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From left to right: Jimmy Fong, Matt Valaskey, Bryan Mounce, Vidhya Raju, and Aditi Bharatkumar.
We will be designing a device to record the sounds due to bone conduction while a person chews. The sounds recorded for different types of foods show characteristic sound waves that allow for analysis of the types of food and the relative amounts eaten.
Complete!
For the first time on October 6th, we were able to connect a working microphone to the oscillator and obtain a signal. We also received equipment that will allow us to directly listen to the sounds made in the ear while chewing. From here, we have also begun looking at the sound waves produced upon chewing a crisp food, such as pretzels.
Capturing a nice sine wave from whistling into the microphone and displaying the results on the oscilloscope. We are currently in the stages of using Fourier Transforms to further analyze the frequencies of the waves.
The group working on the computational analysis and circuit construction.
Our final prototype microphone! It consists of a small, yet powerful, microphone placed within an ear filter for comfortable placement in the ear. Hooking this microphone up to a small circuit to deliver the correct voltages and then connecting it to an oscilloscope, we were able to obtain clear waveforms for analysis using Excel (see the list of files below). This allowed us to guess at which foods were eaten to a surprisingly high level of accuracy.
The Excel spreadsheet with a macro using the FFT algorithm. Data is entered into the first column, and after Excel runs through the process, it predict the type of food eaten by comparing the peak frequency response to a databank of previously-tested foods.
| Week | Reporting Period Beginning | Activities |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | September 8 | Read literature on previous research, became familiarized with different team roles |
| 2 | September 15 | Continued to research, contacted companies for microphones and parts, met with Dr. Schoeller |
| 3 | September 22 | Experimented with possible microphones, found multiple sources, found more audio equipment sources, wrote PDS |
| 4 | September 29 | Worked with first microphone by setting up a circuit and connecting to the oscillator; researched the different types of circuits to capture the frequencies we need. |
| 5 | October 6 | Continued work with oscillator and microphones, measured first working signal using components from a microphone used to listen to inner-ear sounds |
| 6 | October 13 | Continued experimenting with microphone positioning and amplification method; considered using cheaper microphones to cut down the cost of the project |
| 7 | October 20 | Discussed further design possibilities with cheaper microphones and ordered a few; experimented with connecting different types of microphones to an amplifier |
| 8 | October 27 | Began to build a circuit amplifier; began signal analysis using Excel and Matlab |
| 9 | November 3 | Built working circuit amplifier and began working with filtering the signals using Matlab |
| 10 | November 10 | Experimented with final microphone design; explored filtering options |
| 11 | November 17 | Worked on Fast Fourier Transform on collected data; continued to work on final microphone |
| 12 | December 1 | Worked on automating Fourier Transform; worked with making microphone more comfortable. |
| 13 | December 8 | Finished automation of FFT algorithm using Excel; finalized prototype in-ear microphone |
| 14 | December 15 | Worked on poster presentation and fixed some aesthetics on prototype microphone and Excel spreadsheet |
| 15 | December 22 | Compiled final report, prototype, and data for delivery |
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Project Design Specifications (Sep 23 2006, 16 kb) |
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Mid-Semester Presentation (Oct 19 2006, 959 kb) |
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Mid-Semester Progress Paper (Oct 25 2006, 486 kb) |
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Chewing Analysis - Signal Databank (Dec 13 2006, 494 kb) |
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Chewing Analysis - Raw Signal Plots (Dec 13 2006, 1317 kb) |
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Final Poster Presentation (Dec 13 2006, 1813 kb) |
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Excel FFT Analysis (Dec 13 2006, 1322 kb) |
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Final Paper (Dec 13 2006, 270 kb) |
