Levitated Object Controller

Brief

In this project, a system with the ability to levitate, manipulate and move a tiny object with certain characteristics by acoustic waves has been developed. An array of ultrasonic acoustic transducers has been used in which each transducer is cylinder-shaped with a diameter of 10mm and operating in 40 kHz frequency.

Considering the air pressure trap to levitate the object, two types of arrays have been used:

1- Upward Square Array - Horizontal Air Trap

2- Two Directional (one upward and the other downward, with a vertical distance) Square Array - Standing Wave

Both types have been implemented in this project, and the second type led to more stable levitated objects.

For the first array, 64 transducers have been used and 50 transducers for the second in which each transducer is connected to its unique phase-delayed electronic signal. To generate these signals, Arduino MEGA 2560 microcomputer is used. Generated signals are amplified by a 64-channel amplifying board that has been designed using Altium Designer.

• Deps:
  • Qt5 [i used 5.13.0 version clang_64]
  • spdlog [i used v1.8.0]
  • Arduino IDE 1.6.13

CMake Configs:

you can add deps path in your environment path variable and not mention this cmake flag in your configurations

-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=path/to/Qt5;path/to/spdlog

How to build

git clone https://github.com/maghorbani/LevController
cd LevController
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. \
	-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=[mentioned above]
make

How it looks like

First Step: Prepare Hardware

the electronic implementation is using ArduinoMEGA

please prepare an ArduinoMEGA 2560 and using Arduino IDE, programm the LevControllerDriver/LevControllerDriver.ino file into the Arduino

please note that i used Arduino IDE 1.6.13 and in the higher versions, some optimizations in compile steps, will make the hardware not to work in 40KHz but in lower frequencies

so best choice is to use Arduino IDE 1.6.13 and an alternative choice is to compile with -o 3 flag in higher version

you can find Arduino IDE 1.6.13 download link here.

How to use it:

• use action File>Load Struct ([CMD] + O) and load a json structure file

• connect the ArduinoMEGA throgh usb and hit check ports button, and the application will fill the combobx with all connected Serial Devices.

  Select the considered port and hit use button

• in set Levitation Point section, specify an initial location based your structure and click calcAndSend button

• now you can place a particle in your specified location and the structure will Levitate The point

• after Levitation, you can play around with Move Levitated Object section; by hitting any of direction buttons, the levitated object will move in that direction, with location change specified in Move Diff

This Project is done as Bs.c Project in AmirKabir University of technology, Electronics Branch

maghorbani@aut.ac.ir -> you can send me anything about this project