Data Acquisition & Processing

A physical temperature measurement system is developed using Wheatstone bridge, where MyDAQ is used for data acquisition and the data processing is done using LabVIEW 2019 software. a flow chart is shown in Fig.D1 which explains the design concept of the project.

*System Working Principle:

For temperature sensing, Wheatstone bridge voltage divider circuit is selected for its high sensitivity where a 10KΩ NTC thermistor is used as a variable resistance & 3 uniform 10KΩ resistors are used as constant resistance. Initially the circuit is supplied with 5 volt power supply which is lowered to 2.5 volts using a simple voltage divider made from 10KΩ resistors. The circuit connections are shown in Fig.D1. The output of voltage from Wheatstone bridge is acquired by MyDAQ micro controller where data is processed using commands provided by the program made in LabView (Fig.D2). Program in LabView converts voltage received form wheatstone bridge into usable value of temperature in Kelvin using Steinhart-Hart equation which is further converted into degree Celsius  & Fahrenheit. The value of temperature is analyzed in the program to check whether the temperature is rising beyond 40 Degrees & falling below 15 Degrees. In case of temperature is above 40 or below 15 degree Celsius the program sounds the alarm & red LED indication is give to the driver or temperature motoring associate.

 A digital console is made using LabView in order to visualize & monitor the driver's real time body temperature. A provison is made in the program to export the data of variation of body temperature with respect to time (Fig.D3) in order to further analyze the results manually/digitally. System simulation results are shown in Fig.D4 & FigD5.

This was the BE final year Mechanical Engineering project which won award for best project in mechanical category at Pune University's 'Abhikalp' project competition. Project was completed in 2018.

*Objective:

People suffering with medical conditions such as Myasthenia Gravis or recovering from cardiac strokes, usually tend to loose partial control over their arm which can be treated with rehabilitation exercises defined by Physiatrists i.e. doctors specialized in physical medicine & rehabilitation. The rehabilitation is usually performed at hospitals with considerably huge equipment whereas patients can perform some of these exercises at home if they get access to the rehabilitation devices. Thus the main objective of this project was to develop a portable solution for arm muscle rehabilitation for people suffering with Myasthenia Gravis or recovering from cardiac strokes.

*Working Principle:

Project consisted 2 rehabilitation exercise applications,

Application 1: Finger rehabilitation

This application was mainly based on acquiring data for arm muscle movement, processing that data using Arduino UNO micro-controller & actuating a servo motor for the purpose of movement of artificial fingers attached to real fingers of the patient.  

Application 2: Bicep rehabilitation

This application was fairly simple as it only included manual control of clockwise/anti-clockwise rotation of DC motor for the purpose of actuation of the 4 bar mechanism designed for the up/down movement of bicep.

Publication:

Development of Upper Limb Assistive Robotic Devices for Arm Functionality Rehabilitation- A Review 

This was the most important sub-system made for the final year project of diploma mechanical engineering. The project title was 'Automatically controlled Air as coolant system for manufacturing processes' the project was completed in 2014.

*Objective:

To use air as a coolant for manufacturing processes while making use of the coolant only in the case of physical contact between cutting tool & the material which is being machined.

*Working Principle:

In order to control the flow of coolant automatically, a ball type pneumatic valve was equipped with a a limited rotation servo motor.

A proximity sensor was used to trace the contact between cutting tool & machining surface. In case of contact, the difference in signal output was identified by processing the data using Arduino Uno micro controller. On the basis of processed data a command is then sent to servo motor for opening/closing of the ball type pneumatic valve.

A system to record a mono-aural audio signal is developed based using myDAQ & LabVIEW programm to configure input data and obtaining audio data in time domain. The Fig.D10 shows the concept of the system in a flowchart, which illustrates that the recorded audio signal using microphone connected to only one channel is conditioned in myDAQ and sampled digitally. The acquired noisy signal is passed through a low pass filter which is processed and displayed as a waveform in time domain. Overall system simulation result is shown in fig.D8.