Black Box 2.0

Project Summary

The Black Box 2.0 project is a collaboration between Design Team 21 from the University of St. Thomas and Ergotron. Ergotron manufactures carts for use in hospital settings. To improve design and maintenance of these carts, they have a monitoring system that they have developed which tracks relevant information such as temperature of the environment, and adjustments of integrated desk. The team was tasked with improving the monitoring capabilities of the system to support widespread monitoring of Ergotron’s products.

Design Goal

The design goal of the Black Box 2.0 is to expand upon the current design of Black Box 1.0 to capture additional data. Another goal of the project is to send the collected data into the cloud to be analyzed and viewed without having to physically remove a storage device from the Black Box.

Design Constraints

• Transmit and store data to the cloud
• Sense the distance traveled of the cart
• Sense how often the table is raised and lowered
• Detect product shaking
• Sense the temperature around the area of the device
• Be able to detect the air pressure of the use area