Completed projects
Development Board project
Every student builds a ``Development Board'' in their first project course, which is a platform for future projects and experiments. It consists of a perforated 16" by 20" steel subpanel (intended as the subpanel for an electrical enclosure) supported by four furniture coasters and holding two DIN rails for mounting terminal blocks. Also located on the Development Board is a step-down power transformer and rectifier assembly for converting 120 VAC line power to safe, low-voltage DC for powering other circuits. This particular board also contains a PCB with an adjustable voltage regulator circuit.
View 1 ; View 2
The perforations facilitate easy mounting of printed circuit boards, upon which may be built any manner of useful circuits such as signal generators, digital meters, frequency counters, logic probes, etc. When fully populated, such a Development Board may serve as a complete laboratory for experiments which students may use in any location offering 120 VAC power.
Projects completed for external clients
- "Button Battle" game using digital logic ICs
- Fume hood control system using MSP430G2553 microcontroller and home-made air flow sensor
- Programmable digital storefront display using Arduino microcontroller and serial-addressed LEDs: Ms Pac Man Warrior
- Guitar distortion pedal using analog ICs (i.e. opamps): Unfinished Complete
- Rodent repellor project showing PCB and PCB layout using MSP430G2553 microcontroller
Projects completed for the EET program
- Binary adder demonstrator using MSP430G2553 microcontroller, shown adding 5 and 4 to make a sum of 9
- Station Power battery charger for the miniature power grid system (voltage- and current-limited charging circuit for two 6-Volt batteries in series, plus a ground fault indicator)
- Hand-crank self-excited AC generator -- Photo -- Schematic diagram
- Wi-Fi controlled robot using Radpberry Pi computer and Python coding -- Project Journal -- Schematic diagram
- Tech school guest kiosk, a panel with lots of pushbuttons where each one cues up a photograph of a different technical/industrial program at the college. This project uses a CLICK PLC and a C-More remote HMI connected to a large-screen HDMI television monitor -- Photo
- Bargraph voltmeter -- Photo
- Optical theremin, a musical instrument playable using one's hands to block light from sensors -- Photo -- Schematic diagram
- Laser communication link, sending ASCII text data over a long distance using a laser transmitter and photodetector -- Project journal
- Three-phase circuit breaker PCB layout for making low-voltage three-phase AC substation -- Project journal
- Prototype circuit for an electronic drum sequencer built using a 24-stage serial shift register -- Schematic diagram
- Lissajous figure demonstrator using LED array -- Photo -- Project journal
Projects completed for personal use
- Digital lock-box using Arduino microcontroller
- Car audio capacitor bank controller using MSP430G2553 microcontroller (prevents capacitor bank from feeding car engine's starter to reduce stress and improve life, bypasses resistive current limit based on capacitor voltage and time)
- True sine-wave and square-wave signal generator using MSP430G2553 microcontroller, opamp, and charge pump, mounted to the student's Development Board
- Electronic fuse module for student's Development Board power supply
- Arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) for student's Development Board, using EPROM look-up table to digitally synthesize any wave-shape Photo Schematic diagram
Equipment restorations
- Rebuilding an old Hewlett-Packard model 200CD oscillator (sine-wave signal generator) Project journal