Marketing Spy Bander Alenezi Anthony Do Phu Nguyen Golriz Sedaghat ECE411 Practicum Project Fall 2014

Identifying the Problem One of the prior goals and challenges of every business is fulfilling the needs of clients and keeping them comeback, but this is not always an easy job! Some of the common ways of finding out about the interests of customers are: video camera recording, smart phone tracking, personalized advertisements, taking surveys, … But each of the aforementioned ways would need considerable financial and human resource investments.

Motivation Depending on the kind of business some ways might be more efficient and feasible to keep track of customers’ interests. In an electronics store, it can be easily done by directly monitoring the number and amount of time that each item is picked up and hold by customers during a business day, for example. This can be an fairly accurate solution which would save a considerable amount of money and human time and effort invested in other ways.

Design Objective To build a device that can rate customer’s interest in an electronic item by counting the number that item has been picked up and measuring the average time that it has been held in an electronics store. It can particularly be used after launching a new product.

Other Alternatives Video cameras: Most of the big chains do video analytics by monitoring in and outside their stores Smart phone tracking: Monitoring visitors’ cell signals and creating “heat maps” that glow red where the most foot traffic is Personalized advertising: Tiny pinhole cameras built into onscreen video ads, triggering when the customer pick up the item and serving up a message targeting to the needs of the customer Monitoring and tracking returns and exchanges Online customer rates and reviews

Requirements A self-operated device which detects the presence of the object and counts up one if the item is picked up and display the cumulative count and the average time that the device has been held.

Our Approach: Concept Generation Marketing Spy sensor Infrared Sensor Hall effect Sensor Current Sensor Microswitch Processor MCU MPU Display 7-segment LCD Power Battery AC Power Power Management

Our Approach: Concept Evaluation SensorInfraredQuick response, detecting object independent of existence of a magnetic field (Hall effect sensor) or weight of the object (microswitch) Power Supply 9V DC battery Less power dissipation, less complexity DisplayLCDAbility to display complex characters ProcessorMCUStandalone device, less expensive

Design Level 1 Level 0

SubsystemFunctionality Power SupplyConverts 9V battery voltage to 5V DC voltage Infrared SensorEvery time a costumer picks up the device by a specific distance ( distance is adjustable by potentiometer) the sensor will activate and send a digital signal to the microcontroller MicrocontrollerIt receives a low signal from sensor when the item is picked up (signal stays low until the sensor detects the item again), then it increment the counter by one and display the cumulative count and the average time that the device has been held on LCD LCD DisplayControl signals from microcontroller drive the segments and display the number of pick up and holding average time Hardware

Implementation

Implementation Our final implementation was done using Atmega328P microcontroller, track sensor module consists of infrared reflection sensor and 16x2 Microtivity HD44780 controller LCD.

Implementation

Testing: Hardware & Software Module Tests Power Sensor block LCD display Reset push button Integration Test Interaction of sensor block and MCU LCD and MCU Functional Test Acceptance Test

Results System final test result

ContributorReviewed by Preliminary designPhu NguyenBander Alenezi, Anthony Do Golriz Sedaghat Preliminary PCBGolriz SedaghatPhu Nguyen, Bander Alenezi Anthony Do TestingBander Alenezi, Anthony Do Phu Nguyen, Golriz Sedaghat Bander Alenezi, Anthony Do Phu Nguyen, Golriz Sedaghat WritingPhu Nguyen, Golriz Sedaghat, Bander Alenezi Bander Alenezi, Anthony Do Phu Nguyen, Golriz Sedaghat CodingAnthony Do, Golriz SedaghatBander Alenezi, Phu Nguyen Golriz Sedaghat SolderingBander Alenezi, Golriz Sedaghat Phu Nguyen, Anthony Do Contribution

Lessons Learned Industry design process Programming and interfacing with Atmel AVR microcontroller Learning Eagle CAD Schematic and PCB layout tool Improving soldering skills Learning Github and Redmine collaboration tools THINGS DONE DIFFERENTLY IN THE FUTURE: Concurrent testing during the design process Time management and following project schedule