Project Overview

This is the semester-long project for my senior capstone design course at USC. I am teamed up with 2 other engineers, 4 marketing students, and 3 fine arts students for the project. The design requirements from the engineering standpoint are that we design and build a hardware & software prototype for a 4+ outlet power controller that monitors the power of its devices. The idea is that many household electronics suck power when not in use -- from standby mode. The statistic we were given in class was that the standby devices in the average household waste energy equivalent to lighting a 60 watt lightbulb 24 hours of the day. The power controller must be programmed to store turn-on and shut-off times for each day of the week for each device. These are time frames when the consumer knows the devices are not in use; manual override is also available. The challenge is to work within monetary and functional constraints as gathered by the marketing students' focus groups.

Here I will keep a log of my team's progress throughout the semester.

EE 459Lx Course Website
 

Project Log

Friday, February 6, 2009
Today was our first day in the lab. Here is a summary of what we accomplished:

• Attached screws to board
  
• Attached power source with 10uf capacitor to reduce noise
  
• Attached 2 sets of header pins for VCC and GND extensions
  
• Attached 10Mhz oscillator clock
  
• Attached 74LS14 Schmitt trigger inverter chip
  
• Wired clock output through 2 Schmitt triggers to clean up signal

Friday, February 13, 2009
After discussing a problem with our clock signal with our professor, we concluded that the Schmitt triggers were hindering instead of helping our clock so we removed them. We verified that the clock's ringing was okay, since it stayed above 4 volts, and the microcontroller would clean up the signal further.
We then attached the MC908JL16 microcontroller to the boards along with the VCC, GND, and CLK connections. We loaded a very simple test program "CWJL16-0.c" that would toggle one I/O pin on and off. It worked!

Friday, February 20, 2009
After meeting with the fine arts and marketing teams this past Tuessday, we started finalizing design ideas. Today we researched online for parts and these are what we decided to order:

• (5) Push Buttons: Digikey Part Number: 401-1963-ND
  
• (1) LCD: 24 characters x 2 lines, 8 bit interface (HD44780 controller) from BG Micro
  
• (1) IR Receiver from All Electronics
  
• (1) IR Remote from All Electronics

Thursday, February 26, 2009
Attached real time clock component DS1307.

Friday, February 27, 2009
Continued work on the real time clock; added back-up battery; added pull-up resistors.

Thursday, March 6, 2009
Confirmed I/O pin allocation for the uC.
Wrote test code for the clock.

Friday, March 7, 2009
Attached LCD and connected pins.

Monday, March 9, 2009
Wrote test code for buttons -- LED blinks different number of times.