Week 2

Patient Monitoring

(BME & EE)

Biomedical and Electrical Engineering

Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical engineering combines engineering and biology to create technologies or machines that help improve healthcare from medical devices like x-rays to artificial organs. Biomedical engineering is needed to help find suitable solutions for humanity's medicine and healthcare.

Electrical Engineering

Electrical engineering focuses on the use of electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. Electrical engineers create circuits, power-systems, and other devices with many uses (mainly communication) to help improve out technology and infrastructure.

Skill Building Activities

We covered the basics of circuits during a lecture and experimented with the two basic types of circuits, series and parallel. We revised that a circuit is a closed loop made up of a battery/power source, connecting wires, and a couple devices such as a light/motor. For a circuit to work, all parts must be closed which basically means that all the parts must be connected to each other.

Series Circuit

In a series circuit, all the different parts of the circuit or connected with one another in a single path. Electricity can only flow throughout the whole circuit if the switch is on and all devices are working so if one of the parts fails, the whole circuits stops. This is similar to how a logic AND gate works.

Parallel Circuit

In a parallel circuit, everything is connected across the same 2 points on the circuit, which allows the circuit to have multiple paths for electricity to flow. Each device operates independently, so if one goes out, the others will still work. This is similar to how a logic OR gate works.

VID_20250625_102314_020.mp4

Parallel Circuit video on the left and Series Circuit video above.

VID_20250625_102320_017.mp4

Semiconductors - Darlington Pair Lab

A Darling pair is made up of two bipolar transistors, either two NPN transistors or two PNP transistors which are connected in such a way so that it boosts a weak signal.

The first transistor the circuit encounters increases the voltage, which is then given to the second transistor which increases the current.

Combining these two together create a much stronger overall current compared to a single transistor by itself, with the final output coming from the collector of the second transistor.

College Readiness Activity

Our group designed a logic circuit to help us practice implementing AND and OR gates into our future circuits through the use of the college readiness criteria. The circuit checks if the student takes either the ACT or SAT as well as either Geology or Psychology. We used a truth table to plot out all the possibilities and probable combinations of the subjects. When one subject from each pair is taken (e.g. SAT and Geology or ACT and Psychology) the circuit's output is then set to "ready" (see video below). This circuit also shows how combining academics and courses through logic gates can help represent/visualize real life decision-making.

Micro:bit - Rock-Paper-Scissors

In this session our group used the accelerometer in a BBC Micro:bit to make a Rock-Paper-Scissors game that reacts to movement. The accelerometer is a motion sensor which reacts and senses how the Micro:bit responds to outside interference (e.g. tilted from left to right, detecting noise, etc.) in this test, we decided to see how it reacted to being shook. We also learned about variables, loops, and if-else statements which helped us understand what we were coding. The Micro:bit in the video below shows how when shook, it presents the image of either a rock, paper, or scissor through LEDs and in the first few seconds of the video you can see how the win count is tallied and reset.

EveryCircuit - Rock-Paper-Scissors

A logic circuit was designed by one of our group members to play Rock-Paper-Scissors using AND gates to interpret every probable output (e.g. paper against rock or scissors against paper). We calculated every possible input beforehand in a truth table (see 3rd picture above), and used this circuit to observe what results it could give whether one of two players win or the outcome is a tie. To better display the outcome, diodes were manipulated so that they would send variations of the current to a pair of LEDs. If both LEDs light up and are yellow, that means the outcome is a tie and the win count stays constant. If one of the players win, the LED on their side lights up green and the other player receives a red LED to show that they lost.

Link to EveryCircuit: https://everycircuit.com/circuit/5294764329140224/rock-paper-scisros

VID_20250625_111253_173.mp4

20250624_094327.mp4

College Readiness Activity on the left and Rock Paper Scissors Microbit above

VID_20250625_145007_751.mp4

Alarm Circuit

The 555 timer makes an electrical signal that goes fast on/off, similar to a pulse. The resistors and capacitors help us manipulate how fast the the electrical signal is, which controls the sound. The transistors then transform the electrical signal into something stronger so that the noise the speaker makes is louder. This specific activity helps us understand how to use the 555 timer and include parts like the capacitors, transistors, and resistors into our project. With this knowledge of being able to use these materials, we can better visualize how we design our heart monitor as it uses similar parts.

Final Design/Project Process

Setting Goals

We decided to create short-term and specific tasks to complete in the process of our final design/project so that we can better visualize how far we are into the product and better manage our time.

Simulation - EveryCircuit & TinkerCad

EveryCircuit and TinkerCad were used as simulations by one of our group members to figure out and effectively plan out/visualize the logic behind the circuit for our final project.

Heart Monitor Project

The heart attack detector works by using multiple AND and OR gates linked together to evaluate which light should turn on. the design moves the signals from each switch and its corresponding inverted signal to each breadboard, which then processes the logic. We have done the same exact thing on TinkerCad and the circuit worked just fine. However, with our physical prototype on the breadboard, only the LEDs are able to function properly with the alarm being the problem with our design. A possible problem that we had assumed to be the cause of the situation is a loose connection as our initial design had worked on a simulation and there were no other problems found with our current product. In future projects similar to this it would been more beneficial if we had materials of higher quality to lower the many possibilities of our circuit malfunctioning.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse