Project Red EYE

Group 8 Presents Project Red Eye

Project RedEye

 

         While engineers share a love for all things technical in nature, this is a field so vast that even within a specific group, such as Electrical Engineers, it can be very hard to find a specific topic that any two random persons share a passion for.  Extrapolate that to a group of four and you’ll probably get better odds buying a lotto ticket.  This project is a direct result of our comprehension of that concept.  When choosing a topic for this project, we saw group after group fighting between two or more topics until one side caved in and compromised what they wanted to do.  We believe our solution to this problem is a little more elegant than the traditional “diplomatic” method of listing pros and cons and arguing.  When our group was formed we basically had two separate groups of two with two very specific projects in mind.  Our solution was for each group member to identify what topics they had a passion for that were in the project they wanted.  We then compiled all of these topics and began to put together a system that incorporated everyone’s interests.  This is how Project Red Eye was born

Chassis Design

The Chassis Design

 

Pictured on the left is the final, assembled product that is Project Red-Eye. At the very top is the housing for the transmitter, which is attached to the receiver lens. The red box is a commerical laser range finder which we used to verify that results of PRE range finders. The main hull which the optics rest on house the electronics for the system including the microcontroller circuit, GPS, digital compass, pulse generator, signal dector circuit, power supply, and wireless module. On the exterior of the hull there is a three position switch that can be set to "OFF", "5V-ON" in which the yellow LED turns on, and "HIGH-V-ON", AT the third position both the red and yellow LEDs turn on indicating the system is ready to operate. There is also a button for resetting the microcontroller externally. The electronics housing sits on top of a pan and tilt fixture operated by two Hitec servos, enabling the system to rotate a full 360 degrees horizontally and tilt 180 degrees. The entire system is anchored down by a 5lb base.

The Rangefinder

The Rangefinder

 

          The Rangefinder consists of a laser transmitter a reciever and a time to digital converter.  The TDC sends a signal to the diode driver to pulse the diode.  The laser diode fires hits its target and then the back scatter from the target travels back and is focused onto the Avalanche photodiode contained in the reciever module.  This signal is then amplified using opamps and a comparitor at which point the output is inputed to the TDC.  The TDC then calculates the time from pulse signal to received signal and sends a digital value of that time to the microcontroller.

Graphical User Interface

The GUI

 

          The GUI for this project serves two purposes, target selection and the calculation and display of relevant information.  The GUIs first objective is to allow the user to select a target with the mobile device.  We have realized this objective by integrating a live video feed and controls to the servos that move the pan and tilt fixture that the mobile device is mounted to.  The second objective for the GUI is the calculation and display of relevant information including the mobile devices’ current GPS coordinates and bearing as well as the target’s GPS coordinates and the distance to the target.  To accomplish this objective we have created three classes to keep track of the positional data of the mobile device and the targets. 

PCB Layout

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The PCB

 

          The PCB was created using the free application provided by ExpressPCB.  This program was very intuative and made it very easy to complete the 2-layer board that was used in the final Project.  The pictures show the design, the front and back of the finished PCB and the PCB with some of the parts mounted onto it.  Making a printed circuit board allowed the group to decrease the size that was needed for the final product and reduce weight by eliminating the need for a breadboard.

Senior Design I

The Initial Idea

 

          The Initial Idea was to use a camera as a vision system that allows the user to locate their target is comprised of a micro board camera with a dedicated wireless transmitter and receiver.  In addition, the entire package is mounted on a pan and tilt bracket powered by a high capacity servo motor to aid in target tracking.  After identifying the target the laser rangefinder in conjunction with the compass and GPS modules collect all the data required to calculate the coordinates of the target.  The secondary wireless system then transmits all the collected data to the user’s computer where the data and the calculated coordinates are displayed on the GUI.