May '02 - Infrared Detection and Logging

Designed and built a working circuit that used an IR diode coupled with a photo-transistor to monitor the food reservoir on a flower.  Utilized a common-emitter configuration of a BJT amplifier to boost the signal from the sensors to the I/O card in a PC.  Designed the PCB on the computer; chemically etched it, and then soldered all the components to it.Wrote a software program in C to read the data from the I/O card.  It scanned each port via direct memory addressing and used logical bit operators to determine the status of each flower.  The changes of any bit were time-stamped, sorted and recorded in a log file.  Design a special algorithm to sort the entries in real-time and withstand cases of multiple nested visits.  The user interface was textual and displayed information such as: acceptable input characters, the status of each flower, and even the help file listings.