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INDEX About the Section Calendar of Events Recent Events SRT Program Sparks Newsletter Newsletter Archive Executive Committee Meeting Minutes Students Branch Links Daytona IEEE Section December 8, 2009 Dinner/Meeting Tracy Whichmann will speak at the Dinner/Meeting on December 8th, 2009. His talk will be on the subject of Speech Recognition. One of the major problems associated with speech recognition is correctly isolating and identifying individual phonemes from continuous speech. Tracy will describe a statistical prediction algorithm, called a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and a method known as Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) as tools used to correctly identify phonemes from continuous speech. This should be a very interesting presentation as speech recognition using isolated phoneme has been a subject of great interest in the scientific community for a number of years. Tracy will also include in his presentation a demonstration of voice recognition and vocoder operation. An abstract of the talk and a biography of Tracy's technical background can be found on the Calendar of Events page of this Website. Join us for cocktails at 6:30 PM, with the dinner at 7:00 PM and a very exciting technical presentation at 8:00 PM. October 22, 2009 Dinner Meeting On October 22nd, Adrian Zvarych, currently the Smart Grid Lead at TRC Engineering spoke on the communications considerations associated with the development of Smart Grid designed to control all aspects of the electrical distribution network for the United States. He provided an overview of the critical Smart Grid components, and demonstrate how the communications infrastructure is vital to ensuring consumer loads and utility generation supply can be well balanced in the future. Daytona Computer Society Chapter Schedules November Technical Meeting On November 19th the IEEE Daytona Section, Computer Society Chapter has scheduled a technical meeting at 12:45 to 2:00 PM at Room LB170, Lehman Building on the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Campus.. The speaker for this meeting will be Dr. Stansbury, an Assistant Professor of Software Engineering, at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Mr. Jonathon Marolf Master of Software Engineering degree candidate at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Efforts are being made on a global scale to deal with an ever increasing demand for fossil fuels and the impact of greenhouse emissions. The automotive manufacturers have been negatively impacted by the resulting increase in fuel prices. occur is a college level competition primarily sponsored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy in an effort to gain awareness and propose solutions to the growing energy crisis. The program consists of 17 teams with a wide variety of vehicle types. This presentation describes a new resource for hybrid vehicle control systems known as the Intelligent Driving Efficiency Assistant, or IDEA system. The IDEA system works to assist the hybrid or supervisory control unit by using artificial intelligence to predict upcoming driving conditions and make recommendations for the current hybrid mode. This preemptive strategy is believed to provide two key benefits. First, through learning algorithms, new control strategies may be developed based on the driving conditions and past experience. Second, by preemptively making recommendations ahead of a driving event such as an uphill climb, or a frequent stop in rush-hour traffic, it is believed that there will be less energy wasted by not waiting until the need arises to start making the transition between hybrid modes. During this presentation, an overview of the Challenge and the ERAU hybrid vehicle will be provided. We will then discuss the initial prototype of the IDEA System. From this prototype, we will discuss the plan to implement and integrate the IDEA system within the hybrid vehicle. The talk will conclude with a discussion of future work for the project. For additional information on this presentation or on the Computer Society Chapter of the IEEE Daytona Section, contact Dr. Tim Wilson at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (386) 226-6994. You can also reach him by email at wilsonti@erau.edu Life Members Meeting On November 10th a number of Life Members of The Daytona IEEE Section visited the Tel-Tron Company of Daytona Beach, Florida. Tel-Tron provides emergency call systems for the senior living industry, something that is or will affect most of us some time in the future. The program provided an overview of Tel-Tron products and how they serve senior living today. The tour was extensive and the personnel at Tel-Tron permitted us to look at their extensive design and development engineering programs. We also visited their state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities. The LM group would like to thank Rick Dawson. Chairman and Chief Technology Officer and his entire staff for agreeing to host our visit. They provided us with an outstanding presentation of their products and their engineering capabilities. At the suggestion of several members of the Section the webmaster requested an alias web site address from IEEE Headquarters. For people with short memories we can now be reached on our old web address http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r3/daytona or or new alias address: http://www.ieee.org/go/daytona. The Daytona Section still mails out a hard copy of their monthly newsletter "Spark" during the months that the section has active meetings. On this website the current copy of the "Sparks" newsletter will be provided by clicking on Sparks Newsletter at the top of this page. Copies of the newsletter for the past several years are available by clicking on the Newsletter Archives at the top of this page, and then selecting the appropriate newsletter from the archives by date.	Welcome to the Daytona Section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Small Radio Telescope Project The objective of the Small Radio Telescope Program was to acquire and operate a small radio telescope in support of a comprehensive educational and research program. This program was directed at increasing the understanding of science and electrical engineering in the local schools and universities of the greater Daytona Area. In early 2007 a grant application was submitted by the Daytona IEEE Section to the IEEE Life Member Committee (LMC) to provide funding for a Small Radio Telescope (SRT) Program. The purpose of the SRT Program was to acquire, assemble and calibrate a small radio telescope to be used for teaching radio astronomy, electronics, communications, antenna theory, and data processing. The device will be used to support the teaching of these technologies at the University Level, High School and Middle School Level, and provide workshops to home schooled students. In February the Small Radio Telescope (SRT) Program, funded by the IEEE Life Member Committee, placed the initial purchase orders necessary to obtain a commercial small radio telescope instrument. In November 2008 the components for the Small Radio Telescope were delivered to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University where the mechanical portion of the system was assembled and tested. In early January of 2009 the SRT was moved from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to a private aircraft hanger in Spruce Creek Fly-In. At the hanger the microwave portion of the system was tested and initial tracking and calibration tests were performed. In late February 2009 the completed SRT system was delivered to the Daytona Museum of Arts and Sciences (MOAS). On 21 February the system was demonstrated to the Life Members Committee (LMC) as part of their Orlando Florida meeting agenda. After the Life Members meeting the 7.5 foot parabolic dish was replaced with a 10 foot dish to dramatically improve the systems sensitivity. In early April 2009 the antenna system was mounted on a 20 foot mast at the Museum of Arts and Sciences and integrated into the planetarium's control console position. With the antenna installed in the museum's planetarium a series of detailed tests were run prior to integrating it into the planetarium program. In mid May 2009 the Daytona area was hit with a tropical depression which dumped 24 inches of water on the museum facilities over a three day period. This storm caused extensive damage to the museum's wing that contained the planetarium. Although it did no damage to the SRT system it caused extensive damage to the planetarium wing of the museum. When the museum reopened one month after the floods, the planetarium program was moved into the auditorium. The Daytona IEEE section has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the museum to install a wireless ethernet transmission link between the planetarium and the auditorium to permit the SRT to be remotely controlled so that it can be integrated back into the planetarium show. The museum has not yet formulated a plans to rebuild the exhibit space and planetarium in the flood destroyed wing of the museum. During November 2009 a small team of engineers from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University started looking at the SRT software interfaces-making it more user friendly and more meaningful to the potential users. We want to thank Dr. Hugh Ward, Dr. Billy Barott, Jeanette Barott, Jonathon Marolf, Logan Meeers and Nick Bartolotta for there help and support. Detailed photos and description of the development and testing of the SRT can be found on the SRT Program section of this website Annual Elections At the December 8th meeting the Daytona IEEE Section will hold its annual elections. The existing Section officers have volunteered to stand for office for next year. The current slate for this election are: Chairman: Roger Grubic Vice Chairman: Dr. Thomas Yang Treasurer: Tracy Wichmann Secretary: Allan Jusko As usual nominations can be made from the floor on December 8th for any of the offices listed above. Future Meeting Dates The scheduled meeting date for the beginning of the 2009-2010 Season Calendar year are: December 8, 2009. Please mark your calendar. Changes of meeting dates or location, if necessary, will be posted on this website. If you have any comments about these pages, or suggestions for other items that should be added, please e-mail the Webmaster at the address at the bottom of this page.

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