Electrical & Computer Engineering

Electrical and computer engineers create innovative and practical solutions to invent, design and build technologies and products. Our graduates design important technologies and products, including medical devices, tablet computers, smart phones, video games, wireless networks, 3D television and highfidelity audio.

2024 Engineering Open House Home

2024 Projects

Lightning Protection Project

MEMBERS: Mary Peterson; Brayden Schmidt; Caleb Stanley; Isaiah Wasson

ADVISOR: Dr. Arun Manoharan

SPONSOR: Evergy, Kansas City

To ensure the reliable supply of power to consumers, it is necessary to protect transmission systems against lightning strikes to the phase conductor. Generally, utilities use shield wires located on the top of transmission towers to divert lightning to ground; however, the geometry of the shield wire and phase conductor impact the probability of shield failure. This project develops a tool to compute the shield failure rate (SFR) for a given configuration to enable Evergy to maintain required service reliability. For a transmission tower utilizing a shield wire above the phase conductors, shield failure is related to the geometry of the tower and the shield and conducting wires. Since utilities have standards for how many shield failures are permitted per hundred miles of transmission line per year, the ability to project the number of failures is important for transmission planning. In this project, an SFR calculator is developed to compute the shield failure rate for a given transmission configuration, allowing engineers to determine whether the geometry satisfies lightning protection requirements. Calculations in the tool are based on the IEEE 1243 standard, and details about the model will be delivered to Evergy transmission engineers. This model will improve Evergy transmission planning and minimize lightning-induced outages. The final deliverables are a downloadable calculator tool with a report explaining how to use the tool, details about the incorporated calculations, and instructions for updating the tool.

Magnetic Effect Testing System (M.E.T.S.)

MEMBERS: Trey Akler; Nicolas Reyes; Zachary Dornfeld; Mutlaq Alotiabi;

ADVISOR: Dr. Steven Skinner

SPONSOR: Ametek

The M.E.T.S. gets the average value of the electromagnetic field of the earth on start up. Then compares that value to the new values being created by the equipment under testings (EUT) interference. The test starts with the EUT one meter away from the M.E.T.S. then the EUT is slowly moved closer until 1 degree of interference or greater is detected. After the test, the M.E.T.S. indicates the test has finished by changing the color of an LED, sending a message to an LCD, and an alarm going off. There are security systems that detect when measurements that deviate by more than 2 degrees at a time. When the deviation happens too fast the M.E.T.S. lets the user know they need to redo the test as there was interference not caused by the EUT and tainted the test results. A similar system is used in calibration to ensure the sample size is consistent and untainted.

 

 

Solar Powered cattle trough de-icer

MEMBERS: Walter Roensch Jr.; Marcos Fisher; Aden Reusser

ADVISOR: Dr. Visakumar Aravinthin

In the winter it is commonplace for animal water troughs to freeze over. Because of this farmer must check on the troughs periodically in below freezing temperatures. Solutions already exist to mitigate this problem such as bubblers for water troughs, but all these solutions require ready access to electricity. Many animal water troughs are in remote locations with no access to electricity. As such, we have designed a device that uses solar panels, and a battery bank allowing to induce flow in the tank and prevent freezing.

 

Plant Buddies

MEMBERS: Corbin Huisman; John Duong; Ryan Delos Reyesx

ADVISOR: Dr. Ali Eslami

Plant Buddies is a project that utilizes a Raspberry Pi to monitor the health of plants. It incorporates sensors for ambient light, temperature, humidity, and soil moisture, with the ability for users to select the type of plant being monitored. The collected data is uploaded to the cloud, where it is analyzed to determine the plant's health status. When action is needed, such as watering or adjusting light exposure, notifications are sent to the user via email. This project aims to provide a user-friendly and automated solution for maintaining healthy indoor plants.

 

Portable Coffee Maker

MEMBERS: Dayton Turner; Logan Oesterreich; Phuong Nguyen

ADVISOR: Dr. Arun Manoharan

Battery-powered coffee maker with internal heater, water tank, and detachable cup.

Implementation of IEC 61850 in Substation Automation

MEMBERS: Kevin Nguyen, Makayla Padin-Todd, Syed Ahmed

ADVISOR: Dr. Mehnaz Tabassum

SPONSOR: Evergy

IEC 61850 is an international standard for communication of electrical substation automation systems. Its goal is to eliminate as much copper and dedicated control wiring as possible in substations and provide an alternative to merge communications between IEDs and other protection control functions. Rather than using copper wires, ethernet cables are commonly used with IEC 61580 which can greatly reduce the amount of wiring needed. This standard defines the standardization of names, data, mapping, and other forms of object/data use in substations. Researching and understanding the standards of IEC 61850 is crucial to designing a substation protection and control system that can be faster, more efficient, and more versatile. For this test report, IEC 61850 GOOSE and Sampled Values is the focus from the IEC 61850 standard. Our team’s goal with Evergy is to figure out how to implement this standard into their practices and design protection schemes showing how it works. This also includes investigating if using IEC 61850 would be more cost-effective and worth the time and money for Evergy to continue working with this standard. We are tasked with learning about this standard and comparing it with the existing standards used by Evergy.
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WSU ESC

MEMBERS: Cole McDaniel; Jacob Minter; Ethan Doerksen; Brianna Smith

ADVISOR: Dr. Davi Soares

SPONSOR: Brian Falk, Wichita

A Electronic Speed Controller (ESC) for Brushless DC motors (BLDC) that has a working voltage of 11-60V can output up to 80 Amps continous, with 120 Amp peaks. Currently one board controls one motor the design is to control four motors with a single PCB to have a smaller footprint and ease for customer.
AlertSecure - Home Security System with Email & SMS Notifications

MEMBERS: Junayed Rafid; Ryan Buck-Carlson; Mohammad Alhusaini

ADVISOR: Dr. Mehnaz Tabassum

We want to make a system that provides an affordable solution to home security, which includes SMS notifications, Email notifications, Camera for image capture , Gas alert, and light and sound alarm.

 

Honeywell Locking Solutions

MEMBERS: Cole Anderson, Michael Vaught, Trevor Sherrard, Joseph Bunch

ADVISOR: Dr. Watkins

SPONSOR: Honeywell

Creating four unique electronic locking solutions for Honeywell. Each lock requires two people to unlock. Each of the four locks can easily be swapped out for full customization.

Intelligent Parking Lot Solutions

MEMBERS: Christian Sanchez; Luis Pinango; Tala Salem; Eisa Ali

ADVISOR: Dr. Ding

We're developing an innovative automated parking solution to eliminate the hassle of searching for available parking spaces.

Fire Rover

MEMBERS: James Earnst, Ricardo Castanon, Jeff Thompson, Brent Wilson

ADVISOR: Dr. Visvakumar Aravinthan

Project Fire Rover is aimed at providing a robotic solution to aid wildfire response. This robot's goal is to accomplish progressive hose lay operations for wildfire fighters. This can alleviate the burden on the human body and reduce exhaustion whilst on the job site.

Piano Group

MEMBERS: Corey Woltman; Michael Self; Chaz Minkle; Trang Nguyen

ADVISOR: Dr. Ali Eslami

Our project's primary goal is to be able to take any typical sound such as a car horn,
musical instruments, or the human voice, and transform the audio observed into piano notes that
represent the object being recorded. This transformation is not commercialized and has a
potential market for children and musicians. We intend to implement our product on an App
with various algorithms to extract the correlated data to an output of piano music
Automated Test Stand for Electric Motors

MEMBERS: Jacob Lambert; Fabrizio Montorfano Perez; Brian Lance

ADVISOR: Dr. Chengzong Pang

SPONSOR: Electromech Technologies

This project involves the development of an automated test stand for motors, featuring a custom-designed graphical user interface (GUI) developed using Python. The setup includes a high-voltage hipot (high potential) test to ensure insulation effectiveness, a data acquisition unit to capture and analyze motor performance metrics, and a power supply to energize the motors under test. All components of the test stand are interconnected using a General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB) cable, facilitating seamless communication and control via the centralized GUI on a computer. This integration allows for sophisticated testing and monitoring of motor characteristics, enhancing the precision and efficiency of the testing process.

Differential Protection Simulation

MEMBERS: Joseph Wilson; Sang Vo; Chimee Obi; Phuoc Ngyuen

ADVISOR: Dr. Chengzong Pang

SPONSOR: Abrar

Research into an alternative protection scheme for Evergy, includes the research and simulation of differential protection across a series of powerlines.

A First Responder's First Responder

MEMBERS: McKinley Bahr; Elias Brownlee; Daniel Abbott

ADVISOR: Dr. Steven Skinner

The job of a firefighter is a dangerous one. They go into burning and/or collapsing buildings to get people out to safety. Unfortunately, some of their equipment is in need of modernization. The perfect example is their personal distress devices. These antiquated devices require 10 to 30 seconds of the firefighter being pinned down before going off, and only in that scenario. The First Responder's First Responder not only reads a firefighter's vitals, but also relays it back to a central computer which displays the information, but also sounds an alarm if their vitals travel to unsafe and unhealthy territory.