Kevin Van Bronkhorst

Summary:

The project involved creating a partial miniature assembly of an automobile’s electrical system that could be used for educational purposes to demonstrate a typical electronic circuit in a car. Automobile components were obtained from a junkyard, wired to a power supply, and then displayed in an aesthetically appealing housing. The final assembly includes working headlights, turn signals, running lights, and a functional fuse panel.

Three separate switches control the lights. There are a total of six different functions that the display demonstrates. Those functions are the following: hazard lights, right turn signal, left turn signal, running lights only, low beam headlights with running lights, and high beam headlights with running lights.

The project was completed using a design process that could be applied to any real-world engineering project. Once the idea was conceived, there was a brainstorming period where I came up with as many ideas as possible. Techniques such as morphological charts and functionality analysis were used to help come up with different concepts. I then went through a decision process to weed out the different concepts and choose the best idea. This involved a decision matrix in which the different design ideas were rated against each other. The final design was a byproduct of this exercise.

With the design concept finalized several experiments were performed to give direction on the construction of the final product. The last step of the project was the construction of the product. The construction phase also includes troubleshooting. Finally, all of the kinks were worked out and the final working prototype was completed.