Aaron Ford EE, Giovanni Goris EE, Nick Guillotte EE, and Brandon Jones CpE
The original motivation for this project, Helium MP3 Player, was to develop a music playing system that required as little input from its users as possible. It was meant to monitor a room for people and play music at an appropriate volume for the conditions in the room (ie: if people were having a conversation, the volume would lower; if there was a large amount of noise, such as from a lawnmower, the volume would raise). It was meant to identify certain individuals users and play the music that they liked. The group decided that we would use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for the last goal. Current RFID technology proved to be inadequate for the task and the goals of the project have had to change quite a bit (for the worse) since then. This paper will identify what the final project will encompass.
Senior Design 1 DocumentationMusic is love, a song by David Crosby (of Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young, among other groups); for some people, there is little in this world that is as capable of evoking emotions as strongly as music is able to. For some in this group, there is nothing more amazing than music; and because of that, the group has decided that our project should be focused around music. Helium will be a music playing system capable of identifying individuals in a room, through the use of an RFID scanner. The system will encompass an intelligent song selection algorithm which will learn the musical tastes of each of its registered users. Once a user has listened to enough music using the devices for the device to know the user, the device will be able to generate playlists perfectly suited for that user. Ideally, the device will be able to generate playlists for each user that will be far superior than the user could create themselves. The device will associate variables with a user that most people never think of, for example, what kind of music does a user like listening to when it is raining? When it is cold? When it is bright and sunny? To further enhance the user music listening experience: the device will be capable of interpreting various voice commands to keep the device hands free; it will feature a graphic equalizer for getting the sound just right; and it will listen for conversations, and reduce its volume so it will not interrupt anyone. Helium will feature a built in speaker as well as ports for additional speakers. The group will attempt to keep the device both low power and high fidelity. To do this, the group will have to balance the devices power consumption and the thermal noise that it will create (mostly from the equalizer). To keep the device functional for all its users, both registered and unregistered, a mobile app will be developed for controlling the device. With the addition of this feature, the user will now have three different method for accessing the true star of this device its content, the music! The user will be able to start the device with a few taps of their phone, a couple of words, or just by walking near it while carrying an RFID tag. The group hopes to further reduce the amount of user input necessary by adding an ability for the device to detect the user who is speaking. Although, this might just be wishful thinking. There is a lot that the group would like to do with this project, but not nearly enough time to do it all; nevertheless, the group will strive to make listening to music with Helium as easy and acoustically pleasing as possible.
Back to Main Page Senior Design 1: Final Documentation Original Block Diagram