NSF Acoustic Recording Collar

Project Overview

The goal of the project is to create an observation collar for marmosets to operate in the wild.� The collar will record information such as sound, localized movement (such as acceleration), and GPS location.� All of this information will be processed by an FPGA and then stored to a microSD flash card.� The collar will be battery power and solar cell charged.

������������������������������������������������ Group Members:� Kyler Callahan (CompE), Justin Marquart (EE)

������������������������������������������������ Advisor: Ross Snider

������������������������������������������������ Sponsor: National Science Foundation

Project Goals

����������� Marmosets are very small animals; because of this our project has some constraints.� It needs to be as small as possible, and as power efficient as possible as we cannot use very large batteries of solar cells.� We will be modifying an existing prototype of the collar

������������� The first prototype (picture above) is 4.75inx3.5in.� To fit this on a monkey the board needs to be shrunk down considerable.� To do this a lot of unnecessary parts will be stripped out, and the PCB will be re-worked.� The new PCB will be split into 3 segments, each a size of 0.78inx1.6in. The first prototype board will aid us in picking out a battery and learning how to work with solar cells.� The knowledge gained from this will help us design the collar.

Kyler Callahan will be doing the PCB design for the collar, while Justin Marquart will be studying the batteries and the solar panels for application on the collar.

Project Status

������������� This project consists of two parallel developments.� This first is a prototype board that will inform us how our design works.� The second development is to create a second iteration of the initial prototype.� These two things can be done in parallel as the components for the first prototype are finalized and board design is very time consuming.� Pictured above is the completely assembled version of our first prototype.� We are currently testing it for design errors.

������������� To make the testing of the solar cells we needed to create a board which houses the cells.� Pictured above is a single layer PCB fabricated here at MSU, this will house the solar cells we will be testing.

������������� The prototype will be split up into three PCBs: one housing the power components called our POWER board, one housing our sensory components called our SENSOR board, and one that houses our FPGA and all of its essential components needed to operate will be called our MAIN board.� The three boards will be connected with a FFC cable.

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������������� Above is a stuffed marmoset that is slightly smaller than the actual animals we will be designing for.� We have a first design collar based on the solar cell dimentions.� This initial collar is too small to house our PCBs so dimentions will need to be adjusted appropriatly.� The white piece of paper is representing the size of the PCB we will be using.� This size has been determined by the absolute minimum allowable size needed to house the FPGA and all of its essential comonents.� The battery we will be using is also presented for size comparison.

������������� Finally we the PADs Layout rough draft of our main board that houses the FPGA and all of its essential components.� Nothing is hooked up yet as the other two boards need to be finalized.� However this is very close to what our MAIN PCB will look like.