erique82

Hie, I'm currently desperate in search of an electronics project for my final year. I need a project which is not too simple, and not too complex either. I'm looking forward to a project that is simple on the concept, but at the same time I want to impress my lecturers and the other students. I need one that can be developed or built in a time frame of 1 to 3 months. These are my ideas so far, I hope that someone can come up with a better one or assist me in building my project.

1. A ground surveillance robot fitted with camera and motion sensor. Moves automatically on a specified route. Whenever it senses a motion within a specified proximity, it will take a snapshot (or two even) in the direction of the movement (and maybe can send the pcitures via wireless?). Triggers a loud alarm if moved from its location unless it is disabled by flicking a hidden switch on the robot.

2. Cat/Dog food dispenser. What more can I say? Will dispense food and water after a certain period of time (say once in 6 hours for food once in 12 hours for water). Rings a bell (Pavlov experiment comes to mind, haha) according to the specified time. Simple, yet neat. Not sure if the other students will laugh at me for such a project.

3. A pair of glasses that detects your eye movements. Whenever you're sleepy, it will send an electric jolt probably 5-20V to wake you up. Good for drivers and boring old lectures. Hahaha.

4. Locking your car via bluetooth. Any intruders? It will send an sms or a missed call to your handphone!


Besides these crazy projects, I really hope to find a project that has something to do with spreaders in port cranes, or anything to do with it. Ideas, I need them. Thank you

JimB

I dont know about port cranes, but consider a crane on an offshore oil production platform.
How about a device which can control the crane to safely pick up a container off the back of a supply boat when there is a 10 foot swell on the sea.

JimB

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ThermalRunaway

I think you can cross your 1st idea out, mainly because unless you're extremely familiar with robotics and have lots of experience in programming them, you're not going to have any previous work to build-on and therefore you're going to be starting with an empty notepad. A time frame of 2-3 months is not adequate for this,

I'm not sure I completely understand your other ideas, but I do like the idea of the last one. Regarding that idea I would keep the general principal but ditch the blue-tooth part and use a simpler communication protocol instead. I don't know if you've ever taken a look at the bluetooth protocol but it's highly complex and as such you're back to the previous problem of 2-3 months not being a large enough time frame.

Elektor Electronics once did an SMS based "alarm" system which would alert you via text message if certain criteria were met (such as your car being entered without a key). I can't remember which issue this was but you might be able to search for it on their website or alternatively browse the projects section until you come across it. This might be of use to you if you're seriously considering your last idea for a project

Brian

erique82

Yeah, I was considering the last project (car intruder notification via sms). But I had several ideas. The car will send an sms If the doors are either pried open without using the key. I thought that the idea of instead of sending one sms, why not more (to your families and friends or even the cops)? You might misplaced your handphone, or you were in a loud environment which makes you unaware of the sms.
Any bright ideas? I can make this happen. 8)

adamthole

I don't know that it would be such a good idea to send one to the cops...even if they did have an SMS device of some sort...because as with all security systems the majority of times it goes off it is going to be a fake (someone was in the car still when it was armed, etc.)

Also, if this is built wouldn't it require the user to have 2 cell phones, therefore 2 monthly bills? One that would stay in the vehicle and only send a text if the doors were opened and the other your personal cell phone?

Don't get me wrong, I think it is a cool idea. I was just looking at some of the problems you may face with it. Good Luck!

ThermalRunaway

Well you can register the in-car SMS on pay as you go, can't you. Provided your car isn't subject to theft attempts to many times, a tenner credit should last you quite a while

As I said earlier, Elektor Electronics did a project on this some time ago so check out their back issues.

Brian

CHUX

Hello
I'm very much intrested in the SMS based alarm system project. I have searched Elektor Electronics site including their project section but couldn't find it. Can any one help me with the materials.
Thanx

sram

If you are interested, you can build a metal detector. There is more than one method to build it. BFO is one of them. It is easy and you can make it more complex by adding extra features like:

-- distinguish between large and small objects(i.e huge pipes undergroud --- Coins).

-- distinguish between different types of metals. (Gold, Silver, copper...etc)

-- approximately determine how far the metalic object is.

and other creative features.

Pommie

I don't remember Elektor publishing an SMS sender, but I do remember one in Silicon Chip.

You'll find it Here.

HTH

Mike.

CHUX

Thanx for the link. I'm having problem of finding it there. Can you send me the complete material as attach file.
thanx for your understanding.

Someone Electro

How about an miniature model of a crane.To make it interesting you can make it programable.Like you just manualy show it where it the pile of boxes and where to put them off.

then it wod automaticly cary box by box to the destination.

You cod also make ultrasonic radar by meshuring the dsitance and thruing the head aroud so you can see what the room looks like.

You cod also put that "radar" on an wierlesly contrled robot.Then you cod drive it around and you cod see evryting whats around you.

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hassannissan

ASKANA

hmmmm... Sounds interesting do u have any circuit ideas or circuit diagrams for these... ?

srimannarayanakarthik

from today south korea are using robots for border survillance,check that news in google,that might help you

Paul Obrien

Here's a project a RFID cat recognition system, the problem is cats will invade another cats territory then mark there, not a problem in the wild but when it's in your home --very messy and smelly. So while it has been done before, try a simple RFID detection and cat flap controller. BTW UK & AUS use 132.4KHz and US uses 125KHz for cat chip implants..
The Elektor bluetooth controller used a Java program to control(at the mobile) the remote device rather than the more expensive SMS controller option.