Last week the Embedded Systems class demoed its final projects and posted them online. The 13 projects included a spinning LED display and a plant watering system that kept track of soil moisture (ab0ve), and a “piano” that made the most of interrupts to read 8 buttons (bel0w). Projects are generally based on the Microchip …
Category Archives: Lab News
Capstone students are sweating it
This semester’s lab-affiliated Capstone team is busy testing the wireless wearable accelerometers they’ve built. Our Capstone course is a semester of senior year and it’s usually the last project students do for course credit. The big picture for Team 9 is a system to measure training intensity, with some great guidance from the Athletics department. …
Fabric linear motor
We continue experimenting with patterning different types of fibers. When fine insulated wire is embroidered onto a piece of linen tape and supplied with a current, it interacts with magnets. Two sets of embroidered coils, one on top and one on the underside of the tape in this video, pull the tape to the left …
Tumbling tumbleweed
In an effort to create tiny holes in our molded rubber parts, we made these small salt crystals by adding concentrated saltwater to alcohol, which is a poor solvent for salt. Right away, it starts to snow 25-micron cubes. The cubes are added to liquid rubber, then dissolved out in water, creating voids–an approach that …
Fall 17 class roundup
The latest batch of ECE 412 (Embedded Systems) projects is now online. Check out the LED sign that now adorns our lab, the duct-tape based CyberHand and the sound-controlled ping pong tubes. The 14 projects also included a sorting hat, plus a different kind of sorting system based on a pressure sensor. While cardboard and …