Extravagant EE Batchelors Projects - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Poe
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2022, 04:37:36 pm
content: Today things have become an order of magnitude less expensive and more accessible, but some of these projects still appear to cost more than tuition.How are these senior projects typically funded?How much time do seniors commonly have?I couldn't imagine having these resources, so I'm very interested how they make it all work.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2022, 10:01:16 pm
content: Examples of such projects include ... ?

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2022, 10:28:56 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on April 25, 2022, 10:01:16 pmExample of country? (tuition costs vary wildly!)

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2022, 10:30:55 pm
content: I've seen attempts at: an electric car; electric plane;a drone that can launch after being a submarine; a plasma based rocket engine, audio phased array to image device; 3d printer; AI and sensors to detect and prevent pre term baby deaths;They are given limited funds anything else they need to organise themselves.Overall I think they are expected to spend at least 3 months full time on it.Who said they make it all work?

author: eugene
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 26, 2022, 11:31:42 am
content: Are these group projects with both costs and responsibilities spread out over multiple students?

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 26, 2022, 03:59:26 pm
content: Lab fees attached to tuition bill. Anything over the designated amount is out of pocket or sponsored by a third party. So the cost is split over 3-4 students. At least that is how it works where I work.. This caps the cost. We keep the funded parts when done if possible.State law here caps the fees to around 60$ per student per class unless your at a private school. This is done to contain tuition costs. No one wants a school to hide their tuition costs in lab fees.Shop access would be free, as we already have a machine shop for research and teaching purposes. So the student watches a series of videos on shop practice before gaining access. 3d printing is free or at materials cost depending on the type of printing. An excessive materials project would be curbed by budget rules on the shop costs.Large grants to an individual professor or group may come with incentives for community outreach or to somehow involve undergraduate students in their work.Team contest based activities go to a different funding source. So the events like the mini race cars are not for grade, but are used for teaching purposes. Local corporations tend to enjoy funding such things as a means to meet motivated potential employees or as an alumni gift.Never underestimate the parents/students/ staff ability to scrounge parts if they are in a technical /manufacturing town.One person's dead lawn tractor may provide an 18 horsepower engine for a race car. By the time the students get done with it, it is ultra reliable, producing 22-25 Horsepower, has an ECU and Telemetry. It will be optimized for low fuel consumption for a limited fuel contest if not racingThe team will have presentation on it for potential sponsors and will probably snag a marketing student from the business school to tune up their presentation. They will find a way to get supporters and the marketing team to events on their own dime.The team will have established a training group to help each other keep their grades up and to train incoming members.Do this over ten or twenty years and it becomes quite an activity with a nice shop and knowledge base.The one thing I would love to do but can't is join the large scale rocketry team. NASA comes up with a very interesting but tough problem each year. For example: Achieve an apogee of precisely 5000 feet using a solid rocket motor when carrying X kilograms of payload. They are given budget for one flight engine and one test engine. That's it.We do have externally reviewed, audited, internal budgeting practices. I'm not going be allowed to buy a team a bar of solid platinum just because I want to.Teams also score higher if they do outreach to local schools.Steve

author: trophosphere
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 26, 2022, 04:35:54 pm
content: It seems nowadays at my old university, a fair amount of the capstone projects are industry (TI, Raytheon, Qualcomm, etc) sponsored so the budgets would have a wide range depending on what the project actually is. If it's not industry sponsored then usually the facilitator would dip into their own lab budget to get whatever is needed. Students, depending on their situation, would contribute too if the need arises.As an actual example, I did my capstone project back in 2009 with a local startup specializing in dynamically adjustable maximum power point DC-DC converters for piezoelectric energy harvesting applications. The application was using a piezoelectric film that was attached to the myocardium of the heart to harvest energy every time the heart contracted in order to power implanted devices for people with cend-state heart failure (monitoring things like cardiac output and volume/fluid status). The novel part being that this entire system could be deployed via cardiac cath and not surgery due to inherent high-risk from such a targeted patient population. Needless to say several components were custom made such as the piezoelectric film not to the mention the coating on the various assemblies.

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 26, 2022, 05:54:25 pm
content: Interesting fact: In the US an assortment of university auditors and financial planners maintain an association to share best practices. They maintain a database of various costs vs school size and location. This is then averaged over NN number of schools to determine what appropriate spending might be for a given cost. They then tend to use this at their school to determine spending limits. They can also speak up if under funding occurs.So the non-techie finance folks have a good idea of what an appropriate budget might be.Didn't know that until last year. I always wondered where the Yes and No answers came from.What you see as exorbitant might be a requirement to reach from the school's accreditation agency as well. There are national standards [ABET for one example in the US] that may require achieving certain levels of undergraduate lab experience, co-op work, faculty involvement, and project time.A team of professionals and selected professors from other schools descind on your department, interview everyone possibly including the janitor, look at massive amounts of paperwork and review student progress. They attend labs and classes, look at the finances etc. That is accreditation evaluation. Follow up reviews happen.Parents vote with their wallets, too. An all theory degree would not score high on the parental walk-through when recruiting.Steve

author: Poe
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 26, 2022, 06:43:29 pm
content: LaserSteve - Thank you for the reply. I understand the shop access and 3D printing and team activities, but I don't quite understand how capstone projects are funded. Does the school actually give each team funds (tuition) or is it all out-of-pocket?trophosphere - Thank you as well. Very interesting project. Sounds like a great learning opportunity.We've been interviewing college grads lately and the range of projects are huge. It never felt appropriate to question the applicants about their funding source. That's why I'm asking here.We funded our senior project entirely out-of-pocket. The school offered no resources like a shop, only a lab with an oscilloscope and multimeter. We had 3 months, but only one hour per week of 'lab' time was set aside. Out of my group of five, all but one was working a job. So needless to say our projects looked like a MakerFaire rummage sale. This is my only perspective, so I'm very interested in what nice schools offer.