Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
42 Automated Grain Quality Test Kit for Farmers in Developing Countries
 Adam Long
Joan Brown
Kevin Villanueva
 Luke Wendt design_document0.pdf
design_document0.pdf
design_document0.pdf
final_paper0.pdf
presentation0.pptx
proposal0.pdf
This project was pitched by the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and the Institute for the Prevention of Postharvest Loss in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES)


Problem: Small farmers in developing countries lack the ability to analyze the quality of their product. With the proper resources, they would be able to analytically show the quality their product and sell it at higher margins.



Solution: A low cost, portable Grain Measurement Quality (GMQ) Kit that would be able to automatically collect and wirelessly transmit testing data on corn quality via GSM to a Farmer Portal.

The kit will include measurements of: and method/sensor

Corn Temperature: thermistor

Corn Humidity: relative humidity sensor

Corn Color: RGB color sensor

Impurity of Sample: a two-level sieve to separate unwanted large non-kernel material such as husk remnants and stones and unwanted small material such as broken kernels.



The kit shall be portable and handle a sample size of appx. 100 kernels. Samples should be taken from each sack of corn with the data applied to each of their respective sacks. The kit will be powered by rechargeable batteries. The system will also include documentation for conducting the tests that are easy to follow for farmers in developing countries.



The kit is will be in the form of a briefcase. It will have an attached tablet, or low-cost alternative, to display and record the test data. There will be two distinct sections of the kit; the first will be used for temperature, humidity, and impurity measurements. The sample of appx. 100 kernels will be dumped into this section where they will pass layered sieves. A scale will be at the bottom of the leveled sieves, and the data will be recorded by the tablet via a wired connection. The sieves will then be removed by the user and new data points will be recorded to show the impurity of the sample. A thermistor and humidity sensor in the center of the remaining kernels will allow us to acquire the temperature and humidity of the corn. The second section will be adjacent to the first and focus on corn color. An RGB color sensor connected to the tablet will be used to acquire the color of an individual kernel placed on the covered sensor. All the data recorded will be compared to quality standards and the results given back to the user through the tablet.



Challenges:

Ensuring a low-cost solution

Ensuring a long battery life, as users will likely have limited access to electricity

Appropriate accuracy of measurements

Iron Man Mouse

Jeff Chang, Yayati Pahuja, Zhiyuan Yang

Featured Project

# Problem:

Being an ECE student means that there is a high chance we are gonna sit in front of a computer for the majority of the day, especially during COVID times. This situation may lead to neck and lower back issues due to a long time of sedentary lifestyle. Therefore, it would be beneficial for us to get up and stretch for a while every now and then. However, exercising for a bit may distract us from working or studying and it might take some time to refocus. To control mice using our arm movements or hand gestures would be a way to enable us to get up and work at the same time. It is similar to the movie Iron Man when Tony Stark is working but without the hologram.

# Solution Overview:

The device would have a wrist band portion that acts as the tracker of the mouse pointer (implemented by accelerometer and perhaps optical sensors). A set of 3 finger cots with gyroscope or accelerometer are attached to the wrist band. These sensors as a whole would send data to a black box device (connected to the computer by USB) via bluetooth. The box would contain circuits to compute these translational/rotational data to imitate a mouse or trackpad movements with possible custom operation. Alternatively, we could have the wristband connected to a PC by bluetooth. In this case, a device driver on the OS is needed for the project to work.

# Solution Components:

Sensors (finger cots and wrist band):

1. 3-axis accelerometer attached to the wrist band portion of the device to collect translational movement (for mouse cursor tracking)

2. gyroscope attached to 3 finger cots portion to collect angular motion when user bend their fingers in different angles (for different clicking/zoom-in/etc operations)

3. (optional) optical sensors to help with accuracy if the accelerometer is not accurate enough. We could have infrared emitters set up around the screen and optical sensors on the wristband to help pinpoint cursor location.

4. (optional) flex sensors could also be used for finger cots to perform clicks in case the gyroscope proves to be inaccurate.

Power:

Lithium-ion battery with USB charging

Transmitter component:

1. A microcontroller to pre-process the data received from the 4 sensors. It can sort of integrate and synchronize the data before transmitting it.

2. A bluetooth chip that transmits the data to either the blackbox or the PC directly.

Receiver component:

1. Plan A: A box plugged into USB-A on PC. It has a bluetooth chip to receive data from the wristband, and a microcontroller to process the data into USB human interface device signals.

2. Plan B: the wristband is directly connected to the PC and we develop a device driver on the PC to process the data.

# Criterion for Success:

1. Basic Functionalities supported (left click, right click, scroll, cursor movement)

2. Advanced Functionalities supported(zoom in/out, custom operations eg. volume control)

3. Performance (accuracy & response time)

4. Physical qualities (easy to wear, durable, and battery life)