need an interesting project

hey, im a yr 12 student in victoria australia, and i need to construct a project in my electronics class , im a 17yr old girl. this project needs to take me all year to make, and because i do two electronic subjects, i need to do two different projects. one project needs to be integrated with a mechanical system and either electrical or electronic system. i was considering making a merry-go-round, but cant find any info about how it works inside. if u have information about this, or any other projects that u think would be a good choice to make, can u please let me know.
thank u very much.
cya

On my trip to work this morning we (fellow ham radio operators w/mobile radios) discussed loop antennas for broadcast/medium wave reception - and how nice it would be to construct one that is motorized and amplified.

A loop antenna about 18 inches square with 30 or so turns of wire and a variable capacitor can allow very directional reception of radio stations between 500 kHz and as high as 7 or 10 mHz. Most build them for 530 to 1700 - AM here in the US. When aimed in the direction of the station the signal is stronger. The better part - there are directions where the antenna can actually exclude a signal ( a null). That feature can allow you to receive a distant station that is on the same frequency as a more powerful local station. There are two things to control - antenna direction (rotation) and tuning (the variable capacitor). An amplifier can be provided to improve things.

The rotation of the antenna could be accomplished with a motor. The motor drive system can be simple or complex - manual or automatic. You have lots of choices. DC motors, steppers, etc. The capacitor could also be a motor driven affair - or it could be electronic - a varactor diode (or almost any diode can work this way). The amplifier, given that it is at lower frequencies should be manageable as a project - lower frequencies present less construction challenges.

So, something like this encompasses some mechanical, electronic in terms of the motor drive ciruitry. You could take a PIC and configure it to help run a stepper motor - or you could hard wire something. The combination of PIC and stepper would seem like broadly applicable knowledge and experience. When you are done you'd have something you could use - or document your efforts and I am sure others would love to copy it.

Anyway, good luck, have fun!!

Having to complete two porojects seems a tad mean, appeal to your teachers, and perhaps tweek the schools pride and enter the "World Solar Challenge" **broken link removed**

To get good grades you would only have to make a working vehicle as "proof of concept" , getting to the time off school to actually compete in the 3000km race along with fifteen minutes of fame on tv would be bonus.

Line following robots are always popular. You could break the project down into two separate projects (your teachers will probably let you do this if you make each project complicated enough).

1) a robot that can be programed to drive a stored path - move forward for 3 seconds, turn left, move forward. This project would cover your requirements for a simple mechanical system controlled by electronics.

2) A line sensor system. A bunch of LED-Phototransistor detectors can be used to detect a the posotion of a white line on a dark floor (or the other way around).

You put the two projects together and with a little modification you have a robot that can follow a tape line around.

You could do this project with all analog but a micorcontroller like a PIC, AVR or 8051 would make it much easier.