Skill Building Workshops

Skill Building Workshops (SBW) already posted on YouTube

I have created a YouTube channel with a series of skill-building workshops on various topics that all engineering students should know. If you are a student interested in working in my lab, you should review these skill-building workshops. All the playlists can be found here

SBW-1 Altium getting started
SBW-2 Altium using libraries and generating new symbols and footprints
SBW-3 Secrets to Great Soldering
SBW-6 Using the Digilent AD2 scope
SBW-7 Using the Keysight 4024 scope
SBW-16 Using the Xiao SAMD21 microcontroller

 

Sub-System Design Hands-on Bootcamp Kits

The following modules are being developed as 1-3 hour skill-building workshops which could be checked out by any student to gain the skills necessary to implement their own custom subsystem based on the components or principles. These will be posted, along with their hardware kits to YouTube when they are ready. These modules represent the basic building blocks to build subsystems that can be integrated into final product systems. Going through these skill-building modules will prepare a student and their team to design and build a fully integrated, intelligent system successfully.

  1. ADCs and DACs, internal to the uC and external
  2. analog switches and multiplexers
  3. measure responses with analog front end (AFE) with opamps and instrumentation amplifiers
  4. create stimuli with analog back ends (ABE): transistor and MOSFET circuits and high current drivers
  5. data logging and display of sensor information
  6. analog and smart sensors
  7. Github and software revision tracking
  8. instruments like scopes, function generators, power supplies and DMM
  9. ID tags and near field communications (NFC)  interfaces and devices
  10. your first circuit board, illustrating the three phases: plug and play, custom shield and fully custom.
  11. connectors for board to board and board to cable
  12. 3D printing
  13. motors and controllers with encoders for feedback control
  14. plug power VRMs with buck SMPS and linear regulators
  15. power for portable applications including batteries and energy harvesting
  16. microcontrollers and boot loading
  17. Raspberry Pi and python or linux
  18. using Visual studio as an IDE for uC development
  19. wireless communication with a uC: BLE, WiFi, zigbee, NFC, custom rf
  20. rf ID tags and information encoding and readout
  21. edge impulse and AI computing
  22. intro to FPGA programming
  23. ultra wide band for precision positioning and data comm.
  24. software defined radio (SDR)
  25. mutli-function instruments as stimulus-response custom instruments, such as the Diglient AD2, Red Pitaya and ADI's ADALM1k and 2k
  26. image processing with camera and jetson nano or RPi or other AI or ML code
  27. generating local precision frequency signals from oscillators and DDS devices, and measuring their frequency with a uC
  28. highly accurate time sync tagging and geo tagging with gps GNSS devices, NIST broadcast signals and locking to local standards with PLL and feedback

 

Circuits Hands-on Bootcamp Modules

The following are simple, 1 hour or less workshops each undergraduate student should have gone through to master the basic concepts in electrical engineering from which all other projects are based. To complete all of these labs requires a simple kit with various components, tools and interconnect components.

  1. intro to the DMM
  2. how does the DMM measure current
  3. how does a DMM measure resistance
  4. real voltage sources modeled as Thevenin circuits
  5. real voltmeters modeled with parallel input resistance
  6. using solderless bread board (SBB)
  7. resistors in series and voltage dividers in DC circuits
  8. absolute accuracy of DMM for voltage
  9. power consumption and dissipation
  10. schematics and simulators like CircuitLabs.com
  11. intro to the AD2
  12. Ground and single-ended signals
  13. Signals and RMS values, comparing DMM and scope
  14. Mesurement-simulation correlation
  15. Measure I-V curves with scope (stimulus-response)
  16. basic opAmp follower circuit
  17. boosting the current for I-V curves
  18. modeling and measuring a real resistor
  19. modeling and measuring a real diode
  20. LED circuits
  21. RC circuits
  22. cascading low pass filters as passive or active
  23. RL circuits
  24. RLC circuits
  25. snubber circuits
  26. the NPN transistor
  27. Basic MOSFET circuits
  28. build your first circuit board
  29. use the AD2 as an impedance analyzer
  30. measure the inductance of long interconecn wires
  31. measure the mutual inductance between two wire loops
  32. measure the impedance profile of real capacitors and fit RLC models