—– Lubbock X-FAB Engineering Internship Fall 2016 —–

PLC Replacement ProjectPLC Replacement Project

I did an internship Fall of 2016 at the X-FAB semiconductor manufacturing plant in Lubbock Texas near my University doing physical plant upgrades, and connecting old equipment to the SCADA System and building HMIs to interface with the PLCs in the field.

The project description was to:

•Retrofit an older warning system using RONAN Panels, with Allen Bradley CompactLogix PLCs programmed in RSLOGIX5000, and a touch screen HMI control system networked over a SCADA system programmed in Wonderware.

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—– 28.224 MHz Continuous Wave Receiver. —–

One of the most interesting and challenging projects that I did at Texas Tech was building a high gain RF receiver. My team was responsible for carrying the project from the specification stage,  through the theory and design stages, to a final professionally designed PCB product. This is a brief technical description of the project:

• High gain 28.224 MHz CW Super Heterodyne Receiver designed to pick up Morse code, uses multiple frequency spread amplifiers to converts signals as low as -95dBm to an audible signal.

This is a picture of our final product;  a green-board PCB design for the 28.224 MHz AM Receiver.

I took responsibility for the planning/theory, and design/prototyping stages for our project.

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———    Steam Locomotive Simulation and Control System.   ———

I did this project in middle of my undergraduate classes at Texas Tech University. My team was tasked with controlling a HO model train via encoded signals from the track, in compliance with NMRA standards. The train would be controlled through a LabVIEW simulation of a Steam locomotive; and LabVIEW would receive external inputs.

The technical project description is as follows:

• System simulates a steam locomotive in LabVIEW and sends outputs instructions to a rail control system over USB via UART data protocol. These signals are then interpreted by an MSP430G2553 microcontroller into power signals following NMRA (National Model Railroad Association ) standards, and send to power the track.
• The LabVIEW simulation also receives inputs from control panel over USB via UART protocol from a MSP430 chip which receives various analog and digital inputs.

Set up with the train and controller systems being tested:

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———-Sound Analyst Targeting System————

At Texas Tech my first electrical engineering project lab was to use an FPGA programmed in Verilog to control a track mounted robotic system for locating audible targets, in the 1-2.5 kHz range, and then targeting them with mechanical projectiles. My team used multiple sensors including a microphone, an ultrasonic sensor, and infrared sensors to create a system capable of identifying and locating specific audible frequencies and targeting them. A brief technical objective for the project is below: 

• Autonomous FPGA controlled track driven vehicle, designed to locate and target either a 1 kHz or a 2.5 kHz sound beacon and deploy multiple projectiles to hit the target sound source.

The SATS (Sound Analyst Targeting System) on a mostly empty chassis:

For analyzing audible signals we implemented filters for signals from the microphone. We used a double band-pass filter designed to pass 1 kHz to 2.5 kHz….

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