My Bio (Signal Tracker CKT1992)

Signal Tracker CKT1992

    After the taste of bagging the 1st prize (Electronic Combination Lock) from the UE campus 1991 exhibit competition, my enthusiasm in inventing drove me to think one step higher on my works in the field of electronics.

    Aside from the fascination on electronic circuits on gadgets, I thought of designing one that is useful for some industry like solar panel sunlight capturing optimization, or the radio wave capturing optimization, or some other applications where signal detection can be optimized.

    At that time, I read about some concept from a magazine of a sun tracker powered by a mechanical system. This triggered me to think of some electronic circuit to aid the tracking on its most efficient way.

    The device’s operation is that the surface (panel) of the device will face wherever would be the strongest signal there is (where the center portion of the panel be the strongest). The device was coupled with a robotic arm that rotates/revolves in any of the 180deg direction in zooming-in the strongest signal.

    As the UE campus 1992 exhibit competition is fast approaching, once again, I gathered my trusted schoolmates (ANT brigade) and offer this concept for them to again fund the realization (they needed to look for some more people about the size of the whole class to fund my design). The prize of course will be the exemption from the finals of one of the subjects (if the entry will win in any of the prizes).

    I tried to use the device as a solar tracker (since it was the easiest application I can think of to demonstrate its function). It is a perfect application since the sun as we know is a moving source of energy. Hence, to harness its optimum energy (this case the sunlight), a movable panel is needed that will automatically track the movement of the sun from sunrise to sunset. We used a spot light to mimic the sun. That, wherever the spot light points in any portion on the panel, the device looks for that strongest signal (in this case light) source.

    Due to the limited time to construct in time for the exhibit and limited fund for the materials and components to be used (since the IC and other semiconductor components are expensive, the most important component is quite vulnerable to static charge and easily can be damaged if not handled properly), I used scrap materials in building the mechanical portion of the device (e.g. used ball pens, used electrical wires, copper & aluminum foils, and plastic plates). On the electronic circuit side, I used the ever useful universal PCB board in mounting and wiring the semiconductor components. I used up four 4x5 PCB connected together in mounting all of the components in this prototype (of course this should be less if this will be done on a commercial way of producing the circuit).

    The circuit design idea and concept was 100% original (how and what components were used and circuitries coupled together to work as one to make it sensitive to even the minute change of signal for fast and accurate response). I conceptualized the design few months before the exhibit period though.

    We spent about a week long overnight stay in the campus in building the project. We spent two scary midnights inside the campus just to calibrate the sensitivity of the device as well.

    This entry won, but not the 1st prize. The 1st prize was bagged by my ANT brigade colleague and classmate, James (Electronic Hotel Utilities Activation Timing Control). ANT brigade Abel & Melvin had their entry as well (Electronic Arbiter for the Game of the Generals). I served as the circuit design consultant of these ANT brigade entries.

    I remembered at that time, I was told that a certain company was interested on my design and wanted to have it to be mass produced (and have the electronics to be miniaturized into a micro chip). I was not able to focus in dealing with the proposal that time since my focus was just to prove that my idea and design will work.

    Here were some of the working moments during the construction of the device. My deepest thanks to my ANT brigade colleagues, our professors Mr. Pineda & Mr. Galindo, and those individuals that funded, helped, and supported me to build the device.