditions of these systems/environments. Besides the advantage of access, in almost real time, to data that is located on remote systems or environments, the solutions that can be developed over the proposed framework can reduce maintenance costs, traveling costs, working time and, contribute to more safer system and healthy environments

A low-cost and low-power hole-detecting cane for the visualy impaired

Mestrado em Engenharia Electrónica e TelecomunicaçõesEste trabalho propõe uma nova bengala para cegos e amblíopes concebida com o principal objectivo de melhorar a mobilidade dos seus utilizadores através da detecção de buracos, desníveis e degraus. Uma breve pesquisa mostrou que os dispositivos “inteligentes” actualmente disponíveis apenas fornecem detecção de obstáculos à frente do utilizador. Obstáculos que podem ser facilmente detectados por contacto físico com uma vulgar bengala. Por outro lado, as associações de cegos e amblíopes deixam claro que os buracos, desníveis e degraus estão entre as suas maiores preocupações, especialmente buracos de esgoto sem tampa, mostrando que este é um campo onde a investigação e desenvolvimento tecnológicos deverão incidir. Existiu uma grande preocupação relativamente ao baixo consumo energético do dispositivo, bem como com o baixo custo global de um hipotético produto final. As técnicas desenvolvidas para a detecção de buracos baseiam-se em pulsos de ultra-sons. É utilizada energia solar para manter as pilhas carregadas de modo que o utilizador não necessite de preocupar-se frequentemente com a mudança ou carregamento das baterias. Outra característica inovadora desta bengala está relacionada com o aumento de visibilidade e segurança proporcionado ao utilizador em ambientes nocturnos ou escuros, especialmente ao atravessar ruas ou em áreas de tráfego intenso. A bengala detecta automaticamente a luz ambiente e decide ligar ou desligar uma matriz de LEDs intermitentes dispostos ao longo da bengala. Isto permite que os condutores reconheçam antecipadamente e com mais segurança o invisual e tomem as precauções necessárias. Para interacção da bengala com o utilizador são utilizados vibração e/ou sinais sonoros. Testes realizados em ambientes reais provaram a validade do conceito e dos algoritmos apresentados, permitindo detectar eficazmente buracos, desníveis e degraus, verificando-se apenas um número muito limitado de falsas detecções em superfícies muito irregulares. No entanto, todos os buracos foram detectados independentemente do tipo de superfície, mostrando que a abordagem efectuada permite melhorar a mobilidade e confiança dos cegos e amblíopes de uma forma eficaz. Este trabalho cobre todos os detalhes relativos ao desenvolvimento deste novo dispositivo, bem como os resultados obtidos. ABSTRACT: This work proposes a new cane for the visually impaired which is capable of detecting holes, drop-offs and steps, designed with the main purpose of improving the mobility of visually impaired individuals. A small research was initially conducted and showed that currently available “intelligent” canes only provide detection of obstacles ahead of the subject, obstacles which would be easily detected by physical contact with any regular cane. Furthermore, in conversations with visually impaired associations, it became clear that holes, drop-offs and steps are among their greatest concerns, especially uncovered sewer manholes, helping to realize that this was one of the fields where technological research and development should be focused. Throughout this work, there was a great concern in the low-power consumption of the device, as well as the overall low cost of a hypothetically final product. The developed techniques for hole-detection rely on pulses of ultrasounds. Solar power is used to keep the batteries charged so that the user does not need to worry about changing or charging any batteries on a regular basis. Another innovative feature of this cane is related with the increasing visibility and safety provided to the user under dark conditions, especially when crossing streets or in heavy traffic areas. The cane automatically detects the ambient light and decides to turn on or off an array of blinking LEDs along the body of the cane. This enables drivers to recognize the user earlier and better, in order to take the necessary precautions. The means of interaction between the cane and the user are vibration and/or audible signals. Field tests proved and validated the concept and algorithms presented, allowing holes, drop-offs and steps to be detected flawlessly, and with only a very limited number of false detections occurring in very irregular surfaces. Nonetheless, all the holes were detected in every kind of surface, proving this is an efficient way of bringing a clear path to the visually impaired. This work covers all the details concerning the development of this new device, as well as the results of practical field tests

EMBEDDED HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE DESIGN FOR LOW-POWER WIRELESS ECG DEVICE

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN

An Adaptive Modular Redundancy Technique to Self-regulate Availability, Area, and Energy Consumption in Mission-critical Applications

As reconfigurable devices\u27 capacities and the complexity of applications that use them increase, the need for self-reliance of deployed systems becomes increasingly prominent. A Sustainable Modular Adaptive Redundancy Technique (SMART) composed of a dual-layered organic system is proposed, analyzed, implemented, and experimentally evaluated. SMART relies upon a variety of self-regulating properties to control availability, energy consumption, and area used, in dynamically-changing environments that require high degree of adaptation. The hardware layer is implemented on a Xilinx Virtex-4 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to provide self-repair using a novel approach called a Reconfigurable Adaptive Redundancy System (RARS). The software layer supervises the organic activities within the FPGA and extends the self-healing capabilities through application-independent, intrinsic, evolutionary repair techniques to leverage the benefits of dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (PR). A SMART prototype is evaluated using a Sobel edge detection application. This prototype is shown to provide sustainability for stressful occurrences of transient and permanent fault injection procedures while still reducing energy consumption and area requirements. An Organic Genetic Algorithm (OGA) technique is shown capable of consistently repairing hard faults while maintaining correct edge detector outputs, by exploiting spatial redundancy in the reconfigurable hardware. A Monte Carlo driven Continuous Markov Time Chains (CTMC) simulation is conducted to compare SMART\u27s availability to industry-standard Triple Modular Technique (TMR) techniques. Based on nine use cases, parameterized with realistic fault and repair rates acquired from publically available sources, the results indicate that availability is significantly enhanced by the adoption of fast repair techniques targeting aging-related hard-faults. Under harsh environments, SMART is shown to improve system availability from 36.02% with lengthy repair techniques to 98.84% with fast ones. This value increases to five nines (99.9998%) under relatively more favorable conditions. Lastly, SMART is compared to twenty eight standard TMR benchmarks that are generated by the widely-accepted BL-TMR tools. Results show that in seven out of nine use cases, SMART is the recommended technique, with power savings ranging from 22% to 29%, and area savings ranging from 17% to 24%, while still maintaining the same level of availability

Real-Time Wireless Platform for In Vivo Monitoring of Bone Regeneration

For the monitoring of bone regeneration processes, the instrumentation of the fixation is an increasingly common technique to indirectly measure the evolution of bone formation instead of ex vivo measurements or traditional in vivo techniques, such as X-ray or visual review. A versatile instrumented external fixator capable of adapting to multiple bone regeneration processes was designed, as well as a wireless acquisition system for the data collection. The design and implementation of the overall architecture of such a system is described in this work, including the hardware, firmware, and mechanical components. The measurements are conditioned and subsequently sent to a PC via wireless communication to be in vivo displayed and analyzed using a developed real-time monitoring application. Moreover, a model for the in vivo estimation of the bone callus stiffness from collected data was defined. This model was validated in vitro using elastic springs, reporting promising results with respect to previous equipment, with average errors and uncertainties below 6.7% and 14.04%. The devices were also validated in vivo performing a bone lengthening treatment on a sheep metatarsus. The resulting system allowed the in vivo mechanical characterization of the bone callus during experimentation, providing a low-cost, simple, and highly reliable solution.Junta de Andalucía US-1261691Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad DPI2017-82501-PMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad PGC2018-097257-B-C3

Cost-Effective and Energy-Efficient Techniques for Underwater Acoustic Communication Modems

Finally, the modem developed has been tested experimentally in laboratory (aquatic environment) showing that can communicates at different data rates (100..1200 bps) compared to state-of-the-art research modems. The software used include LabVIEW, MATLAB, Simulink, and Multisim (to test the electronic circuit built) has been employed.Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) are widely used in many applications related to ecosystem monitoring, and many more fields. Due to the absorption of electromagnetic waves in water and line-of-sight communication of optical waves, acoustic waves are the most suitable medium of communication in underwater environments. Underwater acoustic modem (UAM) is responsible for the transmission and reception of acoustic signals in an aquatic channel. Commercial modems may communicate at longer distances with reliability, but they are expensive and less power efficient. Research modems are designed by using a digital-signal-processor (DSP is expensive) and field-programmable-gate-array (FPGA is high power consuming device). In addition to, the use of a microcontroller is also a common practice (which is less expensive) but provides limited computational power. Hence, there is a need for a cost-effective and energy-efficient UAM to be used in budget limited applications. In this thesis different objectives are proposed. First, to identify the limitations of state-of-the-art commercial and research UAMs through a comprehensive survey. The second contribution has been the design of a low-cost acoustic modem for short-range underwater communications by using a single board computer (Raspberry-Pi), and a microcontroller (Atmega328P). The modulator, demodulator and amplifiers are designed with discrete components to reduce the overall cost. The third contribution is to design a web based underwater acoustic communication testbed along with a simulation platform (with underwater channel and sound propagation models), for testing modems. The fourth contribution is to integrate in a single module two important modules present in UAMs: the PSK modulator and the power amplifier

Wildlife Deterrence Method Test Device

The objective of the Deer Busters team is to design and build a device or system of devices that will be used to determine which method, or methods, are most effective at deer deterrence. JumpSport suspects that a method which gives the appearance of approach to the deer in an aggressive or startling manner but also changes the way it attacks so that the deer do not get used to the device will be most effective. Deer Busters is committed to the completion of the deer deterrent testing device by the end of the fall quarter of 2014

Wireless distributed intelligence in personal applications

Tietokoneet ovat historian kuluessa kehittyneet keskustietokoneista hajautettujen, langattomasti toimivien järjestelmien suuntaan. Elektroniikalla toteutetut automaattiset toiminnot ympärillämme lisääntyvät kiihtyvällä vauhdilla. Tällaiset sovellukset lisääntyvät tulevaisuudessa, mutta siihen soveltuva tekniikka on vielä kehityksen alla ja vaadittavia ominaisuuksia ei aina löydy. Nykyiset lyhyen kantaman langattoman tekniikan standardit ovat tarkoitettu lähinnä teollisuuden ja multimedian käyttöön, siksi ne ovat vain osittain soveltuvia uudenlaisiin ympäristöälykkäisiin käyttötarkoituksiin. Ympäristöälykkäät sovellukset palvelevat enimmäkseen jokapäiväistä elämäämme, kuten turvallisuutta, kulunvalvontaa ja elämyspalveluita. Ympäristöälykkäitä ratkaisuja tarvitaan myös hajautetussa automaatiossa ja kohteiden automaattisessa seurannassa. Tutkimuksen aikana Seinäjoen ammattikorkeakoulussa on tutkittu lyhyen kantaman langatonta tekniikkaa: suunniteltu ja kehitetty pienivirtaisia radionappeja, niitten ohjelmointiympäristöä sekä langattoman verkon synkronointia, tiedonkeruuta ja reititystä. Lisäksi on simuloitu eri reititystapoja, sisäpaikannusta ja kaivinkoneen kalibrointia soveltaen mm. neurolaskentaa. Tekniikkaa on testattu myös käytännön sovelluksissa. Ympäristöälykkäät sovellusalueet ovat ehkä nopeimmin kasvava lähitulevaisuuden ala tietotekniikassa. Tutkitulla tekniikalla on runsaasti uusia haasteita ihmisten hyvinvointia, terveyttä ja turvallisuutta lisäävissä sovelluksissa, kuten myös teollisuuden uusissa sovelluksissa, esimerkiksi älykkäässä energiansiirtoverkossa.The development of computing is moving from mainframe computers to distributed intelligence with wireless features. The automated functions around us, in the form of small electronic devices, are increasing and the pace is continuously accelerating. The number of these applications will increase in the future, but suitable features needed are lacking and suitable technology development is still ongoing. The existing wireless short-range standards are mostly suitable for use in industry and in multimedia applications, but they are only partly suitable for the new network feature demands of the ambient intelligence applications. The ambient intelligent applications will serve us in our daily lives: security, access control and exercise services. Ambient intelligence is also adopted by industry in distributed amorphous automation, in access monitoring and the control of machines and devices. During this research, at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences, we have researched, designed and developed short-range wireless technology: low-power radio buttons with a programming environment for them as well as synchronization, data collecting and routing features for the wireless network. We have simulated different routing methods, indoor positioning and excavator calibration using for example neurocomputing. In addition, we have tested the technology in practical applications. The ambient intelligent applications are perhaps the area growing the most in information technology in the future. There will be many new challenges to face to increase welfare, health, security, as well as industrial applications (for example, at factories and in smart grids) in the future.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed