Electrical engineering ideas?

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I just graduated from college and want to start a fun electrical project to keep my mind going. Any ideas of something that might be fun to design or construct (that's not overly expensive)?

Not sure what the project for you would be, but I would start with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino.

I personally am interested in showing that one could make a device using one of the above that has WiFi on one side, and a serial port on the other controlling model trains, and dishes up web pages, so one does not have to develop one app for Windows, one for iOS, one for Android, etc.

How about this? Something that checks on the electric hot water heater? If the temperature is cold, and the unit is not drawing current, it sends a email or SMS to a phone? That SMS is NOT easy, you need an intermediary company. Also watch out that you isolate whatever you do with the AC current; a thru hole current sensor is the way to go. Some companies are CR Magnetics, Honeywell, LEM.

You will want to be able to fake out the sensor will developing the software.

Here's another one I wish I had the time to figure out. Use the input on an audio card on a PC/laptop to make vibration measurements. You would need something called an accelerometer and another device called a charge amp, and then you need to find out if the audio input is AC or DC coupled. I have seen various companies demo it (Dasylab and Labview come to mind), but how about one written in C#/Mono, or Java, or Python, something that is free and open. And manage the software in Git or Github. Some high end audio cards are 24-bit, they would rock on this. Bonus points if you can figure out how to make it work on Windows 7/8/10, Linux, and Mac OS. There is a lot of software behind this, you need to get data in fast, filter it, display it. THIS IS NOT TRIVIAL, companies charge a lot of money for this stuff.

I think there is a wifi to serial module out there. you login to to it using shell or SSH and you use it like a VT-100 terminal. not for sure.



I built something similar to this, but is for my irrigation system. I use a pressure transducer that is connected to the post filter side of my system. I use it to check if the filters get clogged and need to be clean. It works by taking a pressure measurement before turning on the system and taking another after. If there is a large enough difference between the two reading. it send me an E-mail telling me to check my filters. The reason I do this differential measurement instead of just reading the static pressure, is I want to make sure that any pressure drop on the system is cause by the filters being clogged and not by changes in the incoming water pressure.



Making a vibration sensor is easy. All you need is a piezoelectric transducer. Gluing a weight on to the back of it will give it a better low frequency response. If you want to do this with a PC sound card. you'll need to find the decoupling capacitor and ether bypass it or put a larger value in to increase the low end on the sound card. Most sound cards will only go down to 20Hz.



Going thru a PC sound card is gonna induce some delay because of it's buffers. If you want instant real-time response with something that need an FFT math engine, and do it all in software. You are gonna have to use a non-multitasking OS to do this.

I'm currently using a Rasberry Pi and a breadboard to create a prototype audio sampler. Like an MPC or SP1200. Just a bit of fun though. I'm also using an Arduino where I hook it up to my Novation Launchpad to create a chord matrix.

You probably know far more than me if you've studied electrical engineering for 3 years lol.

Anything relating to audio I don't mind getting involved in. I'd like to create something with the Pi that I can drop in a location, with a mobile dongle, and have it record sounds then upload them and make them available for download. There's lots of places where interesting and unusual sounds can be heard all day long, I'd like to sample those for music production.

I also had an idea of creating a huge private network of Raspberry Pi's. It works like this:

You drop a Raspberry Pi in a random location complete with solar power, weatherproof casing, and battery packs. Create a script that can scan 802.11 frames and autoconnect to any open wifi hotspot and test for an Internet connection. If it works, you drop the Pi in a discrete location around the spot it picked up and confirmed an open Internet connection.

Once it connects to the internet it connects to a server where other Raspberry Pi's are connected to. The server connects all the Pi's together.

Now you have a network of Pi's in locations all over the place. You now have an anonymous network also because you can use any one of the IP's that all the Pi's are connected to. Ensure everything that goes through the network is encrypted. Ideally they all run on solar power, and can save power when not in use.

You sell these boxes at £50 each for example, making very little profit, but allowing others to instantly join a private network. Each Pi has a 256bit key, which is used to join the network. So you buy one of these devices, you get access to the whole network. If you don't buy one, you can't connect. It's one key per machine, no exceptions. This stops people sharing keys.

At the basic level you connect and use as a proxy.

As the owner of the network you also have tremendous power at your fingers.

How 'bout a Tesla Coil?

High voltage is ALWAYS fun.