Y2 Project Week 1

Week 1: Basic preparation for the project

Introduction:

This week,we made some preparation for the project.  The aim of this project is to find the solution to improve the efficiency which means the value of power factor should be close to 1.

What we did in this week:

With the guidance of the supervisor, we created a basic structure to realize this function.  The basic structure is displayed in the figure 1.  In this structure, students need to input code to the ARM microcontroller to realize the function of detecting the most suitable capacitor form C1 to C3 in order to obtain the most suitable value which is close to the 1.  In addition, the ARM microcontroller need to have the function of calculating the power factor of the circuit.

Figure 1

After knowing the basic structure, we discussed the method to calculate the power factor.  We found that the voltage and current between ARM and circuit can be used to calculate the power of the circuit.  Then the power factor can be obtained by the equation: Real Power/Apparent Power.
In order to prove this method is practicable or not, we designed a simple circuit which is displayed in the figure2:

Figure 2

Using the oscilloscope to display the voltage and current between ARM and circuit, we found that it is practicable to calculate the apparent power of the circuit.
We will focus on the code of the ARM and the circuit in next week.