Equine distress monitor

Horses are subject to several life-threatening conditions that can occur during the night, often leading to death or serious illness by morning. One such condition is colic, which is the most common cause of death for horses. Horses can also become pinned in awkward positions, preventing them from standing back up after they lie down. Death and injury are easily prevented if these conditions are detected during the night, allowing barn staff to intervene in time to save the animal. Electronic monitoring devices exist, but are outdated and clunky.

Horses in high-end equine facilities can be valued at more than one million dollars, and most owners would be willing to invest in a suitable monitoring system if one were available. Equine science faculty estimate an initial US market on the order of 20,000 horses in 250 breeding facilities.

Objective: To develop a wireless equine monitoring system consisting of a low-power transmitting unit and a receiving computer. The transmitting sensor will be triggered by a mechanical tilt switch. Once triggered, the sensor will activate a sensitive accelerometer to monitor the horse's posture for several minutes. If the horse shows signs of colic, the computer will send a text message to the on-call barn staff to alert them of the condition. After several minutes of monitoring, the transmitter will power itself down to save battery life. The final system will ideally require battery replacements no more than twice per year.

The successful prototype design will be tested in USU's equine facility with the cooperation of USU's Equine Science faculty. The Equine Science staff will also assist in developing an appropriate packaging design that can be comfortably and safely attached to the horse for long periods.

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: Low
Commercial Potential: Low to Medium
Warm-Fuzzy Save-the-Animals Factor: High

all weather threat warning system

After a recent visit with the a law enforcement agency this need surfaced. Here are some basic requirements that I came up with.

Objective: Develop a low cost, reliable, all weather threat warning system. This threat warning system would warn the law enforcement officer who is manning an isolated station alone, that an intruder (human) is approaching his position. The system could be mounted on a mast approximately 30 feet above the ground. The mast is retractable for easy of maintenance. This platform 30 feet above ground is approximately 12 inches by 24 inches and will be occupied with other electronic hardware. The threat warning system can be mounted either above the existing hardware or on the platform underneath. The System must have 360 degree coverage and work in all weather conditions and environments. The system must be light weight (a few pounds) and have a simple indicator to tell the law enforcement agent the direction (within 20 or 30 degrees) and distance (no less than 100 yards) to the threat. The warning system must have a low false alarm rate and be able to reject non threats such as animals.

(This is from Michael E. Snow at L3 Communications)

Difficulty: very high
Commercial potential: very high
Cost: high

Home intercom system

Every home has a network of phone wires strung from room to room. Why not use these for a home intercom system. While you are at it, why not add some extra features:
- Call forwarding over intercom system
- Room paging
- House paging
- Caller id
- Call timing
- Answering machine

All this while still maintaining the basic phone functionality. And just for good measure, if there is DSL into the house, don't mess it up either.

Cool factor: medium
Difficutly: high
Commercial potential: high
Cost: low to moderate

Array processing

With array processing, you can steer the direction of an array of antennas, sending energy in a particular direction, or listening in a particular direction.

Here in the department we have an array of microphones with data acquisition equipment (sampling boards). A very cool senior project would be to write some DSP-board software (using department equipment), then provide an interface to a GUI (say, using Matlab) which would do source localization and tracking on the screen. As a speaker moves around the room, the antenna array would mathematically track the position. This could be displayed using a room map.

Cool factor: High
Difficulty: high
Cost: low
Commerical potential --- could be!

Cell phone relay/extender

There are places where cell phones just don't reach --- you can't here me now! One such place is the basement of the good old EL building.

A great senior project would be to design and build a cellphone extender. This would be an antenna system which would collect, amplify, and relay cellphone signals to and from cellphones and cell towers.

Difficulty level: high
Cool factor: high
Commercial potential: high

super evesdropper

It is pretty well known by now that you can evesdrop on a room by shining a laser at a window, then measuring the reflected signal using an interferometer to extract interior sounds from the window vibrations.

Senior project part 1: Build and demonstrate such a system.

But what if the folks inside know you might be listening, and deploy a noise generator to confuse the evesdropping? Well, it is possible to separate signals using independent component analysis (ICA), also known as blind source separation. In this case, we could use two or more sensors to obtain vector measurements, then separate signal (speech) from background noise interference.

Senior project part 2: Build a multiple-laser window evesdropper, then use ICA to separate out noise in the signals.

Cool factor: Extremely high!
Difficulty: high.
Commercial potential: who knows?