Course Overview :: ECE 445 - Senior Design Laboratory

Welcome!

Welcome to ECE 445! If you've looked at the course Calendar, you've probably already noticed that this class is quite different from most other classes in the department. The class only meets as a whole for the first few weeks of the semester. During these lectures you will meet the Course Staff, learn about specific assignments, requirements, and resources for the course, and have a chance to meet other students to share ideas and form teams. These are some of the most important weeks for the class since the decisions you make during this time will determine what you'll get out of this class and, in many ways, how much you'll enjoy it.

Outside of lecture, you are expected to be working on your own to develop ideas and form teams. You are also expected to actively participate on the web board to exchange ideas, receive feedback from course staff, and eventually get your project idea approved. Once your team has a project approved, you will be assigned a TA, with whom you will have weekly meetings. Think of your TA as a project manager. Keep in mind that they are not there to do the work for you. Rather, they are there to keep you on track, point you towards resources (both within and outside of the department), and evaluate the result of your efforts.

Expectations and Requirements

We have high expectations for students participating in ECE 445. You are soon to be alumni of one of the top ECE departments of the world. Our alumni hold themselves to high technical and professional standards of conduct.

In general, projects are expected to solve an interesting problem within the constraints of the course. You will discuss the motivation for your project and its societal impact. What are the potential benefits and possible negative consequences of your project? What engineering standards are applicable?

Your projects are expected to be safe and ethical, and to satisfy applicable ethical codes developed by professional societies such as IEEE or ACM. Previous projects have covered a wide range of topics in areas of personal convenience, entertainment, medical research and treatment, personal transportation, music, robotics, and industrial processes, to name a few.

Projects are expected to have a level of design complexity commensurate with the rigor of the ECE Illinois curriculum. Requirements for specific assignments due throughout the semester can be found by looking through the Grading Scheme for the course. Please read through this documentation well before each assignment is due. Specific due dates can be found on the course Calendar.

Below are a few words of wisdom to keep in mind throughout the semester to increase your enjoyment and success in the course:

"You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note" (attributed to Doug Floyd). You might be tempted to form a team exclusively of your friends you have worked with in previous courses. While it is important to make sure you can have a good working relationship with your teammates, it is equally important to make sure that your team consists of engineers with a wide range of skill sets. If you are only working with people who have taken courses with in the past, you likely will have overlapping skill sets and the same technical blindspots. Consider talking with other students who have taken courses in areas you have not. You might find that the combination of these disparate skill sets lend themselves to creating a more exciting project!

"With great freedom comes great responsibility" (attributed to many, including Benjamin Franklin). In this course, you are ultimately responsible for the success of your project. To a very large extent, you define your own requirements and metrics for success. Although the course staff is there to support and encourage you, you and your teammates must put in the time and effort that will lead to a successful demonstration of your project at the end of the semester. However, seek out and carefully consider the advice provided to you by the course staff. We tend to have a good sense of what is and is not possible within the constraints of the course.

"Slow and steady wins the race" (from an Aesop's fable). You will actually be constructing and physically demonstrating the project you design in this course. Creating a schedule that distributes work amongst your team throughout the semester, and sticking to it, is paramount! Please do not leave things until the end of the semester and expect a positive outcome. Procrastination is not your friend, for no other reasons than parts take time to order and arrive, the electronics and machine shops get inundated with requests from this and other courses and so may not be able to immediately address your needs, and the lab can get very crowded and you may not be able to access a lab bench whenever you want.

"You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar" or "Treat others the way you expect to be treated" (attributed to many). Conducting yourself professionally will take you far in this course. Be considerate to your teammates, TA, and anyone else you interact with in this course (and in life, for that matter!). Your TA will be working with many groups in addition to yours. Be respectful of their time. If you are going to be late or miss a meeting with them, contact them as soon as you know this so they can repurpose their time. Get in touch with the electronics and machine shop as early as possible if you are going to need their services and seek their advice. Be considerate of your teammates and others in the course - clean up lab benches, log off of computers when not in use, don't hog test equipment, help others if they ask. You will find that this department is filled with people who will bend over backwards to help you succeed, and this help will be given happily if they are treated respectfully.

Featured Project

# Mushroom Growing Tent Project

Team Members:

- Elizabeth Boyer (eboyer2)

- Cameron Fuller (chf5)

- Dylan Greenhagen (dylancg2)

# Problem

Many people want to grow mushrooms in their own homes to experiment with safe cooking recipes, rather than relying on risky seasonal foraging, expensive trips to the store, or time and labor-intensive DIY growing methods. However, living in remote areas, specific environments, or not having the experience makes growing your own mushrooms difficult, as well as dangerous. Without proper conditions and set-up, there are fire, electrical, and health risks.

# Solution

We would like to build a mushroom tent with humidity and temperature sensors that could monitor the internal temperature and humidity, and heating, and humidity systems to match user settings continuously. There would be a visual interface to display the current temperature and humidity within the environment. It would be medium-sized (around 6 sq ft) and able to grow several batches at a time, with more success and less risk than relying on a DIY mushroom tent.

Some solutions to home-grown mushroom automation already exist. However, there is not yet a solution that encompasses all problems we have outlined. Some solutions are too small of a scale, so they don’t have the heating/cooling power for a larger scale solution. Therefore, it’s not enough to yield consistent batches. Additionally, there are solutions that give you a heater, a light set, and a humidifier, but it’s up to the user to juggle all of these modules. These can be difficult to balance and keep an eye on, but also dangerous if the user does not have experience. Spores can get released, heaters can overheat, and bacteria and mold can grow. Our solution offers an all-in-one, simple, user-friendly environment to bulk growing.

# Solution Components

## Control Unit and User Interface

The control unit and user interface are grouped together because the microcontroller is central to the design of both, and they are closely linked in function.

The user interface will involve a display that shows measured or set values for different conditions (temperature, humidity, etc) on a display, such as an LCD display, and the user will have buttons and/or knobs that allow the user to change values.

The control unit will be centered around a microcontroller on our PCB with circuitry to connect to the other subsystems.

Parts List:

1x Microcontroller

1x PCB, including small buttons and/or knobs, power circuitry

1x Display module

1x Power supply

## Temperature Sensing and Control

The temperature sensing and control components will ensure that the grow box stays at the desired temperature that promotes optimal growth. The system will include one temperature sensor that will record the current temperature of the box and feed a data output back into our PCB. From here, the microcontroller in our control unit will read the data received and send the necessary adjustments to a Peltier module. The Peltier module will be able to increase the temperature of the box according to the current temperature of the box and set temperature. Cooling will not be required, as maintaining a minimum temperature is more important than a maximum temperature for growth.

Parts List:

1x Temperature Sensor

1x Peltier module

## Humidity Sensing and Control

The humidity sensing and control system will work in a similar way to the temperature system, only with different ways to adjust the value. We will have one humidity sensor that will be continually sending data to our PCB. From here, the PCB will determine whether the current value is where it should be, or whether adjustments need to be made. If an increase in humidity is needed, the PCB will send a signal to our misting system which will activate. If a decrease is needed, a signal will be sent to our air cycling system to increase the rate of cycling, thereby decreasing the humidity within the box.

Parts List:

1x Humidity Sensor

4x Misting heads

Water tubing as needed

## Air Quality Control

The air filtration system is run constantly, as healthy mushroom growth (free of bacteria) needs clean, fresh air, and mycelium requires and uses up oxygen as it grows. Additionally, this unit is connected to the hydration sensing unit- external humidity is in most cases going to be lower than internal humidity, and cycling in new air can be used to decrease humidity. When high humidity is detected, the air filtration system will decrease the internal humidity by cycling in less humid air.

Parts List:

Flexible Air duct length as needed

1x Fan for promoting air cycling

# Criteria For Success

Our demo will show that each of our subsystems functions as expected and described below:

For the control unit and user interface, we will demonstrate that the user can change the set temperature and humidity values through buttons or knobs.

The humidity sensing and control system’s functionality will demonstrate that introducing dry air into the device activates the misting system, which requires functional sensors and a water pump.

The temperature sensing and control system demo will involve showing that the heater turns on when the measured temperature is below the set temperature.

The air quality control system’s success will be demonstrated as air movement coming from the fan enters the tent.

Project Videos

Mushroom Incubator Demo Video