Date of Award

6-2013

Document Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Computer Engineering

First Advisor

James Hedrick

Language

English

Keywords

tool, fencing, design, energy

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to redesign a currently available electric training tool for the sport of fencing in order to fix several existing faults such as cost and power use. The second stage of this project uses this new low-power design to explore small-scale energy harvesting by integrating a charging mechanism into the device to generate power from the movements of the fencer. This goal of this project is to research and explore modern low-power device design, at both the hardware and software levels, and then to apply those techniques to improve a real-world product. The final result of this product is an improved and affordable fencing training tool, as well as an alternative power supply design for the device that uses energy harvesting to charge and power the device and remove the need for batteries or an external charger. The first step of this project was to implement the core functions with low power requirements. The microcontroller I selected was the PIC12F1840, an 8-bit, low-power microcontroller. The power consumption was minimized in both hardware and software designs. The base device has low enough power consumption that replacing the battery with an energy-harvesting power supply is possible. The energy harvester uses a piezoelectric element for power generation and a super capacitor for storage in place of a battery.

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