System Design and Flowcharts/System Block Diagram

Since the preliminary design, the design team has solidified our system block diagram. Only small changes were made to the diagram from the preliminary detailed design phase. Changes included the addition of a power supply for the gateway, directing the voltage from the solar panel to the microcontroller instead of the fuel sensor, changing voltage values to match realistic values, and updating the color code for better viewing.

It should be noted that prototyping during this phase and consulting subject matter experts has made the team consider alternative components. Some of blocks in the system block diagram below are represented by different components. For instance, the fuel level sensor in the individual torch has been exchanged to be a custom sensor made of copper tape. Now that the fuel sensor is no longer an off the shelf component and an adaptive capacitive touch sensor using the oscillator pins of the Nordic microcontroller, power is no longer needed for the fuel sensor. Instead, the microcontroller handles the feedback from the sensor and adjusts the oscillation frequency of the oscillator accordingly.

To eliminate the need for more components than necessary and part failure risks, a simple supply converting 120VAC from the home to 3.3VDC for the ESP32 is utilized. This addition can be viewed in the blue box in the bottom left of the diagram. A connection from the supply is made to the gateway microcontroller providing 3.3 V of DC voltage. It has also been confirmed that the team plans to use a one-way valve near the fuel pump to maintain fuel pressure when the pump stops. Thus, there is no need for additional power to be supplied here and only to the gateway.

Moving into MSD II, there may be slight revisions in order to integrate the system together, but ultimately will be the same.



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