Lab

Recommended Tools

In addition to the resources that the course provides, students may find it useful to obtain the tools below:

  • wire cutter
  • wire stripper
  • needle nose pliers
  • screwdrivers
  • hex set (ball ends)
  • electrical tape
  • small scissors
  • a small file

Lab Resources

The Senior Design Lab is located at ZJUI room D225. This lab provides you access to various equipment, some spare parts, computers, and a space to work on your senior design project. In addition, course staff will make themselves available in this lab during their office hours to provide guidance on your project throughout the semester. Your weekly meetings with your TA will also likely be at this location.

It is our intention that this laboratory space provides you and your team with all the tools you would need to develop and test your project (within reason, of course!). If there is something that you require in the lab to complete your project that does not exist in the lab, talk to your TA and we will see how we can solve your issue.

Lab Rules

There are two overarching rules of working in the Senior Design Lab (and, frankly, any shared lab). First, be safe, and second, be courteous. Lab privileges will be revoked if you fail to complete the required laboratory safety training or if you break any of the lab rules. Specific points and examples of what we expect:

Breaking the rules or exhibiting bad laboratory etiquette will lead to a loss of points and/or revocation of laboratory access.

Lab Bench Reservations

We do not expect the lab to become so crowded such that finding a lab bench to work at becomes difficult. However, in the case that this does happen (particularly in semesters with very high enrollment), we will move to a Lab Bench Reservation system. Reserving a bench guarantees that spot for you, however each team may only book one lab bench at a time, and for a maximum of 4 hours per day.

If the lab needs to move to a reservation-based system, you will be notified ahead of time.

A few ground rules:

  1. You may use a lab bench (a) during a time for which you have it reserved or (b) any time during which it is not reserved in the system (on a first-come-first-served basis). However, if you are working at a bench that is unreserved and somebody reserves it using the online system, the group with the reservation gets the lab bench.
  2. There is a limit on the amount of time for which you can reserve benches in ZJUI D225. The limit is currently a total of 4 hours of total bench time in the lab per group per day (e.g., 2 hours at Bench A and 2 hours at Bench B would max out your team's reservations for the day). While this may seem restrictive, keep in mind that the course serves more than 30 groups in a typical semester and the lab has only 14 benches. Also keep in mind that you can work at a bench if it is unreserved.
  3. Some lab benches have specialized equipment at them, such as digital logic analyzers. Try to reserve the lab bench that has the equipment that you need.
  4. Cancel reservations that you will not need as soon as possible to give other groups a chance to reserve the lab bench. You can cancel a reservation up to 1 hour before time and not have it count against your daily allotment.
  5. Conflicts and/or reports of people not following these rules should be sent to your TA with the course faculty in copy.
  6. Above all, be courteous. Especially near the end of the semester, the lab will be more crowded and many teams are stressed. Clean up the lab bench when you are done with it. Start and end your sessions on time. Be patient and friendly to your peers and try to resolve conflicts professionally. If we notice empty lab benches that have been reserved, we will cancel your reservations and limit your ability to reserve lab benches in the future. Similarly, do not reserve more time than you will need. If we notice that you are frequently canceling reservations, we will limit your ability to reserve lab benches in the future. Finally, do not try to exploit the system and reserve a bench for 30 minutes every hour for eight hours. We will notice this and revoke your ability to reserve a bench.

Recovery-Monitoring Knee Brace

Featured Project

Problem:

Thanks to modern technology, it is easy to encounter a wide variety of wearable fitness devices such as Fitbit and Apple Watch in the market. Such devices are designed for average consumers who wish to track their lifestyle by counting steps or measuring heartbeats. However, it is rare to find a product for the actual patients who require both the real-time monitoring of a wearable device and the hard protection of a brace.

Personally, one of our teammates ruptured his front knee ACL and received reconstruction surgery a few years ago. After ACL surgery, it is common to wear a knee brace for about two to three months for protection from outside impacts, fast recovery, and restriction of movement. For a patient who is situated in rehabilitation after surgery, knee protection is an imperative recovery stage, but is often overlooked. One cannot deny that such a brace is also cumbersome to put on in the first place.

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Solution:

Our group aims to make a wearable device for people who require a knee brace by adding a health monitoring system onto an existing knee brace. The fundamental purpose is to protect the knee, but by adding a monitoring system we want to provide data and a platform for both doctor and patients so they can easily check the current status/progress of the injury.

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Audience:

1) Average person with leg problems

2) Athletes with leg injuries

3) Elderly people with discomforts

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Equipment:

Temperature sensors : perhaps in the form of electrodes, they will be used to measure the temperature of the swelling of the knee, which will indicate if recovery is going smoothly.

Pressure sensors : they will be calibrated such that a certain threshold of force must be applied by the brace to the leg. A snug fit is required for the brace to fulfill its job.

EMG circuit : we plan on constructing an EMG circuit based on op-amps, resistors, and capacitors. This will be the circuit that is intended for doctors, as it will detect muscle movement.

Development board: our main board will transmit the data from each of the sensors to a mobile interface via. Bluetooth. The user will be notified when the pressure sensors are not tight enough. For our purposes, the battery on the development will suffice, and we will not need additional dry cells.

The data will be transmitted to a mobile system, where it would also remind the user to wear the brace if taken off. To make sure the brace has a secure enough fit, pressure sensors will be calibrated to determine accordingly. We want to emphasize the hardware circuits that will be supplemented onto the leg brace.

We want to emphasize on the hardware circuit portion this brace contains. We have tested the temperature and pressure resistors on a breadboard by soldering them to resistors, and confirmed they work as intended by checking with a multimeter.