This page contains links to the work of students of IOngineering at St. Mark's School of Texas. The work of these juniors and seniors includes homework assignments and lab designs using VAB worksheets.

Each entry has a Chapter designation, a title, a summary, author's name, a date of publication or when it was last updated, and links to the material in various formats. 

You can right click on the description to save the file to your computer by choosing the "Save Target As" choice and then designating a location on your local computer. Make sure you save the VAB files with a .lst ending. Each entry also has its bookmark noted, to help teachers making links to it from other web pages.

Chapters 2 & 3: Digital Audio

• Fourier Synthesis

Move the CD Knobs to alter the amplitude, frequency, and phase of three sinusoids as you add them together to attempt to make Sawtooth, Square, and Triangle waves. 

Bookmark: Fourier Synthesis
By:           Pascal
Date:         10-2000
Files Needed: PM FOUR blocks.LST

• Voice Sound Effect Generators

In an attempt to create a voice pitch shift device that mimicked a toy bullhorn, we developed these worksheets that modulate the voice's frequencies in some manner.

Bookmark: Echo Chamber using Cosine generator
By: Thomas M.        
Date: 9-2003        
Files Needed: Cosine Reverb.lst Created by accident, the feedback loop inside of DSP to PC Buffer creates a great "inside a metal hangar" sound effect.

Bookmark: Rummel_Robot_Voice
By: Mr. R        
Date: 9-2002        
Files Needed: Robot Voice Manipulator. Use this as a basis for playing with voice effects. Change the frequency slider and listen to the output. How to get rid of that annoying carrier signal sound?

Bookmark: Tuckers-Deep-Voice
By: Tucker V.       
Date: 7-2002        
Files Needed: Tucker's Deep Voice. This wonderful sheet can make you sound like Darth Vader or the Chipmunks
depending on how you set the controls. Created in the EE 1382 summer 2002 class. A truly elegant solution to the given problem. If you open it and it hangs, stop it and switch to another worksheet with audio. It should run quiet well after switching back to it.

Bookmark: Crystal-Voice-Effect
By: Luke R. and Mr. R       
Date: 9-2002        
Files Needed: Crystal Voice Effect. Want to sound like a far-off crystal harp? Try this.

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Chapters 4 & 5: Imaging

• Homage to Andy Warhol

What happens when you purposefully miswire the RGB outputs of the camera block to the output displays? You get a Warholian view of the world. Try and guess how each block was wired. Remember, when painting with light, Red + Green = yellow, Blue + Red = Magenta, and Blue + Green = Cyan. This is a great logic puzzle best explored with different colored objects (like textbooks) in front of the camera to help you deduce what is going on.
Harder to guess than it looks!

Bookmark: Warhol-Images
By: Luke R.       
Date: 10-2002        
Files Needed: Warhol Images. Need a standard CCD camera hooked up to run this live!
 

• Various pixel operations performed on an image

Bookmark: ImageReaderPixelations
By: Matt J.       
Date: 7-2001 EE 1382 @ SMU        
Files Needed: Imagereader-various pixelations. This file takes a .bmp picture from the VAB install on your C drive and allows you to explore multiple effects all at once by the use of multiple sliders. Resolution and bit depth changes can be shown in various combinations.
 

• Adjusting Tracking parameters to track a Jet Plane

The goal was to accurately track just the jet plane itself on landing approach with the Object Tracker by changing the object tracker 1 block parameters.

Bookmark:     JetPlaneTracker
By:           Evan
Date:         9-6-2000
Files Needed: Jet Plane Tracker VAB.lst worksheet (6 kB), jet landing.avi of landing (1,905 kB)
which you should save in your C:\My Documents folder

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• Motion Activated Security "Superblock" Worksheet

Designed to be a highly selective and stable motion tracker, this superblock will activate an .AVI movie file write to C:/Security whenever motion is detected. It also produces a varying pitch to indicate the intensity of the changes being tracked.

Bookmark:  Motion-AVI Superblock
By:           Bobby
Date:         11-15-01
Files Needed: Superblock- Motion Activated Superblock.lss (13 kB- Download first to desktop)
		Master Worksheet-  Motion Activated AVI-write.lst (11 kB)

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• Air Guitar

Based on the stable motion tracker above, a camera tracks hand motions and generates a three note audio signal for every
x & y position tracked. Motions left/right  or up/down change the pitch relationships to produce new notes. The last note created is sustained if no new motion is detected. Dials allow the pitch to be tuned through changing the power component.

Bookmark: AirGuitar
By:           Bobby
Date:         2-8-02
Files Needed: air guitar chord.lst (20 kB)
		> Requires video camera connected (with proper drivers) to the PC.

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• 3 Channel Tracker

Making an object tracker cursor for each of the Red, Green and Blue channels in a movie file.
Try cutting each color channel connector and watch what happens.

Bookmark:     3channelTracker
By:           Pascal and David
Last updated: Sept. 6, 2000
Files Needed: Sophisticated Tracker.lst worksheet (10 kB) The image read block expects to find the movie duel3.avi in he Hyperception install on your local C drive. If you can't find it use another .AVI movie with multiple items moving.

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• Various Coin Counter Value Calculator Worksheets

These all use a CCD camera input (or image reads) to identify various American Coins by their surface
area at a fixed focal length (~18 cm) and then calculate the dollar amount of money present.

Bookmark:     ChangeCounterI
By:           Bobby C.
Date:         10-2001
File Needed:  Coin counter CCD (27 kB)
Description: Adjust a CCD camera to a focal length of about 18 cm and adjusting light
levels to provide uniform illumination across your coins spread out on a black surface (the back of a mousepad can work well). Your results may vary since this worksheet uses the area of pixels at a given reflectance value to identify the coins, assign a value, and then total the change in dollars. Adjust the sliders according to your local settings!
 

Bookmark:     ChangeCounterII 
By:           Jerry 
Date:         7-2001
File Needed:  Change counter II (19 kB)
Description: This counter uses a still photo of coins instead of the live camera counting created by Bobby C.

Bookmark:     ChangeCounterIII
By:           Alex
Date:         7-2001
File Needed:  Coin Count III (20 kB)
Description: This counter uses a still photo of coins instead of the live camera counting.

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Document Format Definitions

.html    web page (Hypertext Markup Language)
.doc    Microsoft Word 2000 format. Can be read by Office 97 (with some functions unusable)
.rtf    Rich Text File. Can be read across computing platforms.
.zip    archive file for Windows; requires WinZip shareware (or other such compression utilities) to read. Used to upload large files in a compressed format.
.lss     VAB Hierarchical or "Superblock". This worksheet runs and behaves as a single functional block within another .lst worksheet. This structure allows for nested and complex functions to occur within worksheets.
.lst    VAB worksheet; requires VAB software by Hyperception. Can be read in Notepad to see the underlying structure.
.avi    Audio-visual or Windows Media player movie.
.pdf    Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format. Free reader available at Adobe software.