Initial post to web board

Video Lectures

Finding a Problem and Generating Solutions m4v
Diving Deeper m4v
Votingm4v
Reverse Brainstormingm4v, notes
Homeworkm4v

Assignment Description

This exercise is intended to facilitate project brainstorming and team formation. Please see the videos linked below for guidance on brainstorming to find problems and engineering solutions to those problems.

In the first lecture, the course staff will assign you into groups of approximately 8 students to work on this assignment. These are not the groups or projects you will be working with on your course project, they are strictly for this assignment!. Each brainstorming group will use the brainstorming methods outlined in the videos above to come up with problem statements and corresponding solutions. This ideation exercise is intended to stimulate the process of finding a suitable senior design project for this semester but not all problem statements or proposed solutions may fit within the scope of ECE 445.

After the first lecture, all students must make a post on the Web Board. This initial post must consist of either a problem statement or a proposed solution and may be posted as a reply to an existing thread.

Requirements and Grading

Grading will be out of 5 total points and awarded based on the existence of substantive post on the Web Board ("Hello world" type posts will not receive credit).

Submission and Deadlines

The initial Web Board post is due by 11:59pm on the date listed on the Course Calendar. All students must either create or respond to a post. Students posting after the deadline will not receive credit.

BusPlan

Aashish Kapur, Connor Lake, Scott Liu

BusPlan

Featured Project

# People

Scott Liu - sliu125

Connor Lake - crlake2

Aashish Kapur - askapur2

# Problem

Buses are scheduled inefficiently. Traditionally buses are scheduled in 10-30 minute intervals with no regard the the actual load of people at any given stop at a given time. This results in some buses being packed, and others empty.

# Solution Overview

Introducing the _BusPlan_: A network of smart detectors that actively survey the amount of people waiting at a bus stop to determine the ideal amount of buses at any given time and location.

To technically achieve this, the device will use a wifi chip to listen for probe requests from nearby wifi-devices (we assume to be closely correlated with the number of people). It will use a radio chip to mesh network with other nearby devices at other bus stops. For power the device will use a solar cell and Li-Ion battery.

With the existing mesh network, we also are considering hosting wifi at each deployed location. This might include media, advertisements, localized wifi (restricted to bus stops), weather forecasts, and much more.

# Solution Components

## Wifi Chip

- esp8266 to wake periodically and listen for wifi probe requests.

## Radio chip

- NRF24L01 chip to connect to nearby devices and send/receive data.

## Microcontroller

- Microcontroller (Atmel atmega328) to control the RF chip and the wifi chip. It also manages the caching and sending of data. After further research we may not need this microcontroller. We will attempt to use just the ens86606 chip and if we cannot successfully use the SPI interface, we will use the atmega as a middleman.

## Power Subsystem

- Solar panel that will convert solar power to electrical power

- Power regulator chip in charge of taking the power from the solar panel and charging a small battery with it

- Small Li-Ion battery to act as a buffer for shady moments and rainy days

## Software and Server

- Backend api to receive and store data in mongodb or mysql database

- Data visualization frontend

- Machine learning predictions (using LSTM model)

# Criteria for Success

- Successfully collect an accurate measurement of number of people at bus stops

- Use data to determine optimized bus deployment schedules.

- Use data to provide useful visualizations.

# Ethics and Safety

It is important to take into consideration the privacy aspect of users when collecting unique device tokens. We will make sure to follow the existing ethics guidelines established by IEEE and ACM.

There are several potential issues that might arise under very specific conditions: High temperature and harsh environment factors may make the Li-Ion batteries explode. Rainy or moist environments may lead to short-circuiting of the device.

We plan to address all these issues upon our project proposal.

# Competitors

https://www.accuware.com/products/locate-wifi-devices/

Accuware currently has a device that helps locate wifi devices. However our devices will be tailored for bus stops and the data will be formatted in a the most productive ways from the perspective of bus companies.