April 25 was demo day in the ECE 412 (Embedded Systems) course I taught this semester, and we had the biggest batch ever. 17 teams presented projects ranging from musical instruments to games to wheeled robots.
Clockwise from top left: Skittles sorter, guitar auto-strummer, disturbing metal creature probably found in the depths of LVL1, and capacitive-touch LED-equipped piano.
This spring’s project quality led to mild swearing from the instructor. Students had about three weeks to do these projects and many were working in lab on the weekend before (or early morning of) the 8am Monday demo. New additions for spring 2016 included TWI/I2C code from Eugene Rockey that will enable students to add powerful sensors in future years. We benefited from fantastic TA’s (Eugene, plus Troy Kremer), Ben Douglas on grading/lab, Tom Carroll’s parts procurement, the growing base of previous code for the A3BUs donated by Atmel, the nearby resources of FirstBuild, the Engineering Garage, and LVL1, and possibly the fact that the 17 teams were each named after delicious local restaurants.