Looking for advice - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: WholeWhorse
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 17, 2020, 11:44:34 pm
content: Hello everyone, I appologize in advance if this is not the place to post this. I am a student going into my 4th year of electrical engineering, I have been struggling to find a project suitable to begin in order to improve my resume. There are alot of pi/arduino open source projects out there but most of them seem to be "life hack" or tacky projects that don't appear to correlate with real engineering work. So, i am wondering what kind of projects should i be looking for. Should i set my standards higher than the small diy projects and pick something that appears to be somewhat out of reach? Or work on projects that i can follow along step by step, Thank you. Side note: i have alot of spare time at the moment and am willing to spend it working on projects.

author: Renate
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2020, 12:16:35 am
content: That's the problem with any sort of invention.Find a problem and solve it with a solution that's not more cumbersome than the original problem.Too many inventions suffer from myopia in that they address a problem but the inventor does not notice that the solution takes more knowledge, work and time than the original problem.A great invention is immediately and obviously apparent to the end user.They are rare.

author: WholeWhorse
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 18, 2020, 12:29:51 am
content: Thank you for responding, i see what you are saying. I'm not necessarily implying that i'm looking to invent something. I meant something more along the lines of having no relation to the real engineering world making it difficult for me to assess what subjects and what difficulty level of projects companies would appreciate to see.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2020, 12:56:00 am
content: Robotics, computer vision and gaming are worthy topics. I hesitate to call it AI unless it learns the game from scratch. Still, doable - particularly with the Deep Learning projects written in Python.I never did it but I thought building a computerized "4 In-A-Row" game with computer vision to keep track of moves, a robotic arm to place the computer's chip and a suitable algorithm to play the game would be interesting. The algorithm is well known. The vision thing doesn't need to be complicated; what changed since the last move? The only difficult part is getting the robotic arm to pick and place the pieces. An electromagnet for the effector seems doable.The Pi can easily handle all aspects of this and libraries are available for the vision part.

author: Renate
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2020, 01:07:09 am
content: Quote from: WholeWhorse on November 17, 2020, 11:44:34 pmI think as a 4th year it should be something original that comes from you.I don't think that it has to be rocket science, but not replicating something, unless it's a real challenge and you're replicating from scratch.For instance, building a SpaceX stage 1 landing on a ship.You could do it in a water tank to reduce the scale and thrust required.It would be a challenge to deal with instability and turbulence.Building an Engine Control Module for your vehicle.I think creativity would make you stick out.

author: WholeWhorse
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 18, 2020, 01:26:25 am
content: Right, what you are suggesting i agree with. Originally i wanted to make a Ps2 portable but i felt it did not touch upon enough enigneering concepts like control circuits or image processing etc... Are you saying creativity is more valuble to proffesionals than an academic type project? I really appreciate the advice

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2020, 01:43:05 am
content: If video games is an interest maybe make your own portable video game system from scratch? Don't copy the PSP, come up with something unique. It doesn't have to be spectacular and cutting edge, retro is in these days anyway. Or find something else that interests you and develop something in that area but with your own personal flavor. It doesn't have to be a marketable product, just something you can get creative in.A project I've had in mind for years is a handheld Asteroids vector game with a lollipop CRT from a Watchman. I have most of the individual parts worked out, Asteroids running on an FPGA with a 5" CRT vector monitor but doing it with a lollipop tube would probably require some geometry correction.

author: WholeWhorse
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 18, 2020, 01:54:15 am
content: Truthfully im interesting in most things electrical engineering not specifically video games but thats a really cool idea. Mostly I want to do something to show employers when i graduate given that i dont have any work experience. Im getting the sense that anything im passionate about should do as long as i can explain the function thank you.

author: m k
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2020, 12:23:30 pm
content: People have offered projects that include some not so electrical aspects.That's probably what would do the trick with the future employers.I'm about to make a bench power, not very unusual.What I found to be a possible problem later is testing it.So electronic load is one that is not very popular nowadays.You can make it a bit more difficult by making it physically small and including sophisticated self awareness of its own heat exchange.For future employers you pobably need a heat camera video though.Anyway, it includes non electrical aspect but can still be completely in the box.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2020, 05:29:44 pm
content: It's nearly impossible to do a completely original project. The're almost all variations or combinations of already existing projects.Are you familiar with the FinalProjects of Cornell University?It seems that those students both have to make a project, and make a website about their project, and these projects have been collecting for years.You can start by:https://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalProjects/

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2020, 12:40:41 am
content: There is a book "Introduction to Computing Systems..." by Patt and Patelhttps://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Computing-Systems-Gates-Beyond/dp/0072467509In the later chapters and in the appendices there is a complete description of a RISC style processor called LC3. Like:http://people.cs.georgetown.edu/~squier/Teaching/HardwareFundamentals/LC3-trunk/docs/LC3-uArch-PPappendC.pdfI built this on a rather large Digilent board because it has all the switches, buttons, LEDs and 7 segment displays I want:https://store.digilentinc.com/nexys-a7-fpga-trainer-board-recommended-for-ece-curriculum/The only criteria I had for FPGA size was the amount of BlockRAM. I wanted 64kx16 to match the 16 bit address width. Any other Artix can probably be used even if the memory isn't completely available. I would always choose a 100T variant over a 50T over a 35T.FPGA development boards are serially reusable. It is always a good idea to have an oversized chip, you never know what comes up down the road.The authors use a microcode approach while I used VHDL. I like microcode but I have never used it in an FPGA.A complete project will be less than 2000 lines of code, the finite state machine is given as a transition diagram, the hardware layout is given. Everything necessary to implement this processor is in the appendices.I don't know if you had a class on Computer Systems (probably) or FPGAs and some HDL (maybe) but this is a nice project. If you look around, you can find an assembler for the CPU along with the start of a limited operating system.This is a really easy project but it is a fully functional CPU.