Maze solving Robot

We have discussed many projects in Robotics before including Line Follower Robot. Maze Solving Robot is similar project but before we discuss about this project, we should know about maze and our objective.

What is Maze?

Maze is a type of puzzle with start start and end points including many dead ends.To solve this puzzle we need to find right path in a fastest possible way.

What type of maze we are going to use for our robot?

Usually, this project requires line maze which is black line on a white background.

Our Objective:

We will build a robot which can find its way in a line maze from start point to end point.

Basic Requirements:

Two Motors: Motors will move robot forward(Both motors running) and help it turns towards left(left motor slow and right fast) or right( right motor slow and left fast).

Five Infrared Sensors: Sensors helps robot to find its path and keeps it updated about the line on the floor.With five sensors their are 32 combination possible but many of them are unlikely to occur in our experiment.For ex. 11111(All indicating black) will never occur because their is only one line and this pattern is showing that line on both side of robot including line on which it is moving.


Concept:

Deciding some rules:
Before implementing this project, you should  decide some basic rules which robot must follow. For example if robot face a situation of T or Four Way , in which direction it should turn? Some students go for right hand rule where robot always give preference to right hand side and some go for left hand rule, though both rules are correct, you need to select one of them and teach robot accordingly.

Intersection:

Define intersections ( turns except only right and only left) where robot needs to take decisions.

Storing Information:

Robot should store information about Dead ends(180 degree turns where pattern is five zeroes 00000) and Bad turns.

Algorithm:

Step 1). Robot will start from first end and move straight as their is only one line.

Step 2). It will move Left because their is only left direction( no intersection so no storage) where it can move.

Step 3). Move Left again(no intersection therefore no storage)

Step 4). Move Left ( Intersection and we apply Left hand Rule) Store L

Step 5). Take U Turn ( Reached Dead End) Store value becomes LU

Step 6). Take Left Again ( Intersection and applies left hand rule) Store value becomes LUL . We move Left but because we took U turn in fifth step we now know that we should not have taken Step 4) .To avoid this mistake for future we will replace LUL to S.

Step 7). Move Straight ( Intersection again but as we are following left hand rule, we will not turn towards right,instead we will follow straight Path) and stored value becomes SS

Step 8). Turn right ( Only right available therefore no intersection)

Step 9.) Reach Target.

So SS will correctly guide robot in next run.

Useful Links:

Maze Solving Robot
Recursion Solving a Maze
Micro mouse: Intelligent autonomous maze solving robot

Related Video:

More Projects:

Robotics Projects
Mechanical Projects

Discussion Forum PHP and MYSQL

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Today we will learn  how to create a simple discussion forum using PHP and MYSQL. This project is big and can't be covered in single post,so I would divide it into four different posts. Today we will discuss about how we can create skeleton of this project.Next week, we will see how we can use advance features such as jquery,ajax,functions and classes with this project.

File Structure:
We will create five files in root folder and one file db.php (Database configuration file) inside config folder.
index.php : This is home_page or our site from where user can sign in
sign_up.php:  Its for new users registration
discuss.php: Post topics
reply.php : Post replies
log_out.php:log out user


Tools: Apache, PHP and Mysql (Download Xampp or WAMP)

What we are trying to do?

When we think about discussion forum, we know that we will need one login system and only registered can post and reply inside the forum.So, we will create three pages just for user login and they are index.php(login form), sign_up.php(for registering new users) and log_out.php(to remove session).

Other two pages will be used for discussion;first for submitting topic and other one will be used for replying.


Step 1. Create Databases:

I have created database discussion where we will create four tables:

• categories
• users
• topics
• replies

Database: `discussion`

----------------------------------------------------------

--
-- Table structure for table `categories`
--

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `categories` (
  `category_id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `category_name` varchar(100) collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`category_id`)
) 

ENGINE=MyISAM 

DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COLLATE=latin1_general_ci AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

-- --------------------------------------------------------

--
-- Table structure for table `replies`
--

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `replies` (

  `reply_id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `reply_content` text collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL,

  `topic_id` int(11) NOT NULL,

  `reply_user_id` int(11) NOT NULL,

  PRIMARY KEY  (`reply_id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM 

DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COLLATE=latin1_general_ci AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

-- --------------------------------------------------------

--
-- Table structure for table `topics`
--

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `topics` (
  `topic_id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `topic_content` text collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL,
  `category_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `user_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`topic_id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 

COLLATE=latin1_general_ci AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

-- --------------------------------------------------------

--
-- Table structure for table `users`
--

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `users` (
  `user_id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `user_name` varchar(16) collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL,
  `password` varchar(16) collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`user_id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COLLATE=latin1_general_ci AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

Step 2. Inserting some dummy DATA
Fill in the category table with related subjects or anythings related , I have filled it with physics,chemistry,maths,physics and biology:

INSERT INTO `discussion`.`categories` (`category_id`, `category_name`) 

VALUES (NULL, 'physics'), 

(NULL, 'chemistry'), 

(NULL, 'maths'), 

(NULL, 'physics'), 

(NULL, 'biology');

Create Admin user with username and password admin:

INSERT INTO `discussion`.`users` (`user_id`, `user_name`, `password`) VALUES ('1', 'admin', 'admin');

Step 2. Coding Each and very project

index.php

<?php session_start(); 
if(isset($_POST['submit'])) { 
include('./config/db.php');
$user_name = $_POST['user_name'];
$password = $_POST['password'];
$user_name = stripslashes($user_name);
$password = stripslashes($password);
$user_name = mysql_real_escape_string($user_name);
$password = mysql_real_escape_string($password);
$sql="SELECT * FROM `users` 

WHERE user_name='$user_name' and 

password='$password'";
$result=mysql_query($sql); // execute query

// mysql_num_row is a function used to count number of results we get from the above query
$count=mysql_num_rows($result);

// If result matched $user_name and $password, table row must be 1 row
if($count==1){
$sql="SELECT user_id FROM `users` WHERE user_name='$user_name'";
$result=mysql_query($sql); // execute query
$user_id_array = mysql_fetch_array($result); 
$user_id = $user_id_array['user_id'];
// Register $user_name and $user_id and redirect to file "discuss.php"
$_SESSION['user_name'] = $user_name;
$_SESSION['user_id'] = $user_id;
header("location:discuss.php");
}
else {
echo "Please enter correct username and password (check whether capslock is on)";
}

           } 
 ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD 

XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Discussion forum from iprojectideas.blogspot.com</title>
</head>

<body>

<form action="#" method="post" name="topic_form">
 <label>Username</label><br /> <input name="user_name" type="text" />
<br />
  <label>Password</label><br />
  <input name="password" type="text" /><br />
  <input name="submit" type="submit" value="submit" />
  
  </form>
  <p>New Users <a href="sign_up.php">Sign up now</a></p>

  </body>
</html>

sign_up.php

 <?php session_start(); 
if(isset($_POST['submit'])) { 
include('./config/db.php');
$user_name = $_POST['user_name'];
$password = $_POST['password'];
$repassword = $_POST['repassword'];
$user_name = stripslashes($user_name);
$password = stripslashes($password);
$repassword = stripslashes($repassword);
$user_name = mysql_real_escape_string($user_name);
$password = mysql_real_escape_string($password);
$repassword = mysql_real_escape_string($repassword);
// check for errors
if($user_name == '' || $password == '' || $repassword =='') {
echo "Please fill correct username and password";
}
else if($password != $repassword) {
echo "password does not match , please try again";
}
 
else {
  $sql="SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE user_name='$user_name'";
  $result=mysql_query($sql); // execute query

  // mysql_num_row is a function used to count number of results we get from the above query
  $count=mysql_num_rows($result);

  // if user name does not exist than register this user in our database and redirect him to discussion forum
  if($count==1){
      echo "User name has been already taken, please try again!";
      }
  else {
     $sql = "INSERT INTO `discussion`.`users` (`user_id`, `user_name`, `password`) VALUES (NULL, '$user_name', '$password');";
     $result=mysql_query($sql); // execute query
     if($result) {
     
     // Register $user_name,$user_id and redirect to file "discuss.php"
     // find out user id
     $sql="SELECT user_id FROM `users` WHERE user_name='$user_name'";
     $result=mysql_query($sql); // execute query
     $user_id_array = mysql_fetch_array($result); 
     $user_id = $user_id_array['user_id'];
     $_SESSION['user_name'] = $user_name;
     $_SESSION['user_id'] = $user_id;
     header("location:discuss.php");
        }
     else {
     echo "Error, please try again";
      }
   } // end of inner else

     } // end of outer else
}
     
 ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Sign up | Discussion forum from iprojectideas.blogspot.com</title>
</head>

<body>

<form action="#" method="post" name="topic_form">
 <label>Username</label><br /> <input name="user_name" type="text" />
<br />
  <label>Password</label><br />
  <input name="password" type="text" /><br />
  <label>Re-enter Password</label><br /><input name="repassword" type="text" /><br />
  <input name="submit" type="submit" value="submit" />
  
  </form>
  <p>Already Registered <a href="index.php">Sign in</a></p>

  </body>
</html>

discuss.php

<?php 
session_start(); 
if(!isset($_SESSION['user_name'])) {
header("location:index.php");
}
else {
$user_name = $_SESSION["user_name"];
$user_id = $_SESSION["user_id"];
echo "Welcome $user_name ";
echo "<a href=\"log_out.php\">Log out</a>";
include('./config/db.php'); 
}
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Discussion forum from iprojectideas.blogspot.com</title>
</head>

<body>
<?php if(isset($_POST['topic'])) { 
$topic = $_POST['topic'];
$category_id = $_POST['category_id'];
$sql = "INSERT INTO `discussion`.`topics` (`topic_id`, `topic_content`, `category_id`, `user_id`) VALUES ('', '$topic', '$category_id', '$user_id');";
$rsd = mysql_query($sql);
echo "Thanks for submitting your topic $topic in $category_id "; 

           } 
else {
?>
<form action="#" method="post" name="topic_form">
 <label>Topic</label><br /> <textarea name="topic" cols="100" rows="5"></textarea><br />
  <label>Category</label>
  <select name="category_id">
  <?php $sql = "SELECT * FROM  `categories`;";
                             $rsd = mysql_query($sql);
                             while($rs = mysql_fetch_array($rsd)) {
                         $category_id = $rs['category_id'];
       $category_name = $rs['category_name'];
        
       echo "<option value=\"$category_id\">$category_name</option>";
       }
 ?> 
 </select><br />
  <input name="submit" type="submit" value="submit" />
  
  </form>
<?php } 
echo"<h3>Submitted Topics:</h3>";
$sql = "SELECT * FROM  `topics` ORDER BY  `topics`.`topic_id` DESC;";
$topics = mysql_query($sql);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($topics, MYSQL_ASSOC )){
  $topic_content = $row['topic_content'];
  $topic_id = $row['topic_id'];
  echo "<h3>$topic_content</h3>";
   $sql = "SELECT * FROM  `replies` where `replies`.`topic_id` = $topic_id;";
   $replies = mysql_query($sql);
   while($row = mysql_fetch_array($replies, MYSQL_ASSOC )) {
      $reply_content = $row['reply_content']; 
   echo "<p> $reply_content</p>";
                } // end of while
  echo "<br /><a href=\"reply.php?topic_id=$topic_id\">reply</a><br />";
}

?>
  </body>
</html>

reply.php

<?php 
session_start(); 
if(!isset($_SESSION['user_name'])) {
header("location:index.php");
}
else {
$user_name = $_SESSION["user_name"];
$user_id = $_SESSION["user_id"];
echo "Welcome $user_name ";
echo "<a href=\"log_out.php\">Log out</a>";
include('./config/db.php'); 
}
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Discussion forum from iprojectideas.blogspot.com</title>
</head>

<body>
<?php if(isset($_POST['reply'])) { 
$reply = $_POST['reply'];
$topic_id = $_POST['topic_id'];

$sql = "INSERT INTO `discussion`.`replies` (`reply_id`, `reply_content`, `topic_id`, `reply_user_id`) VALUES (NULL, '$reply', '$topic_id', '$user_id');";
$rsd = mysql_query($sql);
if($rsd) {
echo "Thanks for submitting your reply $reply. <a href=\"discuss.php\">Return Back</a> to view it. "; }
else {
echo "Error, reply submission fail";
}

           } 
else {
  $topic_id = $_GET['topic_id'];
  $topic_id= stripslashes($topic_id);
  $topic_id = mysql_real_escape_string($topic_id);
echo"<h3>Reply:</h3>";
$sql = "SELECT * FROM  `topics` where  `topics`.`topic_id` = $topic_id;";
$topics = mysql_query($sql);
$row = mysql_fetch_array($topics, MYSQL_ASSOC );
  $topic_content = $row['topic_content'];
  
  echo "<h3>$topic_content</h3>"; ?>
  <form action="#" method="post" name="reply_form">
  <label>Reply</label><br /> 
  <textarea name="reply" cols="100" rows="5"></textarea><br />
  <input type="hidden" name="topic_id" value="<?php echo"$topic_id" ?>" />
  <input name="submit" type="submit" value="reply" />
  </form>
<?php }
?>
  </body>
</html>

log_out.php

<?php 
session_start(); 
if(!isset($_SESSION['user_name'])) {
header("location:index.php");
}
else {
session_destroy();
header("location:index.php");
}
?>

 config/db.php

<?php 
$db_host='localhost';
$db_database='discussion';
$db_username='YOUR_DB_USERNAME';
$db_password='YOUR_DB_PASSWORD';
$connection = mysql_connect($db_host, $db_username, $db_password);
if (!$connection){ die("Could not connect to the database: <br />". mysql_error( )); } 
// Select the database
$db_select = mysql_select_db($db_database); if (!$db_select){
die ("Could not select the database: <br />". mysql_error( )); }


?>

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Study of Cooling Tower

Cooling towers are heat removal devices which are used to transfer heat from cooling water to the atmosphere.

What does a cooling tower do?

1)They promote efficient water uses
2)Prevents environmental damages

Animation shown at the University of Michigan website will help you to understand more about hyperbolic stack-natural draft cooling towers.


How a cooling tower works? 
They work in two ways, first using evaporation of water or by using conventional method of heat ex-changer.Video given below has more explanation about it.

  

Projects:
Increasing Cooling Tower Water Efficiency :By increasing water efficiency of tower, we can save tons of gallons of precious fresh water.

CFD Prediction of Cooling Tower Drift :The CFD (computational fluid dynamics) program predicts plume rise, surface concentrations, plume center-line concentrations and surface drift deposition within the bounds of field experimental accuracy.

Cooling Tower Analysis : Analysis by a team about the performance of four cooling towers and cooling done by them.

Related Presentation:

Thermodynamics of efficient cooling tower

Related Post:

Mechanical Projects

Hydraulic Regenerative Braking System

Regenerative Braking:
How regenerative braking Works ?
More about this braking

Relative PDF :
Regenerative braking system for bicycle
Development of Regenerative braking system using super capacitors for electrical vehicle
Hybrid RBS Presentation
Algorithm for these types of brakes


In hybrid cars, hydraulic regenerative braking system (HRBS) can play significant role to lower the fuel consumption.It recycles energy by converting kinetic energy into potential energy during deceleration using accumulator.A hydraulic accumulator is a pressure storage reservoir in which a non-compressible hydraulic fluid is held under pressure by an external source.And, in this case this external source is high pressure compressed air.

What's the use of storing energy?
This energy can be reused while acceleration which significantly lower the fuel consumption.Moreover, we all use stored energy in some or the other way. When we fill water tank on roof top using electric motors, we are actually storing electric energy in the form of potential energy and this energy can be used later to provide water inside our home.

Why its important?
Energy recycling is the energy recovery process of utilizing energy that would normally be wasted.The regenerative braking system can capture and recycle the normally wasted braking energy during vehicle drive cycle.
Projects:

• Model of a novel configuration for HRBS using MATLAB/Simulink environment
• Aftermarket Hydraulic regenerative braking system
• Bicycle Hydraulic Regenerative Braking System 

Useful Links:
How Regenerative braking system works?

Related Video:

Related:
Hydraulics projects

Jaipur leg Improvements

In developing countries where people can't afford artificial legs,Jaipur foot is just like a miracle. I hope you have heard about Jaipur Foot.If not you can read about it here.The Jaipur Leg is a rubber-based prosthetic leg for people with below-knee amputations, produced under the guidance of Dr. P. K . Sethi by Masterji Ram Chander in 1969.The Jaipur Foot is an easy to manufacture prosthetic foot that gives patients the ability to do many things that they could do with an actual foot (running, climbing, etc). It has been extraordinary achievement for country like India where more than 30 Percent of population still earns less than 1 dollar a day.It costs around $45 and more than 17000 get this leg every year.

Our Objective:

Though NGO who build Jaipur foot is doing extraordinary research work to improve Jaipur foot but still their is large scope for improvement.


Number of things on which we can work on:

1. It Lacks Toe Support
2. It is heavy(Around 800 g)
3. Material used is not long lasting.

This project idea is for mechanical engineering students.Moreover, many researchers around the world has been already working on it since many years. I will discuss some projects related to it with you:

1. SHAPE and ROLL: COSMETIC SHELL (By Parhys L. Napier and Nicholas Torgerson) :This project objective was to create cosmetic cover to coat the Shape & Roll prosthetic foot
2. History of Jaipur foot
3.Accessing the impact of Jaipur foot organization in India

Project Video:

Related Video:

Waste Management Machine

As every year passes, the concern over waste increases steadily.Based on incomplete reports from its parties, the Basel Convention estimated 338 million tonnes of waste was generated in 2001.Though, above mentioned estimate is not officially correct but it gives us idea that how much waste we produce each year.

We all know about conditions near the waste sites and dumps, due to these difficult conditions,it is not always possible for humans to do all tasks(collection, transport, processing or disposal, managing and monitoring of waste materials ) involved in Waste Management.


Our Objective:

To build an autonomous robot who can navigate himself through a messy environment, avoid obstacles, search for various kinds of recyclables, sort the recyclable, and store the recyclable by its classification.

Hardware Requirements:

• Atmel AVR ATMega 128 general-purpose microprocessor:It is a low-power CMOS 8-bit microcontroller based on the AVR enhanced RISC architecture.
• We will need 6 pieces of switches, 8-bit port headers and special servo headers. 
• 1 LCD header, an RS232 header
• An ADC header and 
•  JTAG port for programming: Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) is the common name for what was later standardized as the IEEE 1149.1 Standard Test Access Port and Boundary-Scan Architecture. 

We will also need to build a system so that our robot can move, recognize important things from junk and able to collect them. You will find complete details of this project in a report given below useful links.

Useful Links:
Tony Soprano "Waste Managment"


Related Video:


Related Projects:

Waste Management Systems
Tiny Bio Gas Generator
Robotics

Joystick control car drive mechanism for physically challenged people

We often see that, persons with disability needs to use mobility car.Mobility Car is a vehicle issued to a disabled person, to allow them to travel without burden of their disability. Mobility cars are obtained from a scheme called "Motability". But this car too not come with some preconditions and these conditions are difficult to met for severely disabled person.Moreover, driving a car is always difficult for a person with having control distributed all over.

This project is for engineering students and would be extremely useful for people who are impair the physical abilities

Our objective:
We want to build a car which can be operated by using joystick. If we can build that, it would be great help for disabled persons.

Why we need this type of system?

Existing system in the market are modified to allow the physically disabled to drive but it still needs lots of improvements.


How to build one?

The Vehicle works in two modes:
1) Joystick:- A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. We will take input from user through a joystick and then process it to produce servo commands via a Arduino Board.
2) Autonomous driving in constrained environment: Using input from Kinect sensor.Kinect is a motion sensing input device by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game console and Windows PCs to obtain depth image and process the frames in real-time.To perform depth based blob detection combining it with vision based blob tracking to perform a robust obstacle detection. The technique involves using a slice of depth image for detecting obstacles and then finding path taking in view the maximum steering angle, width of the vehicle, turning radius etc.

System Requirements:
Languages Used: python 2.5,autonomous module is built in c# and uses emgucv
Softwares: Aforge image processing libraries and Microsoft Kinect SDK 1.0
Hardware includes - Standard Laptop (Intel core i5-2410M @ 2.30 GHZ, 4GB RAM), Joystick, Kinect Sensor, Arduino Uno Microcontroller, Servo, UPS, Battery, servo motors, h-bridges and wireless transmitter and receiver(Fail safe) .
The vehicle also has a fail-safe mechanism that is used to control vehicle in emergency using a wireless remote.

Related PDF:
Joystick controlled Cars

Related Video:

Produce Fuel using Solar Energy

Scientists around the world are working towards the goal of developing technologies to harness energy from the sun to produce fuels for transport, industry and electricity generation. Fuels produced using solar energy would transform our future energy options by providing an alternative to fossil fuels.Solar energy, radiant light and heat from the sun, has been harnessed by humans since ancient times using a range of ever-evolving technologies. Solar energy technologies include solar heating, solar photovoltaics, solar thermal electricity and solar architecture, which can make considerable contributions to solving some of the most urgent problems the world now faces.We all know about the ever growing energy needs of our world.

 If we can use it to produce fuel , it would be milestone for us and for our future generation. Many researches around the world are working on this project.


Our Objective:

To produce synthetic gas which can be used with our currently available infrastructure.This project should have the potential not only to be completely renewable, but to produce a minimal carbon footprint.

Concept:
It can be done using process known as a two-step solar thermochemical cycle, which involves using concentrated sunlight to heat a metal oxide and split it into metal and oxygen.  The resulting metal is then reacted with carbon dioxide and water, producing carbon monoxide and hydrogen, or synthesis gas, which can be used to make diesel fuel and other synthetic fuels.

Procedure:


The process begins with a solar simulator in the form of seven mirrored, 6,500-watt lamps that concentrate the light on a 10-centimeter spot with an irradiance of 3,000 suns. With this concentrated radiant energy, one can generate temperatures of more than 3,600 F in a chemical reactor. There, carbon dioxide and water are split to form carbon monoxide and hydrogen, the two components of synthetic gas.The key to the technology rests with oxides of two metals: zinc and cerium which allow us to split water and carbon dioxide at temperatures achievable with modern solar concentrating devices.

Useful Link:

University of Minnesota 

Related Video:

Solar Powered automatic rain operated wiper

We have discussed many projects related to solar energy and we are going to discuss many more in next few months.In this post we will see how we can use sun light in automobile.  

Though this project has been implemented by many companies, it would be great to build one for yourself in a lab or as your final year project.When I was thinking about this project , I thought it would be great if we can build it as a extension of rain sensor wipers project idea. 

It is very easy to build and needs very few components. Rain Operated Motor consists of conduction sensor(Tough Sensor) circuit, Control Unit, Wiper Motor and Glass Frame.

Concept:

We all know that wipers need electricity to move and this electricity has been supplied by battery inside a car. So, to move wiper using solar power, you just need to supply electricity to this battery or some smaller battery(if you want independent system) using solar panels.

Older System

Wipers <-----Battery<-----Car Engine

Solar Powered Wipers

Wipers<-----Battery<-------Solar Panels<-----Sun Light

To optimize performance , you can use rain sensor wiper as shown in this video:

Related Projects:
Mechanical
Physics
Solar Energy

Pedal Powered Juicer Grinder

A juicer is a tool for separating juice from fruits, herbs, leafy greens and other types of vegetables from its pulp in a process called juicing. In separating the pulp, juicers concentrate the nutrition naturally present in fruits and vegetables and allows the body to more easily absorb the nutrition than digesting the solid produce. The use of juicers also makes it easier to consume more raw produce.

Electric Juicer is very common part of our life. But , do you know how much electricity we consume while juicing! if we start using pedal powered juicers,we will not only save large amount of electricity but our body would get some exercise too.

This project idea is for mechanical  and physics students.


Is it commercial viable?

Yes , it is , in New York I have seen it implemented where customer gets discount if he pedals his juice himself.

How to build my own?

Its simple, you need to buy some old juicer(I recommend sugar cane juicer for this project) and connect it with your bicycle instead of electric motor using belt. Video shown below will give you some idea about that.



Related Projects:

Pedal Powered Washing Machine

Ruby on Rails Project

Ruby on Rails(ROR) was first introduced by David Hansson when he was working on the basecamp project. ROR is basically a framework developed on Ruby language. It makes website development interesting and very easy.

It works on two concepts -

1)Convention over configuration - Its a software design paradigm
to gain simplicity
2)Don't repeat yourself - Same code is not repeated twice anywhere in the program

Though the flexibility of programing is compromised but the programmer gets a speedy decision making advantage and also saves himself from future problems.

David Heinemeier Hansson extracted Ruby on Rails from his work on Basecamp, a project management tool by 37signals (now a web application company).Hansson first released Rails as open source in July 2004, but did not share commit rights to the project until February 2005.In August 2006, the framework reached a milestone when Apple announced that it would ship Ruby on Rails with Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard",which was released in October 2007.


As many other frameworks, ruby on rails(ROR) also works on MVC(Model View Controller ) concept. There each layer is independent of the other. For eg. if you want to do something with application data, you code would be in the model layer which handles database. If the designer wants to implement new template he would have to work with view layer.

ROR is getting popular with each passing day. You can imagine the extend of its popularity only by the fact that Twitter and Groupon programming completely done on ROR only.

I am sharing some project ideas below which would help you to understand and learn about this extraordinary programming language which I personally use and recommend.

E commerce

Local Commerce

Neelix recipe management system : It allows you to organize your recipes and do useful things with them, such as printing shopping lists, meal plans, scaling recipes arbitrarily, printing recipes, and import/export with other programs.

Tracks To Do List Application: This application helps you in doing things properly.

Yellow Pages

Dating Website(Lovd by Less): Built with Ruby on Rails, Lovd is a social networking solution that has everything you need to build your community.

Gullery Photo Gallery: Gullery is a simple photo gallery built with Ruby on Rails. It works well for a personal portfolio or small photo gallery.

Related Posts:

Java Projects
Final Year Computer Projects
Computer Science Project Ideas
IT
BCA
MCA

BCA Projects

BCA (Bachelor of Computer Application) is a undergraduate degree course in India.With the boom of the IT industry, it has become one of the most sought after graduate degree courses. Full-time BCA programmes normally take three academic years.The course usually consists of programming languages, mathematics, algorithms, data structures, networking, etc.Though , you can do project on any of the above topic,but still here I am suggesting project ideas related to programming languages.

C :

You can do project related to any topic related to computer science but I would personally recommend to go for C and C ++ Projects.

Advantage of using C: 

C is the base of computer programming and once you start understanding it , you will not face any difficulty in learning new languages. Other advantage with C is that it doesn't require large computer resources and you can run its project on any machine whether you are using windows or linux server.Not only that, because C is one of the oldest language , you will get lot of free resources and books of C on internet.

Once you start developing in C , you will also start understanding limitation of C language and get an idea why we had developed other programming languages.

C++ is for those students who wants to get exposure of object oriented programming. Developing project on C Plus Plus is great way to learn classes, object and constructors.

Library Management System
Mobile Phone Shop
Search Engine Project

More C and C++ Projects

Java:

Java is one of the most important language in today's world. According to official website of java over 3 billion devices are running on java. Advantage of java is its virtual machine which makes it platform independent.

Hospital Information System in Java
Mail Client Projects
Real State Project in JSP
Java Projects

PHP:

It is one of the most popular language now-days.It is also known as Server Side Language. The reason behind its popularity is its simplicity. It can be written inside any html page and its embedded inside the page perfectly. It is really useful for designing dynamic website.It runs on Apache Server.

If any one of you are interested in web programming , you can build project on PHP.

Video Rental Service
Personal Finance Management System 
Meeting Room Booking System
Income Tax Calculator 
Purchase Order System

More PHP Projects

ASP:

It is pretty similar to PHP with one of the main difference is that ASP is developed by Microsoft and PHP has been given by open source community. It runs on IIS Server provided by Microsoft.

Hospital Information System
Movie Ticket Reservation System
Online Treatment System in Homeopathy
Job Recruitment System
ASP Projects

Ruby on Rails:

ROR is a framework based on MVC(Model View Controller) developed in 2003 by David Heinemeier Hansson. It is based on ruby language .Rails provide us tools sufficient to build large websites such as Twitter.I am giving you few examples about sites which you can build using ROR below.

Job Recruitment System
Knowledge Sharing System
Purchase Order System

You can build anything using ROR which you build using Asp.net or PHP. So you can refer to theirs pages too for ideas related to its project.

ROR Projects

Personal Finance Management

Personal finance refers to the financial decisions which an individual or a family unit is required to make to obtain, budget, save, and spend monetary resources over time, taking into account various financial risks and future life events.

Personal finance management is very important and useful in long term. Each individual should know about his or her spending habits as well as earning sources.

This project can be done by Computer Science , BCA , MCA and IT graduates.

Concept:

This application works as a small accounting software where we need to take input from the users, do some calculation inside and store these calculation and user input inside the database.

Procedure:

We need to design some forms to take input from the users. For ex. Form to take input of bills such as telephone, electricity or credit cards.

Once we take input, we will add all these values according to dates ( Weekly, Daily and Monthly Basis) and store them into our database.

We can add as many forms as user needs and store them accordingly. Sometime we need to use complex formula such as finding interest on amount or things like that , but that can be easily done using loops and variables.I am giving you some projects below from open source community which help you to understand this topic more.


Source Codes:
Java
Jgnash : jGnash is a cross platform personal finance application.It is a double entry system with support for multiple currencies.

PHP MySql
Personal Finance Manager: Multi-user Personal Finance Manager web application. It helps you to manage and reconcile accounts and transactions; track income and expenses.It uses Jquery based ajax form submission to eliminate page reloads.

MyFina : MyFina(My Finance) is a web-based personal finance and budgeting program for managing accounts and expenses. The system aimed at those who have little or no financial background to gain control over their money.

PHP Finance System: phpfin is a well known finance manager. It gives you complete control over your finances from budgeting and scheduling transactions to email alerts.

Related:

Computer
Computer final year
IT Projects for students

Solar powered remote controlled aircraft

In  December 17, 1903  when Wright brothers build first aircraft,it became discovery, that changed the world completely.They build fixed wing aircraft which is capable of flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed and the shape of the wings.In last century though, everything improved from design of aircraft, fuel efficiency and power of engine but aircraft fuel which is most important has not changed and become leading cause of global warming.

Why?
If you read airplane history, you would find that human need and desire of flying is more powerful than flying with renewable energy.So, focus in last century was only on designing and improving efficiency of engine and not on changing its fuel.

So , Why now?
In last decade, awareness of general public about climate change has increase significantly. With this awareness and fuel price that are rising at rocket speed creates catastrophic effect, which pressurizes us to think about alternate fuel for aircraft and one of these alternates is Solar Energy, which we are going to discuss today.

Is it possible?

Yes it is, recently Swiss made Solar Powered Plane, Solar Impulse completed its 4000 miles journey between Europe and Africa successfully. You can read more about it at news website msnbc.


What's the need of building solar powered RC planes?

When we think of building our plane, we know that because of financial and knowledge constraint we can only build models and small planes as our engineering project. We already discussed about RC planes in Aeronautical Projects Post . Solar Powered RC Plane is extension of that post.
Most of you know that planes are the biggest polluter of the world. In a series of steps we need to tackle global warming , solar rc planes could be vital.


Basic Principle:

Sun Energy --> Solar Panels -->Batteries-->Converter-->Motor and Electronics Equipment


How to build one?

Design :

Design of Solar Airplanes(PDF)
Performance Analysis 

Requirements:
MATLAB : For designing your plane
Mono-crystalline Silicon cells
Lithium Polymer Battery
Motor
Management System for Charge/ Discharge and Temperature
Thermal Insulation ( To Safeguard batteries from external environment)

Procedure:

Jon Kalow, Jun Kudo and James Nick Vines discuss complete procedure,prototype and details about building solar RC Plane at their webpage.Click here for complete detail

Useful PDF:
Solar Impulse

Related Projects:

Aeronautics 

Fabrication of Cam less engine

In this modern world where companies are focusing on green energy,cam less engine can become a great alternative.

A cam is a rotating or sliding piece in a mechanical linkage used especially in transforming rotary motion into linear motion or vice-versa. In an engine, it is connected to a shaft (e.g. a cylinder with an irregular shape) that strikes a lever at one or more points on its circular path.

In traditional engine camshaft has a very important role to play while opening and closing of a valve. It was a necessary evil for an engine functioning.Furthermore, because of camshaft, engineers need to choose either efficient engine or power engine but not with both qualities.This is one of the most important factor that makes camless engine a necessity. Though , idea of cam less engine existed from 1899,it has become need of modern world now, when we need power and efficiency both.
A camless engine uses electromagnetic, hydraulic, or pneumatic actuators to open the poppet valves instead. Actuators can be used to both open and close the valves, or an actuator opens the valve while a spring closes it.An actuator is a type of motor for moving or controlling a mechanism or system. It is operated by a source of energy, usually in the form of an electric current, hydraulic fluid pressure or pneumatic pressure, and converts that energy into some kind of motion.

Things required:
Mindstorm lego kit for Camless Engine

Advantages of using cam less engine:
Increase efficiency
Reduce emission
Improve Power

Disadvantage:
High power requirements of the actuator

Uses:
Camless IC Engines
Air Compressors

Related PDF:
Development of a Piezoelectric Controlled Hydraulic Actuator for a Camless Engine
by John Steven Brader
Control of an electromechanical actuator for cam less engines
Camless Engine Control for a Robust Unthrottled Operation

Related Video:

Related Projects :
IC Engines

Water fuel Power Generation System

 Is it possible to use water to power our cars?

Some people claim that it is possible and done before and other thinks, it has never been done and would need more time before this actually happen. But all of them believe that someday we can run our cars on water. I found this project idea interesting enough to discuss with you. If you are believer of  water fuel cell invented by American Stanley Allen Meyer.Then you should try this project and see whether we can run our cars on water or if we can generate power using water fuel cells? 

I have never used water fuel cell myself and Stanley Meyer also lost his case in US Court when he found guilty of fraud.Still I want you to do some research on this topic because many people believes that Stanley finding were true and these fuel cells are going to be future and would solve our energy needs. 

Concept:
As we all know, opposite charges attract, so when we put anode and cathode into the H20, the positive charged hydrogen are attracted by cathode and negative charged oxygen is attracted by anode. Hence, HH and O bonds break to form HHO. This HHO can be supplied directly into Internal Combustion engines for moving the engine shaft.
This process can produce mechanical energy. Furthermore, this mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy by using D.C generator. 30% of power from generator is consumed by electrolysis process and remaining 70% is for our applications.

Useful Links:
Electrolysis of Water
What are Fuel Cells ?
Animation of Fuel Cells

Related PDF:
WFPGS
 Fuel Cell Cars





Related Projects:
Mechanical 
Physics

Pure water with the help of SMS

Pure water with the help of SMS is project based on getting pure water using Hand Pump.Though we have already discussed about various projects based on water purification such as Pedal Powered Water Filter  and  Solar powered water purification system but in Africa the most common source of pure water is Hand Pump. If it stops working, people get force to drink dirty water as a alternative. This project idea solves this problem.

People living in rural area of Africa can use mobile phone to drink clean water. Researchers of Britain  has build Data Transmitter which can be embedded inside the hand pump.

This transmitter sends sms when hand pump stops working. These transmitter  would be installed in 70 villages of Kenya.  Information about this technology has been discussed at General of Hydroinformatics.


Dependance on Hand pump

Millions of people living in Africa are dependent on Handpump, but it is believed that 1/3rd of these hand pumps not works properly.Handpumps located at distant places repairs takes even months. Africa has changed in last decade and it is believed that people who own mobiles are more than people having access to clean water.

That's why for better management of hand pumps Researches from Oxford university has used mobile phone.Researchers put Transmitter  in the handle of the pump. It measures speed of the handle,using which it can measure water flow inside the pump.

Using this technique , central office keeps on getting updates about pumps and mechanical can be mar shelled immediately after fault reports.

Other advantage of this technique is that they can measure total consumption in Kenya.

Related Projects:

Pedal Powered Water Filter
Solar powered water purification system

Light Weight floating Wind Turbine

A floating wind turbine is an offshore wind turbine mounted on a floating structure that allows the turbine to generate electricity or pump water in water depths where bottom-mounted towers are not feasible.

Further more, wind is more powerful over the sea in comparison to land. Though their are many ways we can use these turbines,but today we will see how we can use them for pumping water.


Farmers around the world consumes large amount of fresh water for their farming.Not only that,at some places of Africa and Asia, their only source of fresh water is rain or tube wells.Farm Pond project, we discussed yesterday can help them to store rain water on their farm itself. Even though,  farm ponds with drip irrigation solves the problem of water shortage for farmers but still they need to pump out this water for irrigation and light weight floating wind turbine pump can be used here.

Pumping at farms usually done by traditional methods such as electric pump or diesel pumps.But as our focus is to make our farming green, we can use wind or solar powered pump discussed earlier on this blog. Though any of these methods can be used but floating wind turbine would be much better alternative, particularly for farm pond pumping.

How it works?

Its working is similar to traditional wind mills with only difference is its free flowing nature.It base is not fixed and it floats and changes its direction according to wind.



Related:

Mechanical Projects
Physics Projects
Farm Ponds

Farm Ponds

We all know that water is precious and with growing population and their needs, fresh water is getting even more worth full with each passing day.Main uses of fresh water are drinking,washing and in Agriculture.Each year irrigation requires large amount of water and one of the main source of this water is rain. This makes rain water harvesting a top priority for farmers in every country from east to west.


Why we need farm ponds?

Most of the farmers all around the world heavily depends upon rain for their agricultural needs.Crops are very sensitive and two or three delays of watering can have devastating impact on crop production. Farm ponds help them to become somewhat independent and they can timely give water to their crop irrespective of time of rain.It also helps to improve ground water significantly.Farms ponds with drip irrigation would play great role in water management.


Indirect Advantages:

Water saved here can be used somewhere else ex. industries, households etc.
Less dependence on ground water which eventually increase it.
More production,less price of food grains for poor.
More area can be covered in agriculture where due to lack of water resources farming is almost impossible.

How it can be done?

It can be done using Farm Ponds. Farm ponds are artificial ponds dig inside the farm to harvest rain water.
Construction of Farm Pond Manually( Example):
Approximate
Top Cross section of Pond = 27 m * 27 m
Bottom cross section of Pond = 23 m * 23 m
Depth of Pond = 3 m
Side slope = 1 :1

Pedal Powered Water Filter

Pure water is precious and its value is known to those people who do not get it.According to the WHO, such disease account for an estimated 4.1% of the total DALY(Disability-adjusted life year) global burden of disease, and cause about 1.8 million human deaths annually.Waterborne diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms that most commonly are transmitted in contaminated fresh water. In my last post, I discussed about how we can purify it with solar energy.Though in summer solar water purifier is good option but in winter or rainy season it becomes very inefficient and slow.

We need a system which can work whole year whether it is day or night. Pedal Powered water filter is one of such solution. It is green and pollution free method of purifying water using human labor.

How it works?

We all know how nature filters our water. It evaporates dirty or sea water and later condenses it in the form of rain which is pure drinking water. Pedal powered water purifier works on the same concept. In this project we pedal our bicycle to transform water into vapor and later condense it to get clean water.


Concept: 

This project consists of two chambers,copper tube and pipe, one chamber is for dirty water called tank and second one is tiny boiler.Both of these chambers are connected using pipe. When we fill our tank with dirty water,as pressure of dirty water increases,water starts to transfer from tank to boiler using pipe connected to both of them. In boiler, water gets heated up to the boiling point using pedal powered generator.Water Vapor generated in this process passes through tank of dirty water using copper tube and later to outlet.Advantage of passing water through dirty water chamber is that,it preheats the dirty water and condense itself to provide us clean water. Video show below has complete explanation.

Related PDF:
The Portable Bicycle Ultra-Filtration Water Treatment System
Water Purification Project
University of Michigan complete project Report



Related Projects:

Mechanical Projects

Solar powered water purification system

Waterborne diseases have significant contribution in total number of diseases around the world. Most of the developing countries governments around the world are still struggling to provide clean water to their people.This problem is much more severe in some parts of Africa.

Today we will discuss how we can use solar energy to purify water. This would be great project not only for you as your engineering project but people whom life will change by your effort.

In my research I found that it is extremely difficult to make water completely clean.Even, if we heat water to 100 degree Celsius(212 Fahrenheit), some bacteria's would survive till 118 degree Celsius(244.4 F).Thus we would try to filter as much as we can using sun energy to make it less harmful.

Sodis: Solar water disinfection is one of the most easiest method of water filtration. You just need to fill clean plastic bottles with water(somewhat filtered with traditional method like sand) and expose these bottles to direct sunlight from 6 hours to 2 days (depending upon the condition). Water will get mostly disinfected.



Solar Water Purifier: It uses the concept natural fiteration of evaporation and condensation. When water gets heated with sunlight, it starts converting into water vapor which later condensed to get pure drinking water.

Related:
The development of a solar thermal water purification, heating, and power generation system(pdf)