Iowa State University Ecpe Science Center May 10-16

1. Problem Statement Tour guides visiting the science center are usually not from the ECPE department. The current exhibits in Science Center have a poster explaining them, but there is not a structured tour. We do not want the tour guide to give false information or a wrong impression of the ECPE department. • System Requirement • The program will take the burden off the tour guide. • The program will allow additional exhibits to be added easily. • The program shall be robust and handle various situations. • The presentation shall be under 10 minutes. • The layout of the room shall allow a maximum of 30 people. • The projects shall include instructions that are understandable • to the common user. Solution We will be working to build an automated/interactive room with the help of the last three phases. The room will be in Coover Hall and contain projects from previous phases. Tour guides will swipe the RFID card to start an automated tour. This will take the burden off the tour guide and ensure that correct information is given. Non-tour groups also can visit the science center and watch the informational video for each project. Iowa State University Ecpe Science Center May 10-16 • System Components • Room and Project lights (x10 and Insteon) • RFID tag and reader • Computers with Labview program Concept Sketch System Description The backbone of the system is the Labview program which takes input from the user to navigate between different menus on the touch screen. Each project has a video explaining what the project is and how it operates. When the project is selected, a spotlight illuminates the project, and the corresponding video will be displayed. RFID Tag and Reader The RFID reader reads a unique key from each RFID tag. We map each key with a tour guide so we can identify when a tour is present and begin the presentation . ` Labview Program We used Labview for the interfaces on all of the computers. With this program we were able to display data on the screen (see right for example) as well as share data between computers. Lighting Control ( x10 and Insteon ) The lights in the science center are controlled by sending signals across the existing power lines as shown in the diagram. This allows for future projects to be added easily as well as moving the Science Center to a different room. Room Layout This is the layout of the projects and lights in the science center. The current setup consists of three exhibits with the addition of up to at least three more exhibits. • Testing • To test our system we first tested each component of our system separately before combining them all. We then ran through multiple user scenarios to check for vulnerabilities in the operational flow of the program (see image to the right). • The cases that we tested are as follows: • Tour guide with a tour group • Visitor with out tour guide • Current student visiting Project Schedule Team Members Derek Bond (EE) Matt Schulz (EE) Si-myung Yang (CprE) Advisors Jason Boyd ManimaranGovindarasu Summary In conclusion, we created the interactive/automated room for the tour presentation. Current students, prospective students and parents, and any faculty members can visit science center and learn more about what electrical and computer engineering is all about. Website http://seniord.ece.iastate.edu/may1016 Client Vicky Thorland-Oster