Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
57 Electronic Dog Teeth Cleaning Toy
Angela Jiang
Yilong Zhang
Youhan Li
Selva Subramaniam design_document1.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
photo1.jpeg
photo2.jpeg
presentation1.pdf
proposal1.pdf
video
# Electric Dog Teeth Cleaning Toy

Team Members:
- Angela Jiang (angelaj4)
- Youhan Li (youhanl2)
- Yilong Zhang (yilongz3)

# Problem
Many dog owners don’t put in the effort to manually brush their dog’s teeth more than a couple times a week. They either use a dog teeth cleaning treat or liquid that can remove some of the plaque rather than all. Nowadays, at least 80% of dogs over the age of three have oral problems [1]. To combat this pet health issue, dog owners need a tool that is able to conveniently clean dog’s teeth and regulate the frequency of cleaning.

# Solution
The solution we have is to develop a log-shaped electric dog toy that is capable of cleaning the dog’s teeth and monitor the cleaning. Treats are used as the incentive to interest the dog to continue biting the toy. The treat will come out after each cleaning is complete. The dog toy has a nylon bone casing, covered in dog-safe toothbrush or silicone bristles. Under the exterior cover, there is a layer of pressure sensor for biting force sensing. Internally, the toy is equipped with a vibration motor that will create moderate motions in the dog’s mouth for cleaning. When turned on and being bitten, the toy will vibrate and adjust the force according to the data from the pressure sensor. Also, the toy has a timer. When the recommended cleaning time is reached, the toy will cease cleaning and release a treat. The toy then enters a sleep state and stops responding to biting until a preset time interval has passed. After recess time, the toy will be available for cleaning again. Overall, the dog will be able to play with the toy and get their teeth cleaned 2 times a day. A visual depiction of our concept can be found in this link: https://notability.com/n/2sY7_QoKl0fOiddgZskVmi.

# Solution Components

## Sensor Subsystem
The dog toy will be using several flexible film pressure sensors that will be wrapped around the nylon bone casing and underneath the thick bristles. The pressure sensors are quintessentially resistors that change resistance according to the applied pressure. Each sensor will be connected in series with a fixed-value resistor to the supply voltage. This forms a voltage divider, and the voltage across the pressure sensors serve as analog inputs to the microcontroller. By characterizing the pressure-resistance or pressure-voltage relationship, we can determine the applied force using an algorithm programmed in the microcontroller.

## Control Subsystem
The dog toy will be using an ATmega328P microcontroller as its control system. The input of the controller will be data from the pressure sensor. When pressure data exceeds a certain threshold, indicating that the dog is biting the toy, the microcontroller will send a signal to the vibration motor to start the vibration process and start counting the actual brushing time. An algorithm will be developed to calculate the target teeth brushing time according to the pressure that the sensor reads when the dog is biting the toy. When the actual brushing time exceeds the daily target brushing time(~3 minutes, twice a day), the microcontroller will stop the vibration, send another signal to the treat dispensing subsystem to dispense the treats, and light up the LED to indicate that the end of brushing process is reached.
The control system will have three states:
IDLE - When the toy is powered but the data read by the pressure sensor doesn’t exceed the threshold. This occurs when the brushing is either not started or not complete. The microcontroller will be powered to record time with a memory, to keep the maximum brushing time on a daily basis.
VIBRATION - When the dog is biting the toy and daily brushing time hasn’t been exceeded by actual brushing time. The microcontroller will tell the motor to vibrate and record the pressure data for calculation.
COMPLETE - The target brushing time has been reached. The system will turn back to idle, but it will first dispense treats, and light up the LED to indicate its state.

## Treat Dispensing Subsystem
The dog toy will be able to dispense treats after the dog has finished brushing their teeth. The dispensing system will be adopting the mechanical principle of a PEZ candy dispenser, so that only one treat comes out at a time. The treat release is controlled by the microcontroller and the spring will be pressed on a pressure sensor to detect when there are no more treats left. This will light up an LED to let the owner know it’s time to refill the dispenser.

## State Indication Subsystem
The state indication subsystem consists of a ‎RGB 4-pin LED and 3 current-limiting resistors. The LED is controlled by the microcontroller to produce the corresponding colors for different states by blending the three colors. A different color is assigned for each of the states described in the Control Subsystem section.

## Power Subsystem
The power subsystem consists of one 9-V alkaline battery, one 3.3-V linear voltage regulator and one 5-V linear voltage regulator. The purpose of the subsystem is to provide proper supply voltage to other subsystems. The 9-V battery directly powers the vibration motor driver while providing input voltage to the linear voltage regulators. The 3.3-V DC voltage will power the programmer and the state-indicating LEDs. The 5-V DC voltage would be the supply to the microcontroller, the camera module and the pressure sensor.


# Criterion For Success

-The dog toy will be able to brush away most of the plaque through the vibration of the bristles.

-The dog toy will be able to accurately stop vibrating and dispense a treat after three minutes, two times a day.

-The electronic system will be solid enough to withstand the vibration.

# Reference

[1] K. B. Enlund et al., “Dog Owners’ Perspectives on Canine Dental Health—A Questionnaire Study in Sweden,” Front. Vet. Sci., vol. 7, p. 298, Jun. 2020, doi: 10.3389/fvets.2020.00298.


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.