Exciting news this week! Northrop Grumman has been kind enough to invite the members of team MATR including faculty sponsor Dr. Eric Schwartz to visit their site in Melbourne, FL. The team is grateful for the invitation and looking forward to the opportunity to get a deeper look in to the company sponsoring their IPPD project. Communications with Northrop Grumman liaisons are ongoing, to set up a date and get a full plan in place for the visit. In terms of progress this week, electrical and computer engineers made progress on microcontroller programming and system integration, and have begun outlining a PCB design. Meanwhile, the mechanical engineering team is moving on to the next iteration of enclosure manufacturing, considering ways to improve the 3D-printed mold casting of the electronics enclosure for the sensor package.
MATR Mechanical Engineering sub-team working on enclosure manufacturing process. (left to right) 3D printed mold for sensor package enclosure, mixing epoxy, pouring into mold.
MATR delivered their first Qualitative Review Board (QRB1) for the development of their prototype. The team was able to present the current status of their prototype development, as well as the current plans for completing the prototype. Updates on the current status included the successful ARGOS transmissions and what has been learned about the ARGOS satellite system through making transmissions and retrieving the data sent. One insight we gained is that the locations provided through telemetry are inconsistent and can be quite inaccurate, up to a few miles off, which confirmed that we will need to integrate a separate GPS module into the sensor package. An appropriate GPS module has since been ordered and is currently being shipped. Additionally, the enclosure manufacturing process was tested prior to delivering the presentation, and insights gained from that process were presented. The epoxy enclosure for the electronics was cast using the 3D printed mold according to plan, but the epoxy stuck to the mold, despite the use of a mold-release chemical specifically designed for the epoxy being used. The hardened epoxy was too stuck to be completely removed from the mold, so the team is planning to increase the density of the 3D printed mold among other measures to ensure the next iteration of the enclosure can be completely and easily removed from the mold once the epoxy cures. Positive insights on the enclosure manufacturing process include the transparency of the cured epoxy as well as its strength, giving the team confidence in being able to utilize ambient light sensors and safely protect electronics. Moving forward, electrical and computer engineers will work together to integrate all peripherals with the TI MSP430 microcontroller, and mechanicals will continue to develop the enclosure manufacturing process.
MATR GUI displaying the 2 locations received by ARGOS satellites during communication testing.
Team MATR has had an exciting week of building and testing. Preliminary testing of ARGOS satellite communication was conducted and turned out to be a success! The team was able to get location and message data sent from their hardware, through an ARGOS satellite, which sent that data to an ARGOS data center, where it was able to be retrieved and displayed by team MATR’s GUI software. This successful test will allow us to move forward in the testing process to get a full measure of satellite communication capabilities. Also the mechanical team has sent out the design files for the enclosure mold to be 3D printed, and we hope to get it back early next week to begin testing our enclosure design and manufacturing process. On Tuesday, January 25, we will present our first Qualitative Review Board (QRB1) and receive feedback from UF faculty on our progress and current plan. Along with that we will continue testing satellite communication, and begin integrating ARGOS hardware and our sensors with the MSP430 microcontroller.
David Carvajal soldering pins on to ARGOS capable circuit board for testing.
As we begin the second and final semester of the IPPD course, Team MATR is getting ready to build a final prototype of the turtle tracking device. Since returning from holiday vacations, the team has been hard at work on the final planning for the next couple of months. The mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering majors are splitting up into sub-teams for some of the more specific technical tasks. First and foremost, electrical and computer teams will be working on micro-controller programming and making successful satellite transmissions. While the mechanical team will be focusing on manufacturing the mold for enclosing the electrical system in epoxy.
To close out the first semester of the IPPD program, Team MATR delivered their system level design presentation for the IPPD System Level Design Review (SLDR) event. Among those in attendance were our Northrop Grumman Engineering Liaisons Jessica McDaniel and Mary Alice Beck, and Director of Northrop Grumman’s Project Turtle Tech Joel Oguete. Team MATR is thankful that they were all able to make the trip up from Melbourne to attend the event and interact with the team, providing great feedback and encouragement following the SLDR presentation.
Turtle equipped with satellite tracking tag emerging from the water. Depiction of a scenario where the sensor package will make contact with ARGOS satellites.
Members of Team MATR got back to work this passed week after a restful Thanksgiving Break. As we approach the final days of the semester, Team MATR is preparing for the System Level Design Review (SLDR) presentation that will be delivered in front of our Northrop Grumman liaisons, along with the other IPPD teams, liaisons, and faculty members on Tuesday, December 7th. We are excited to finally have an in person meeting with our liaisons and to show them the work we have done on the design for the project they gave us, and to share our plans for next semester when we will be completing our prototype. The presentation will include a robust explanation of how the sensor package we are designing will operate, and steps we will take to test the prototype and ensure that quantitative design specifications are met.
Team MATR delivering prototype presentation. Jack Gonzales demonstrating the map function of the GUI for viewing animal locations.
On Tuesday the team delivered prototype presentations to various UF faculty members and professors for IPPD’s Prototype Inspection Day. Thanks to UF professors and faculty that participated in the event, we received a lot of valuable feedback on our design, and have reviewed the feedback and made plans to amend our design and project plan. The team now has plans to solidify a system level design of the device, that will have to be finalized before our System Level Design Review (SLDR) on December 7th. Among these plans is doing more experimentation to measuring power consumption of our sensor package, to ensure that our design spec of a year long device lifespan can be met with all of the sensors and features we currently have included in our design. Another major plan is to finalize a method of exposing sensors to the outside of the device to collect data on the saltwater environment. This is a challenging problem because we cannot compromise the water proofing of the device, so engineers will have to experiment with some different methods over the coming weeks to determine our best option.
interfacing with ARGOS chip (top left) and Arduino UNO for satellite transmission testing
Over the past week Team MATR has been quite busy! The team has been hard at work putting together a prototype of our device for prototype inspection day. Electrical Engineers have been working on building the hardware we need to make satellite transmissions. Mechanical Engineers have been modelling the device in CAD software and running simulations to test the strength of the design. And Computer Engineers have been working on a GUI to organize and present data that was transmitted through the ARGOS system. The GUI will automatically pull data from ARGOS’ database and present it in the form of graphs, including a map for presenting GPS coordinates received from the tracker. We will be showing off all of these features in our prototype presentation, and hoping to get feedback we can use to improve our design.
Experts from the Sea Turtle Conservancy have provided helpful guidance to our project. Special thanks to them for their cooperation! check out the organization and the work they do to help turtles at https://conserveturtles.org/
Prototype inspection day is approaching! and the team is excited about moving toward implementing the design ideas we have come up with. The preliminary design report has been signed off on by engineering liaisons from Northrop Grumman, and another round of meetings with turtle research experts is being planned. In our team meeting this week we discussed the questions we have for experts at this point, in preparation for the meetings so that we can gather as much information as possible before our prototype inspection. We are primarily concerned with the feasibility of our design as it compares to other devices currently being used, and getting a sense of how our device could impact the environment, so we can minimize any possible negative impact. In regards to our prototype inspection coming up on November 16, the team has split up mechanical and electrical/computer engineering tasks to implement and test some core components of our design. The mechanical aspects include a model of the device using CAD software, and running simulations to test the strength of the design. The model may also be 3D printed to provide a sense of a possible size and shape for the final device. The electrical and computer engineering aspects include doing some preliminary interfacing of sensors on the device and creating a simple GUI that will be used for viewing collected data from the device. So far we have received a temperature sensor and the ARGOS transmitter, and plan on getting at least these working together with a microcontroller and making satellite transmissions by prototype inspection day.
This week the team got some exciting news! Our project was approved for use of the ARGOS system. ARGOS system managers provided us with an ARGOS ID, so we can register devices with the satellite system and obtain transmitted data. Another team meeting with an ARGOS representative was held to discuss our next steps for getting registered and using the system. The team can now begin testing the possibilities of remote data transmission to validate our design as we move toward the prototyping phase. We will also be receiving our ARGOS transceiver hardware this coming week, so we can begin exploring its functionality as we continue to research and order the other sensors and hardware that will be included in the device.
