This project explores distribution line protection in high risk areas as well as a proposition for a new design that could help save money and lives. California in the past years has been exposed to a multitude of wildfires and about 10% of them are caused by power lines. Many homes and lives have been lost to these fires and it is our duty as engineers to protect these communities no matter how small. This new protection scheme involves mechanically coupling a high frequency audio transducer to a distribution line, with the intention of running into a fault and returning back for us to read and interpret. There are no studies on this topic so our main goal for now is to research and experiment as much as possible. More specifically there is no research on the permeability of an ultrasonic wave on braided cables. Our future goal involves testing on smaller scale braided cables to extrapolate further data and make a professional opinion with regards to its feasibility and scientific accuracy.

This Self Driving Vehicle was the final project for my Micro-controllers class. I worked in a group of three to build this car, and my specific role was designing a control system for the DC Motors and integrating the sensors and slave units to the Raspberry Pi master controller. As you can see from the enormous contraption in the pictures above, our main goal for this project was to add as many features as possible, with primary focus being on functionality rather than presentation.

This Micromouse was a group project that I built with two of my friends to compete in the IEEE Micromouse Competition. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the finished product, in which we replaced the breadboard with a custom PCB board. I was responsible for designing the motor control system, but I also helped design the maze-solving algorithm, and custom built PCB. We use a STM Nucleo microcontroller and designed and 3D printed the chassis and wheels. Building this micromouse was a great learning experience, and we were able to get second place at the IEEE Region 6 Micromouse Competition.

I used stepper motors for the robot, and used input from infrared sensors to design the control system. There was one sensor attached to the front of the micromouse, and one on each side. Using the input from these sensors, I was able to determine if the micromouse was close to a wall in the maze. I implemented a PID controller; however, because I was using stepper motors I only made use of the proportionality constant to adjust the speed of the right, or left motor to keep the micromouse centered. I also created functions in C Programming for the micromouse to go forward, turn, reverse, accelerate, and slow down.

I wrote the maze solving algorithm in C Programming by creating a 2 dimensional array with a number for each square in the maze. During the first run of the micromouse in the maze, it maps out the maze by going to every square of the maze. Based on this map, the algorithm marks off the path to center that takes the least amount of squares. Then in the second round, the micromouse is able to get to the center of the maze as quickly as possible.

I also helped design the PCB in Diptrace. Starting from our breadboard wiring, we created a circuit diagram on paper and used this to design the PCB in diptrace. I learned how to label pins, add components and how to create a sleek design in Diptrace. However, due to time restrictions, we weren't able to order the custom PCB so we built our own PCB on a solder board. I used a multimeter to test and troubleshoot our PCB so it was ready for implementation.