This semester (Fall-2025), I am taking 2.671 (Measurement and Instrumentation). As part of the class, students have to conduct an independent research assignment, known as the "Go Forth and Measure" project. This is a semester-long research project that helps students apply measurements techniques and experimental design to a topic of our own interest. At the bottom of this page is a 2 column final paper summarizing my work in the class (sadly not in $LaTeX$).
Initial Writing (October 12 2025)
When I first set out to start the project, I was pretty unsure of what I wanted to do. Many experiments focus on using EEG machines or measuring things at home. Recently, I've realized that I want to gain more expertise in understanding electrical design (hence my LED PCB array project). As such, I wanted my project to be something related to measuring electricity.
I eventually decided that observing the production of electromagnetic interference (EMI) would be cool, which is what I decided to work with.
Since then, I have ocassionally regretted doing this, but it is what we're doing.
My initial goal was to use an electromagnet and run AC through it (3A, 100 kHz), but this did not produce any notable changes in the wire.
As such, I have changed my project to measuring the effects of wires runing in parallel. My initial test for this was running around 2 meters of wire right next to eachother, with one being driven off of a function generator, and the other being floating. I was somewhat amazed to see really great results. A 5Vpp sine wave resulted in a 1Vpp sine wave in the other signal. I also saw consistent changing behavior in the signal, which resulted in observed interference at 60 Hz. After talking with Steve Banzaert, a technical instructor for electronics, I realized that it was a result of the radiation of the walls and ceiling, which run at 60 Hz and 120 Hz, respectively. I am going to include some images of the waveforms below.
I am going to modify this experimental set up with 2 main things. The first, I am going to change the floating wire, which is essentially just a really long antenna, to a driven wire for a sensor. Right now, I will be doing it for an IMU, but I will consider changing to something more representative of the sensors used by the AUV. Secondly, I'm hoping to show the effect of varied length and varied distance in the effects observed in terms of frequency differences, phase shifts, and more.
Update (October 22 2025)
I was trying to get data off the oscilloscope and had a wire pulling from the end that was running near another wire (almost away from the oscilloscope). I'm realizing that what I should do instead is run the IMU further from the oscilloscope and have cabling around it one the way there instead.
Update (December 31 2025)
My semester got thrown for a pretty bad loop in terms of my personal life and general work-life balance. As a result, I ended up not updating this with a lot of my progress with the project, but feel free to read below for a description of my work in the project.
Final Poster
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