Week 3: Circuit Design
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Biomedical Engineering
Biomedical Engineering combines engineering with medicine and biology to design, create and maintain equipment, computers and software that are concerned with affecting and understanding biology. This area of study is ever expanding and evolving with new problems and solutions being brought to light daily, as whether it concerns the growth and use of tissues, or the creation sensors and cameras for animals, it is part of biomedical engineering.
Electrical Engineering
Electrical engineering is an area of engineering that solely works with electricity and technology, it may interact with other fields but general consists of solving electrical problems. This field is know to be fairly stable and growing, as such intricate and complicated tasks are involved that computers at their current stage of development can not compare, nevertheless the job is not the most lucrative and certain positions entail a certain degree of danger.
Design Process
- Define the Problem
We need to create a circuit that will inform the user that he or she has a certain amount of symptoms of the Coronavirus.
- Generate Alternative Solutions
Create a simple, yet functional circuit board using logic gates and a 555 timer.
- Evaluate and Select a Solution
We have only one solution available which we chose to pursue. We decided that the given instructions were fairly straight forward and there were insignificant changes to any possible alternative solutions.
- Detail the Design
Our group knew how the circuit should work and how to make it using logic gates so that the lights will illuminate with the corresponding information given by the sensors, or switches in our case. So, in order to easily create a logic board, we created truth tables and logic equations and used them to know how and where to use the logic gates that will lead into the individual LEDs.
- Defend the Design
We decided that through our logic equations and truth tables, our prospective logic board will work. We used the truth tables to input values into the logic equation so that it will lead into the correct LED. With that, we concluded that this is the best design we could have made and chose to pursue it.
- Manufacture and Test
We built the circuit using the switches, alarm circuit with the 555 timer, and the logic board we manufactured through the logic equations. We tested the whole circuit using the simulator in the Circuit Lab program and used the DC Solver to see if there were voltages going out of the flip flop with different combinations of switches.
- Evaluate the Performance
We noticed that the voltages going out of the flip flop are through only one output with is Q bar. No voltages were coming out of the Q output which was strange. Since only the Q bar output was working, this led to the green light illuminating since the logic equation for the green light is (C' x O' x T') = G where C is coughing, O is oxygen, T is temperature, and G is that the green light will light up.
- Prepare the Final Design Report
We have decided that this circuit should theoretically work, and that we were not the only group to have problems with the voltages. So, we decided to go with our circuit and create a design report detailing how this circuit should work with proper voltages coming out of the flip flop.