The EE2079 Design and Innovation Project (DIP) program is a five-week compulsory program for all full-time second year EEE students in Nanyang Technological University, held during the special session in May. Each project group is supervised by up to two academic staff. Throughout the five weeks, students will design, prototype, and test innovative electronic, electrical or IT products. The following are two projects from this program in 2011.
Heat stroke is defined as a body temperature of greater than 40.6C degree due to environmental heat exposure with lack of thermo-regulation. Design a system where the body temperature and other bio-signals can be monitored. For examples, when 2C degree rise in temperature is detected/ rate of heartbeat exceeded certain threshold value, an emergency SMS with GPS location information is sent.
EE 65 Temperature Monitoring (Short Version)
EE65 Temperature Monitoring (Long Version)
EE65 ECG Monitoring
Calculate Heart Rate from ECG waveform
code snippet to measure heart rate (shr) in beats per minute
Water level sensor detector sends out SMS flood alerts to local residents in flood-prone areas. The system is programmed to send out alerts whenever water level in canals/monsoon drains hit 75%, indicating a "moderate" risk of flooding; then at above 90%, indicating a "high" risk. Design a system where the water level is monitored and when the water level exceeds certain threshold, an emergency twit with GPS location will be sent to those subscribed to the twitter feed.
Flood detection using the pressure sensor
Flood detection using the magnetic reed switches
The first of the flooding happened on the 16th of June 2010, Wednesday. Heavy rains began to fall in Singapore's central shopping district in Orchard Road affecting shopping centres such as Lucky Plaza and Liat Towers. Several basement shopping malls and car parks were submerged in water which led to the need to rescue over 70 members of the public from danger. Fortunately, no one was injured. Another significant flooding occurred in December 2011, where water ponded at open areas, including the basement area of Far East Shopping centre and Lucky Plaza. This resulted in the loss of millions of dollars worth in electrical goods, jewellery as well as customer patronages. It also saw the temporary closing of the burger chain store Wendy's, despite its recent opening.
Hence a group of students from NTU EEE decided to come together to tackle the problem by obtaining the water level and subsequently tweeting it out to our very own twitter website.
Measure Depth using Hydrostatic Pressure
The pressure at a given depth of water is due the weight of the water acting on a unit area at that depth plus any pressure acting on the surface of the water. This allows the water level to be derived by measuring the hydrostatic pressure.
Disaster Information Goes Social
Australia have unveiled an ambitious new revamp of the country's national Emergency Alert telephone warning system. This revamp incorporates a "world-first" mobile emergency alert service, to be fully operational by November 2012, while tapping into carrier-class mobile communications networks. The location-based mobile emergency alert service will send warnings to mobile phones that are physically in an emergency zone when a disaster strikes.
Deep Ocean Tsunami Detection Buoys
A typical tsunami buoy system comprises two components; the pressure sensor anchored to the sea floor and the surface buoy. The sensor on the sea floor measures the change in height of the water column above by measuring associated changes in the water pressure. This water column height is communicated to the surface buoy by acoustic telemetry and then relayed via satellite to the tsunami warning centre.
The system has two modes - 'standard' and 'event'. The system generally operates in 'standard' mode, where it routinely collects sea level information and reports via satellite at relatively low frequency transmission intervals (i.e. every 15 minutes). This helps to conserve battery life and hence extend the deployment life. The tsunami buoy is triggered into 'event' mode when the pressure sensor first detects the faster moving seismic wave moving through the sea floor. It then commences reporting sea level information at one minute intervals to enable rapid verification of the possible existence of a tsunami. The system returns to standard mode after 4 hours if no further seismic events are detected.