Cal Poly IEEE CMS

The High Altitude Balloon project is a student-led project that aims to develop a near-space balloon platform that can carry a payload of sensors, cameras, or experiments. This balloon will reach heights of up to 80,000 feet before bursting, letting its payload parachute back to earth. During flight, the balloon will relay GPS position and height back to mobile chase units that will follow the balloon on its course and retrieve the payload it drops. The balloon is using a Parallax Propeller microcontroller to interface with all the sensor modules and parse the data to be transmitted to the ground units. The goal of this project is to develop (and test!) a HAB kit that could be sold to other educational institutions through Cal Poly's IEEE Student Branch. 

Natcar is an annual competition held by UC Davis or UCSD in May 2010. The objective is to create an autonomous RC-scale size vehicle capable of detecting and following a current-carrying wire as quickly and accurately as possible. This time will be the first year the IEEE or even Cal Poly will put together a team to compete and as such, it will be a great learning experience! This will put into practice the team's knowledge on physics, mechanical, circuit design, microcontrollers, programming, and other engineering skills.

For competition rules and previous competition videos, check out UC Davis's official Natcar page:

http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/natcar/

PolyKart is now a quarterly competition that the IEEE-SB here at Cal Poly hosts. The goal is to interface up to three infrared emitters/sensors with the PolyBot Board, an exclusive board made by Professor Seng and is normally used as a robot controller board for use in Roborodentia, senior projects, and any project requiring microcontroller control, and to make the new "Kart" follow a black lined course that is different every quarter. One of the highlights of the competition is to see who can go around the track the fastest and most accurately. Please check out some of our videos from last year's competition! The new videos will be posted shortly!

Motion-LED Cube :

Do you love those fun and basic games such as snake on the old gaming stations or even your phone? Now imagine a motion based gaming cube (no relation to Nintendo's GameCube).  The goal is to create a cube with each side containing a 24 x 24 LED matrix that is controlled by the electronics inside the cube.  By adding an accelerometer, the user can play a game of snake that spans all sides of the cube. If you want to learn about digital electronics and embedded systems while designing a cool user interface (or if you just like bright flashing lights), swing by the IEEE lounge (20-115).  Teams are forming today!

Roborodentia is an annually held robotics competition hosted by CPES and HKN during Cal Poly's Open House during the month of April. The objective is to build a robot that will meet the specifications of the competition and compete against other entries for three prize levels ($1000 for 1st, $600 for 2nd, and $400 for 3rd place). For Roborodentia XVII, there will be a head-to-head double elimination tournament where the object of the competition is to collect small cans and push them into an end zone. In the past, line-following robots have competed in head-to-head double elimination style tournaments where the object was to launch the most ping pong balls into the opposing robot's net. Participants have included a team of ME, CSC, CPE, EE, undergraduate or graduate students. IEEE this year would like to form 2-3 competitive and talented (2-3 student) teams to compete. To many students, this has become their senior projects as well. So if you've had previous experience in classes, robots, or Roborodentia and would like to participate please e-mail the club's Technical Projects Coordinator with a general info and experience, to be considered for one of the teams.

A CMoy is a pocket headphone amplifier originally designed by Chu Moy.

The headphone amplifier is designed around single or dual-channel op-amps such as Burr-Brown's OPA2134 or OPA2132PA, however, a wide variety of op-amps have been successfully implemented. The amplifier's design is quite simple. It consists of only a few components, can be assembled on a small section of protoboard, has a lower parts cost than other headphone amplifiers, and can run for many hours on a single 9 volt battery. In spite of this, a well-made CMoy amplifier still cannot drive demanding headphones, like Sennheiser's HD600 but may show marginal improvements on low impedance Grados quite well. These characteristics have made it very popular among DIY hobbyists, especially those who have not built an amplifier before. The CMoy headphone amplifier can be fit into Altoids tins.

No previous experience with electronics is required to complete this project. This project requires intensive soldering. If you do not have prior experience with soldering, it is suggested that you read a soldering guide first.

Arduino project updates are coming soon!

Stop by the IEEE Lounge (20-115) and speak to an officer if you have questions.

Formula Hybrid is a competition sponsored by both IEEE and SAE where students design, build, and race hybrid racecars. The cars are judged on efficiency, design, and performance at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in March. Students from schools around the world will be present to compete with Cal Poly's entry. The Cal Poly student branches of IEEE and SAE are working together for the first time to design and build the primary electrical system of the vehicle. The primary electrical system safely provides high voltage DC power to the vehicle and must be engineered to be robust and redundant.

This project aims to develop a scanning laser projector to display a 640x480 pixel image on a projection surface. The projector will use a single laser directed at a system of mechanically actuated mirrors. A grayscale will be achieved by PWM modulation of the laser's output.