April Update

IEEE Visit (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

Sam Bustillos, President of the SDSU Student Branch IEEE came with 6 other IEEE members to help Current Invents on their project.

During the visit with IEEE's, Current Invents Team continued working on the charging circuit for the fence modules. The team was surprised to learn that the IEEE members were just as stumped as they were on a lot of the problems they were having. That said, the team made some major breakthroughs with the RC circuit. Zach and Dayyan were finally able to charge the capacitor off of the fence pulses (which the members of the IEEE didn't think was going to be possible) and smooth out the waveforms to be read by the oscilloscope. A lot of learning took place to about capacitors and RC circuits in general, and the team's knowledge was put to the test as they demonstrated their findings to the members of the IEEE along the way. Now that Current Invents knows they can charge small capacitors, their next step is to see if they can charge larger capacitors and allow them to keep that charge longer.

In addition, team members Greta and Andrew showed the visitors their shock-box and its schematic. Then an idea came up about displaying the voltage on the shock-box for people to see, and it quickly became the main focus for the shock-box of the evening. They showed Greta and Andrew a few ways on how they could make it work, eventually coming to the idea of using colored LEDs to display the intensity of the shock. They decided to use the arduino, and they gave examples of how to code the idea. Overall, Greta and Andrew have a clearer plan on how to move forward with the shock-box.

Technical Update

(Written by: Francesca Bragg)

We have now switched to a modular approach to the system. There will be an off-the-shelf fence energizer (E1). We will introduce our own voltage source (V1) alongside the energizer. We will then distribute a number of modules along the length of a fence. Instead of trying to measure and characterize the inconsistent pulses of the energizer (which has been a struggle), we will use V1 to introduce a small voltage in-between pulses. This small voltage will be used to (a) power the modules and (b) to characterize the fence by comparing the relative measurements of the modules.

In order to start experimenting with the nitty details in our code and subjecting our fence to different environmental conditions, we need to understand how it behaves untouched at its "baseline." So, with this new idea in route, we have kicked off March with even more testing to understand our generator/electric fence system. Currently, we have split into small groups, each guided by professionals in the field, and are focusing in on fine points that will help to achieve this goal. Some of us are continuing work on our Shock Box and Arduino Program, while others are working on our new model idea, and trying to collect data from our standard fence set up. We are working to induce our own small voltage on the fence wire and observe how it behaves to see if we can make a general guideline of what to expect the signal strength to be at the end of the line after each pulse.