Suggestions for organizing Engineering Competition - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: MrOmnos
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 08:41:58 pm
content: Hi guys! Our school has decided to organize a competition. They have left it upon me to come up with an idea. I need something different. I don't want another drone race or another Robot WWE. I need something new. Something that participants can prepare in a month. It must include both hardware and software. Can you please suggest me. I would love to know what kinda of competitions you guys participated in as a young engineer. Something interesting and enjoyable.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 08:58:43 pm
content: What is the targeted age and knowledge?

author: abraxa
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 09:42:16 pm
content: One month of what? One month of full-time work, meaning 8h/day? Or one month of one class per day? Or one month of working on it in their space time aside from after school activities and homework? It really makes a difference on what can be achieved

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 01:26:06 am
content: Quote from: MrOmnos on June 13, 2017, 08:41:58 pmWay too much way too fast, a month full time wouldn't be enough time to really get into that sort of complex system with children who may have little to no background knowledge to work from. The simple robocup competitions which have scaled difficulty through all school ages need months to get students up to delivering something functional and that working from a base of "copy paste" tutorials for the hardware and software.

author: MrOmnos
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 01:30:45 pm
content: It's not for children. It's an engineering school for Electrical and Electronics. The competition is going to be for engineers.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 01:57:42 pm
content: It would still be helpful to know how many hours' work are anticipated, and what resources the students have available.When you say 'hardware', are you thinking purely of electronics, or is there scope for mechanical design and construction too?What kinds of things are within the scope of what you'd expect the students to be able to build in the time?

author: MrOmnos
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 05:11:53 pm
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on June 14, 2017, 01:57:42 pmYes, there's definitely scope of Mechanical design and construction. I think taking hours of work into account would be over complicating things. I just want a simple idea for a competition. Like, if the competition requires them to build a bot, 1 month should be enough time to do so. Just throw some ideas at me and I will decide if it will be feasible.

author: Vtile
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 08:46:23 pm
content: Make yourowncommunication protocol and implement it between two(or several) machines.Make your own calculator.Edit ..Or is it for nearly graduated students?Make design tool of choise.Make automated component analyser.Seriously I don't know what to expect as these are not a thing here. What I understand is that these are a funny and maybe inspiring (in case you happen to get your thingy working) introduction for doing and tinkering.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 09:12:55 pm
content: OK, here's something I'd like to see. A controller for a cat flap, with the following features:- a light sensor, which allows 'in' but not 'out' when it gets dark (1 point)- a timer, which allows 'in' but not 'out' during programmed hours, with a simple UI for setting (2 points)- a microchip reader, which scans the cat's ID chip and only allows recognised cats entry (5 points)- any *other* mechanism for differentiating between cats, and only allows recognised cats entry (10 points)- some mechanism for determining whether or not a cat in is carrying something in its mouth, and refusing to unlock and allow entry if it is. (25 points)There's scope here for students with any level of ability, from trivially simple PIC programming all the way up to image recognition and advanced processing. Actually building the mechanical parts is probably optional, a couple of LEDs would do to indicate 'lock' vs 'unlock' states.Bonus points are awarded for actually herding cats.

author: vinicius.jlantunes
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 09:23:39 pm
content: When I was a teacher at a tech level school I once promoted a competition where the students where given a circuit on veroboard and the smallest functional board won the competition. Prize was a box of beersBut that is too simple for your case I guess.On a previous year the competition was to build a miniature crane; the concepts required where the subjects of consecutive classes (e.g. simple motor control, PWM, etc.). The competition involved lifting 3 different weights onto 3 miniature "buildings" I made in Styrofoam, 3 different heights.Again maybe too simple and similar to the "drone / robot" things you mentioned.Last year I taught at that school the competition was to build a toy car controlled in 2 different fashions: sound (e.g. clap) and light (point a light to it and it ran); when light controlled it would run for as long as sufficient light hit the sensor, when sound controlled it would run for a specified time and then require another clap to go again.Once more, it was designed to use different concepts learned over the course (e.g. use of simple light sensors such as LDR's, use transistors as switches, use of comparators, simple 555 timing circuits, etc.)Also too simple I would guess...As said, these were all for a technician level school so perhaps too simple. But maybe you can use as inspiration.I had a professor that liked running simple competitions and they were loads of fun. One of the classes he thought we had to build a FM receiver; the team's radio where he could listen to the most different stations won. I remember we used some Phillips IC and build a board around it, in theory simple but to make it work sufficiently well (i.e. get all inductors and capacitors right, etc.) was quite challenging and fun. We won the competitionThe same professor also taught a basic DSP class. The competition was like this: we were investigators in a company that had found that a group of employees was leaking industrial secrets through a custom build communication device; we had found though that we could "listen" to the signal when tunned to a certain FM radio station due to interference. Our job was therefore to, given a sample of the audio signal where the interference was audible, analyze it and crack the encoding, and then decode the message.We did it in Matlab. On the day we presented the findings the teacher would then run a new, not seen before sample through our code and see if could decode this sample as well.Lots of fun - but this in our case was done purely on software (Matlab). Maybe you could have the students building some hardware to capture an audio sample, process it in a DSP / dev kit board, and show the decoded message on a display or something?

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 10:46:43 pm
content: Quote from: MrOmnos on June 14, 2017, 01:30:45 pmThen a short timeframe is even more problematic while they're trying to balance all the other demands on their life. All you'll do is give a big advantage to the highly motivated students with lots of free time. A long time for a apparently simple problem is much less frustrating for the students and creates a fairer spread of results. I've seen it time and time again when people throw too much into something to make it seem like an achievement, instead of looking at how to teach everyone in the process.