EE 175 Senior Design
UCR

My Journey of understanding the process of developing a Project.

The Low Noise Preamplifier is used to produce an amplified version of a weak signal gathered from a detector. In our case the detector is a hall sensor input. The purpose of this device is to mount it on top of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).

I used Bluetooth and RFCOMM communication do send ASCII bits of data ,4 at a time. Converted them and displayed them as mV on the application.As well as making the application handle multiple threads.

This will show only my input in the group project. Everything here is what I personally did in the project.(I was involved in both Hardware and Software)

Features

Overview 1

Low Noise Amplifier is both Portable and Low Cost.
(Cost is roughly =$200USD)

Overview 2

Application has a container for automatically connecting amplifier to familiar phone devices

Overview 3

Follows RFCOM Communication Protocols and Transfers data to the Application. Also Creates Multiple Threads to maintain the application and raspberry pi working properly.

Overview 4

Detailed error messages and asks for permission if device does not have bluetooth activated.

Major Journal Entries

General Design Completed

I broke up our team to research the different parts our design was going to have. Asked my team for their input,to make any changes to the block diagram design I designed.

Parts List Completed

This was the parts list I wrote down in a word document and sent to my team to make sure it seemed good. At this point I had already researched a couple of components and bought the pieces to test out my amplifier design.

App Development Started

I began creating the application from scratch. I was unfamiliar with android studio and java. I decided to use Roman's resources and began designing the application's main features.

Amplifier Testing

For our design, we tried incorporating a jfet resistor due to the low noise and limited bandwidth. But we faced many issues with getting the desired voltage gain with this design. The gain was always lower than we would like it to be.

Bluetooth Feature Finished

Includes my actual pushes to Github and how many lines of code I inputted throughout the projects timeline.One of the hardest struggles from this project was getting the bluetooth to be active on the application. Ended up making use of four threads of the pi and phone to keep a stable communication between both devices.

Raspberry PI Communication Completed With APP

I mainly helped in handling the specific names required to obtain the right data from the app. I also did the pairing and requesting and receiving UUID from devices to avoid settings pairing from phone. Which allows pairing directly from app.

Main Features

Phone Application

To reduce cost and weight, all data is transfered to phone via Bluetooth Communication.

Low Noise/Cost

Low Signal Amplifier we designed is roughly $200USD compared to the bulky $500-$3000USD models.

Portability

Since the amplifier contains a raspberry pi and application. It does not need a display, making the actual amplifier smaller.

Personal Details

Bryan Jesse Parada
Computer Engineer

bpara001@ucr.edu
Los Angeles Area