Week 4 Update

The group has gotten a variety of things done this week, yet we are still somewhat behind where we really wanted to be by now. The circuit itself is just about finished, we are still waiting on the EOG sensors that were ordered a little over a week ago. Without the sensors we aren’t going to be able to test as much as we would like to. Although, the accelerometer is somewhat interfaced with Matlab so we can begin testing with the accelerometer. All of the group members at this time are actively learning how to use Matlab, since only one of us knows how to use it right now. We are also talking about how much data we actually want to collect. An idea that is floating around right now is to not collect data from the accelerometer while the person is in REM sleep in order to organize data more efficiently. All of the group members have been conducting active research on the topic that they were assigned such as what will affect sleep habits, and why will this product be better than existing solutions.

We have added Frequently Asked Questions to its own tab, both required questions and questions that we have been getting asked from everyone we've explained our project to. We have also updated our project proposal to reflect our most recent revision of it. 

The Accelerometer and Data Acquisition Unit

The rear of the circuit board with a proposed grounding wire.

The front of the circuit board with all the connections made.

Week 3 Update

Over the past week the group has made a large amount of progress regarding out design. So far we have acquired all the parts to our circuit board, the accelerometer, and the Data Acquisition board. We have ordered the sensors and the mask, which are the only two components that we don't have yet. Everything has been soldered onto our circuit board, but connections have not been made yet. We are going to wait until the next lab section to make sure that all connections are made properly. The program that tracks the accelerometer's movement in MatLab, which is being made by Michael, is close to being completed while other group members are looking for a way to be able to log this data. All of the members are still conducting research on a wide variety of topics such as the different forms of sleep, how accurately we can track the different states, and how to use Matlab to track this data.

The preliminary circuit board. At this point everything but the grounding is connected. 

The schematic for the amplifier circuit

The group was given a very specific way to build the circuit board pictured above using the schematic also pictured above. The signal from each of the electrode leads connected to the user's face will be passed through a resistor-capacitor high-pass filter. This high-pass filter will be used to reduce the noise of the outputted signal. There will also be one resistor connected to each side of the amplifier which sets the gain of the signal to 5000x (there is a typo in the schematic).


Edit: My apologies for getting this post out late, it was written on 4/19/13 but I somehow hit save as draft instead of publish.

Week 2 - First Post

Welcome to Group 3's Blog in Engineering 103-094! The purpose of this blog is to keep you informed on the progress of our design, a device that monitors your sleep habits. We will try to post as much as possible on here, but we will post at least once a week. 

We have a design in mind right now to be able to track what type of sleep you are in and log it to a computer. With this information the computer should be able to give you a detailed view of your sleep. This information can be used to help make your sleep better or bring to a medical professional to give advice on how to make your sleeping habits better.