Selecting college project - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: yashrk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2016, 07:50:54 am
content: Hey guys,I am now in my last year and within few weeks I have to decide my final year project. I will have around 8-9 months to work on it with include full day of college and exams. I have many projects in my mind like Solar MPPT, embedded debugging tool, milliohm meter, digitally programmable dummy load etc. I need few more suggestion from you guys.Just for reference I have experience with power electronics & embedded, no so great with RF voodoo. My college mini project was the self-balancing robot.Part 2-I have an option of working with a company on their product which I am kind of sure will involve using an off the shelf processor board and I will have to write code for it which I am not thrilled about but it will give me more time to study, save me money and also has a fail safe with guaranteed good grades. Here I want to know your opinion how much will my project matter in future and what would you opt if you were in my place.Thank you!

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2016, 08:49:24 am
content: When I was being interviewed for my first job, the interviewers asked about my final year project. When they realised that the department was expecting tousemy project, they were impressed. Clearly the department felt sufficiently strongly about my abilities that they didn't give me a "make work" project.

author: yashrk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2016, 09:05:37 am
content: My college will have the last say & yes the working on a project which will be used in the industry will be great but the work is mostly programming initially (the time which counts) so I am not much interested but I might do if it comes to that.Any suggestions for project ??

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2016, 09:46:54 am
content: There are too many unknown (to me) constraints for it to be possible to suggest a project.Engineering is about understanding competing requirements and making a choice. Sometimes that choice satisfies all requirements, usually it is necessary to select what is more/less important. I find it useful to list requirements under three headings: "must have", "want to have", and "wouldn't it be nice to have".

author: danadak
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2016, 10:01:24 am
content: I think the ability to program + analog & digital design leads to a verydiverse and interesting career. And job security in lean times. Andboredom coefficient lowest. Being an expert in a narrow field has itspoints, but I found diverse responsibilities more interesting.Regards, Dana.

author: yashrk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2016, 10:32:19 am
content: Thanks for your responses!Can you just give me few example of project you might have seen online or in maker fair that caught your eye forget my constraints I will worry about it

author: yashrk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2016, 04:23:14 am
content: Come on please give me some ideas

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2016, 04:50:23 am
content: Quote from: danadak on June 29, 2016, 10:01:24 amSorry OP, this is a difficult question to answer. My answer is something you are interested in, either in a hobby way or money way. OR something your professor is interested in.Apologies to OP - but Dana how big would the fuel be if in one ball for the SSN-583? Like pea size, golf ball, baseball, basketball, watermelon, etc? Also how long would it last? You are the first nuclear person I have come across.thanks

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2016, 09:08:27 pm
content: Quote from: ez24 on June 30, 2016, 04:50:23 amI thought this was an interesting question so I looked it up. In a nuclear power plant, one tonne of natural uranium (raw) provides about 44 million kilowatt hours. A typical 1000 MW plant would have a fuel load of about 75 tonnes of enriched uranium.http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/introduction/nuclear-fuel-cycle-overview.aspxOP, you have to give us some help!If your school picks your project, there is no decision to make. If you are going to work in some kind of intern position for credit, you will don't have a decision although this will provide real world experience - take it! It looks good on a resume. If you ultimately get to make your own choice, what part of electronics interests you? It's a huge field and you're about to graduate into it, you must have some idea of where you want to wind up.Did you take Differential Equations? Was it fun? I struggled through and really didn't get a good understanding. Lately I have been playing with a small analog computer and it's nice to be able to model the equations. Of course, I can also do that in Matlab but when I went to college I was lucky to have a 4 function calculator. We were still using slide rules. It's probably too small for a senior project but there's a lot of utility in having such a computer. Something with 10 amplifiers that can be used as either integrators, summers or inverters would be very useful. There's quite a bit of information on the Internet.It probably isn't really worthwhile but you could design a small CPU for an FPGA. I mean small! Very small footprint, very small instruction set, just the kind of thing you might drop into another FPGA project to handle some kind of IO. Maybe it would be a peripheral processor for things like SD cards. The point is that it is relatively difficult to build state machines to drive these devices and it would be easier to program a little universal IO core. Maybe the idea is that the IO processor has an address register set by the main processor where it looks in the main memory for a command block (data address, IO device (if it services more than one) and a command. Allow for a link field so instructions can be chained. Actual operation would be by way of a DMA channel. There would also be a status register so the main CPU can monitor operation and, of course, the IO processor has to generate a completion interrupt. I am still thinking about doing something like this for one of my projects. I would need about 6 of these gadgets to move all the IO operations outside the main processor logic. You might get an idea if you can find any documentation for the Control Data 6400 Peripheral Processors.Write an assembler for the little processor. This is trivial with Python! It would just be a lot easier to deal with things like SD cards if there was a small programmable core.Other than that, you need to tell us what you are interested in.

author: danadak
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2016, 09:28:10 pm
content: Apologies to OP - but Dana how big would the fuel be if in one ball for the SSN-583? Like pea size,golf ball, baseball, basketball, watermelon, etc? Also how long would it last? You are the first nuclearperson I have come across.That's a question I am not at liberty to answer. Rules of employment.Regards, Dana.

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2016, 10:51:56 pm
content: Quote from: danadak on June 30, 2016, 09:28:10 pmdarn