Free Space Optical Communication

The purpose of this project is to update the Engineering Physics 3G03 Project designed by Honson Lam, and Sarah Hoffman. By updating the project, the project can be cleaned up and can be used in the future provide a representation of the some of the type of work that students in Engineering Physics complete during their time at McMaster.

A free space optical communication system was to be engineering. Using a GUI created in Visual C#; text, pictures and sound were to be transmitted via laser beam to another computer. The project was successful, as it could transmit both text and small pictures. The task at hand was to increase the speed of the system, so that pictures could be transmitted at a faster rate and to make the transmission of sound possible. This would improve the system for demo purposes.

To begin updating this project, I had to first understand the code used so that I could make it faster. After the code made sense, and knowing where it needed to be fixed, it was essential to get the FSO system working before changing anything. This proved to be somewhat of a problem, as the majority of the project was not available to update. Using two ARDUINO’s and a photocell, the project was able to run and transmit text. Two pan and tilt servos were hooked up and tested. They worked properly and would not need to be changed.

An extra update to the project, was the addition of an accelerometer that provides real time corrections to variations in the laser beam alignment. The ADXL355 was programmed using ARDUINO to give accurate acceleration measurements. Problems arose when trying to intregrate the accelerometer and the pan and tilt servos.

While in the progress of attempting to rewrite the code, the project was dropped. This was due to lack of time and the fact that the majority of the project was not available. The only original piece of the project available was the code, which was included in the final project report from April 2011. This project is not working and therefore there are no operating instructions, circuit diagrams, figures or images. The code and attempts at updating the code can be found on the J: drive. The original report can be viewed for figures, images, CAD drawings and operating instructions if one wishes.