Day 5 Friday 6-14

Work, Work, and More Work!!!



We were able to have another "Girl Power" session to discuss Ohm's Law.

Our afternoon session consisted of us becoming familiarized with UNT's library system.

Day 4 Thursday 6-13

Day 4

Work Day!!!!

Today we were officially named "Team Girl Power"! We are the only team that consist of ALL women.  Yay!!! Therefore, as you can see, we are very detailed in our layout. 

Here Jennifer is explaining our Closed loop control system. 

State transition diagram.
Here is where we identified the different steps to our  Arduino will go through.  Also, at the top of the board is our mock up of our ground layout for installing the equipment at the park.

On and Off grid diagram.
Here is where we designed a diagram of how we will power our DVRand cameras using the non spilling batteries.  The writing in the blue is where we implemented a new idea of adding a "switch" to power the Arduino for the cameras and DVR. We realized that on the basic Arduino board it only powers 5v and the DVR/Camera system needs 12V to power.  Therefore, we are going to see if we can split some of the power from the battery to power the Arduino board ultimately powering the Swann System.

Day 2 Tuesday 6-11

Wildlife Monitoring Day 2

Back again!  We kicked the day off with a round robin discussing our perspectives of the current projects in motion.  

Here are the suggestions for utilizing the solar panels for power:

Solar trees were suggested to combat the risk of dirt covering the mounted panels in the ground.

Wind turbine was suggested as an alternative to using solar panels.

Inclination of the solar panels with an angle of  33 was suggested if we continue with the idea to mount the panels in the ground.

Dallas aquarium was suggested as an alternative location to monitor the burrowing owls.

After our round table, we took a tour of the EESAT building of UNT and learned of their current project to power their greenhouse through solar energy.

We finished up the day learning about system controllers. For example: 

Air conditioning 

Cruise control 

Other areas that involve system controlling are:

 Smart grid
 Information cloud
 Internet traffic control 
 Air traffic management 
 Epidemic control
 Environmental science
 Economics
 Systems biology

Controlling the robot with a closed looping system

Day 1 Monday 6-10

Wildlife observation notes

Burrowing owls population is on decline. "National concern" They utilize the prairie dogs if not occupied. So Texas wildlife is setting up artificial nest. We are trying to minimize human interference so that we can increase the population. Therefore we would like do video monitoring with a system wake up to reduce the power needed to video the owls. Ultimately we would want to place these at multiple site so that we can adequately observe the owls just in case they do not go to sites.  Breeding season is September -May. We hope to have the cameras installed in El Paso before they start to breed again,

300watt panels for 4 cameras and a DVD they are purchased already with a waterproof 

Il de Bois to help with equipment testing. There is a bird house built here. 

It is completely dark on the hill side where the owls live so we would need to do motion sensing. 

Problem statement:  provide surveillance to collect visual data and archive it for outreach. 

Goal: try to have cameras run for two days without solar and to use only one solar panel. Cut back on power. Program the Aquino board to motion sensor. 

We will be working on video system, power, weather proofing the dvr. Also waterproofing the pir which is the motion sensor

Literature review topics;

Wildlife monitoring

Security monitoring

Actions of burrowing owls

Dessert monitoring

Off grid system monitoring components 

Overall we were able to layout the project goal and brainstorm on our first objective. We realized that going to install the camera at isle du bois this week will have to be scheduled for next week.