DATE: March 30, 2014

TO: Dave Michelson, Ph.D, P.Eng.

CC: Siamak Moori, Yin He

FROM: Wayne Huang, EECE 380 L2B2

SUBJECT: Progress report for the week of March 24

This week our group began by discussing how we would construct the hardware portion of our project. We discussed various ways to implement our sensor and actuator and decided to create a wind speed sensor using a photo-interrupter and a servo that would raise a flag under predetermined circumstances.

Our group then finished the design of our system and split the project into different blocks that could be worked on in parallel with each other. We assigned Remy, Frank and myself to work on the software components, and Chris and Mo were assigned to work on parts of the hardware.

Our goal is to complete each of our respective blocks by the beginning of next week and begin integrating our system together. If this is successful, we will move on to test our system and aim to have our prototype ready for demonstration on Friday April 4^th. 

DATE: 10 February , 2014

TO: Dave Michelson, Ph.D, P.Eng.

FROM: Wayne Huang, EECE 380 Team L2B2

SUBJECT: Project Progress Report for the week of February 3rd

This week we attempted to finish up the design and build of the separate blocks of our system. We had a few setbacks where the output of the blocks were undesired or their behaviour unexpected.

Our precision peak detector was implemented using a lm-6172 op amp. The initial output was not what we expected with the value of components we calculated. The output signal was either very noisy or there was a large amount of loss. We deducted that this was caused by the inherent capacitance of the breadboard, and had to tweak the values through trial and error.

We decided to construct our IF bandpass filter using four crystal oscillators in series, without any capacitors. This gave a desirable frequency response with a very narrow band, so we left it as just the crystals in series. Upon further observation, there was a very steady rise in the response at a much later frequency. We will have to test to see if this will cause problems for our system and have though about using a low pass filter as a solution.

We created a basic display in LabVIEW that shows a signal input into the MyDAC and was able to test it by displaying a waveform from the function generator. We attempted to test if the display would work as intended in our system, but we were unable to functionally connect the blocks of our system together.

In the coming week, our goal is to connect all the blocks of our system together, work out any abnormalities and problems, and have a very basic spectrum analyser working.