Blogs about Research Phase

• Sending and Receiving SMS Messages with mbed

  Andrew Back

  Thanks to a library created by Vodafone R&D only a few lines of code are needed to send and receive SMS messages with mbed.

• Progress on the Renesas/Eco Solar Breizh solar race car

  Bill Marshall

  The next World Solar Challenge car race takes place in October 2013. The race involves purpose-built vehicles being driven from the north to the south coast of Australia powered by energy which must come from the sun or be recovered from the kinetic energy of the vehicle itself. Here is the third post in a series charting the development of one entrant sponsored by Renesas Electronics.

• Great British Audio Part 1: Calrec

  Andrew Back

  The first in a series of posts which take a look at great British audio engineering companies.

• HANDY-CAP: Final Blog

  handy-cap

  The competition has reached his final stage and our group has finished the major part of our project which is the HW board.

• Smart Street Lighting

  andi

  The earliest lamps were used by Greek and Roman civilizations, where light primarily served the purpose of security, both to protect the wanderer from tripping over something on the path as well as keeping the potential robbers at bay. At that time oil lamps were used predominantly as they provided a long-lasting and moderate flame. The first electric street lighting employed arc lamps, initially the 'Yablochkov candle' developed by the Russian Pavel Yablochkov in 1875. The first street in the UK to be lit by electric light was Mosley Street, in Newcastle upon Tyne. The street was lit by Joseph Swan's incandescent lamp on the 3rd February, 1879 Today, street lighting commonly uses high-intensity discharge lamps. Such lamps provide the greatest amount of photopic illumination for the least consumption of electricity. Dramatically falling costs and improvements in efficiency are driving increased sales of light emitting diode (LED) lamps for street lighting. Costs have fallen as much as 50 percent over the past two years, and are expected to continue falling. According to a new report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant’s Energy Practice, by 2015, LEDs will become the second-leading type of lamp for street lights in terms of sales. Smart lighting is a lighting technology designed for energy efficiency. This may include high efficiency fixtures and automated controls that make adjustments based on conditions such as occupancy or daylight availability. Smart street lighting solutions use wireless communication systems. Lamppost’s node configuration using RFID EEPROM which can be written/read during both manufacturing process and installation procedure by the PDA. A recommended EEPROM is the ST M24LR64-R, an 64-Kbit Dual Interface EEPROM (I²C and ISO 15693 RF protocol at 13.56 MHz) To gain experience RS offers the M24LR-DISCOVERY kit (775-8052) The M24LR-DISCOVERY kit helps you evaluate the M24LRXX-E Dual Interface EEPROM that features an energy harvesting analog output, as well as a user-configurable digital output. The M24LR-DISCOVERY kit is delivered with a battery-less M24LR board that can be powered by RFID readers or NFC phones supporting the ISO/IEC15693 protocol. It is based on an M24LR04E-R I²C - ISO/IEC15693 Dual Interface EEPROM, an 8-bit STM8L152C6T6 ultralow power microcontroller, and includes an STTS751 temperature sensor, a 24-segment LCD, and 2 push buttons. The M24LR-DISCOVERY kit also comes with an USB RF transceiver demonstration board that includes the CR95HF 13.56-MHz multi-protocol contactless transceiver. It is based on a 32-bit, STM32F103CBT6 performance line microcontroller and is connected to a computer host via its USB connector.

• HKUST ROV Team shone in Asia Regional IET/MATE Underwater Robot Challenge 2013

  GordonSin

  The ROV Team, a sub-team of HKUST Robotics Team, shone in the Asia Regional IET/MATE Underwater Robot Challenge 2013 held on 13-14 April 2013. 9 university and 24 high school teams from 8 countries around Asia competed in two categories, Ranger Class and Explorer Class, respectively. The HKUST ROV Team won the Champion Award in the Explorer Class, and they will represent Hong Kong to join the International MATE ROV Competition 2013 Explorer Class in USA in June 2013.

• A Parallella Update

  Andrew Back

  As the first Parallella beta boards arrive this post takes a look at recent project developments.

• Engineering education is going CubeSat shaped....

  Bill Marshall

  First it was the home computer, then the mobile phone: now it’s your own earth-orbiting satellite. Alright, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but about 5000GBP will buy you a kit of parts for the latest high-tech gadget, sorry, valuable research tool that no self-respecting technological university will want to be without...

• Six less ordinary sensors

  Andrew Back

  This post looks at a selection of slightly more esoteric ways of sensing the environment.

• PiGo Sneak Preview

  Andrew Back

  A first look at the upcoming modular expansion system for Raspberry Pi.