Senior Design Capstone Part 13: Running Tests and Showcasing our Work!

2023-07-21 | By Will Siffer

License: Attribution Non-commercial

Some updates before we begin!

We have been working hard in the last week to ensure our design is ready for review presentations and that we are able to present a functioning unit to our professional industry partners and the guests at Purdue's Design Expo! Something that we are very passionate about on the team is that we are continually improving the device and making sure it is set up for success in every way, as I mentioned last week when we found an issue that prevented RFID from working properly. Now that the issue is solved, we can re-run tests and evaluate the RFID system once again.

It is the week of design review presentations for all of the EPICS teams, giving us an opportunity to present our hard work throughout the semester to industry partners and possible future employers. One of the big parts of design review is also submitting documentation that showcases the work that has been done in the form of a "Design Document" and making a "Transition Document" for the team next semester in case there are new members that need to be brought up to speed on the project. Since this project is not delivered yet, we know there will be new members to the team. So, we are making sure to be extra thorough in our Transition Document to reduce the lag time in resuming the project. Since this project is quite complex, I have also made a couple of extra documents and this entire blog series available to the future team. Since this blog was a weekly format of the work done and the lessons learned, the future team will have an incredible amount of information in these blogs.

Range Testing for our RFID Scanner!

Now that we have our PCB repaired and ready to test again, we decided to run another range test to be sure the tags can be scanned from a distance, even on battery power. Luckily, we had a testing team responsible for the test plans as well as carrying out the tests.

Since we had issues before (see last week) with the 5V line being truly at 5V, we decided to measure the line and double-check before completing the range test, and we verified that the board was indeed repaired!

Measurement of the 5V supply on the PCB

From there, we were able to start our range test. As referenced in my previous post discussing it in more detail, the test was carried out at varying distances from 5 to 100 feet to evaluate RFID performance. The test was completed by the test team, both indoors and out, to ensure that the system was not performing differently in changing environments.

Indoor Perpendicular Range Test

Once we completed the range test, we could validate that the RFID system was performing as expected and move on to documentation.

Documentation, the engineer's enemy

Many people love to make projects and build new things, but writing them down so someone else can do them too is another story. Something that I am passionate about is documenting the work being done so that it is replicable and easy to follow, allowing someone to understand the work I am doing. This makes it easier for people to evaluate the project since they understand it faster. By giving the reviewers a chance to read my documents early, I am able to make more progress and produce an overall better final product.

I am excited to see this blog post come to a near end; part 14 will be the last of the series. Just as documentation will help the future team, this blog series will help explain to others starting their senior design how much work they may be expected to do, as well as explain to future teams how I completed the work, and what steps were taken to get to where the project stands today.

That's all I have for this edition; I am extremely proud of all of the work that has been done this semester, and I believe this project has real potential to become a marketable technology in the future. Until next week, my name is Will Siffer from Purdue University, and I hope you learned something new today!

Recommended Reading

• Senior Design Capstone Part 1: What (or Who?) is LoRa?
• Senior Design Part 2: Using Eagle to make a custom PCB
• Senior Design Part 3: Designing a SMD PCB full of sensors
• Senior Design Part 4: Assembling, Testing, and Debugging Circuit Boards!
• Senior Design Part 5: Diagnosing PCB Issues
• Senior Design Part 6: Protecting our Power!
• Senior Design Part 7: Compressing data with Magic? (It's just math!)
• Senior Design Part 8: Squishing Bugs and Finding More
• Senior Design Part 9: Can adding a delay be a good thing?
• Senior Design Part 10: Making Sure the Project is Ready to Pass On
• Senior Design Part 11: Strengthening Integration with Testing
• Senior Design Part 12: Solder Reflow Sabotage!

"As I work toward the end of the semester, I am finding myself very excited to see this project get to a point where we are able to see how the project could one day evolve into a real product. Experiences like this make me think about how my work has broader impacts, possibly on a global scale. Thinking locally, there are countless opportunities to use these low-power devices to power small sensors around campus. They could serve as trash level detectors or as remote data loggers for research on agricultural land. These are just a couple of other uses, but I think one of the beauties of the board is that it can be expanded for multiple uses. I hope someday to work this device into something that I can patent, and hopefully, my work will have broad impacts on the community. This can be applied to my life outside of Purdue because I hope to continue working on projects after I graduate."

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