Speaking of said projects, I've actually had one in mind for a while:
Take an old SNES controller and retro it up for USB. I have an emulator on my computer, but keyboarding your way through mario is pretty tough haha. I also have an old controller... anyway I've heard of people doing it. It'd be more fun/educational to DIY that than just buy one.

That definitely sounds like a very fun project! It's a bit advanced, but if you take it one small piece at a time, that's a great result to work up to!

 

Winter break project #2. Still have an old tube echo machine that needs to be mapped out/diagnosed too.

Well glad to know arduino is kinda a crappy educational tool to begin with and shouldn't be used as such...I guess. Sucks that's what she picked... or the department picked.

Anyway, the thing that really kills me with this whole mess is this teacher is a student. Older grad student. I have no idea what she did before coming back to school. Lemme paint the picture: mid 50s, tiny little thing, kinda androgynous, very very dry. Frequently just keeps talking w/o pause for questions. She basically just reads her powerpoints, assuming those are free of errors. Last week on pointers, she re-wrote one slide 4 times and only then thought that was "probably right." Code wouldn't compile one day and she couldn't explain why... not easy with this kinda thing going on. Buddying up has helped somewhat. Now we all need a higher level up... Like Walt and Jesse... we need a Fring to distribute haha

 

They are now using Arduinos to teach a EE class? What is the world coming to? Matt - it's nice to hear from someone with Arduino experience confirm my suspicions that it is not an easy platform to learn from. If you don't mind, I may PM you on this subject for something I'm doing on the side. I think Arduino's success lies in the fact there are so many examples online that most people can cobble something together without really understanding the code. I've never had a lot of luck with programming in C to begin with mostly because I had a hard time finding any good step-by-step instructions on programming a uC in C when I tried to learn.

By all means! I have worked with the PIC, the MSP430, and the Arduino (both using the standard Arduino IDE, and using Eclipse with the AVR plugin to use it as just a regular ATMEGA chip). I can't guarantee I'll have any answers for you, as I started only recently with embedded systems--I think it was just a few years ago, I was new to this forum when I started.

 

Winter break project #2. Still have an old tube echo machine that needs to be mapped out/diagnosed too.

Well glad to know arduino is kinda a crappy educational tool to begin with and shouldn't be used as such...I guess. Sucks that's what she picked... or the department picked.

Anyway, the thing that really kills me with this whole mess is this teacher is a student. Older grad student. I have no idea what she did before coming back to school. Lemme paint the picture: mid 50s, tiny little thing, kinda androgynous, very very dry. Frequently just keeps talking w/o pause for questions. She basically just reads her powerpoints, assuming those are free of errors. Last week on pointers, she re-wrote on slide 4 times and only then thought that was "probably right." Code wouldn't compile one day and she couldn't explain why...

That sounds an awful lot like one of the professors I have seen at the university where I work. He reads entirely from powerpoints and doesn't really teach anything, and often his slides contain errors. I understand your frustration entirely. Don't feel like you are alone--you just had one of the worst introductions to microcontrollers that you possibly could, but that wasn't your fault.

 

I really feel like a fool for not learning more about either the AVRs and Megas, or PICs before going back to school. Just any exposure to embedded. Like... I'm being asked to cook up Walt's formula for this class and the hands of a teacher like Jesse haha. Forgive my Breaking Bad reference. I digress to humor to avoid the bummer that is Embedded 1 with.... I better not drop her name openly.

 

DerStrom8 has some good words of advice. I am not going to repeat what he wrote. It is well worth rereading his posts.

It is not programming that you hate. It is the way it is being taught to you.
Arduino is not the greatest programming platform. Note that arduino was designed for hobbyists and for folks who want to get from point A to point B with the least amount of hassles and with little knowledge of computer science.

If you want to move forward and get the most out of this situation you have to stop, think, and redirect your approach and efforts.

Arduino is designed for DIY learning.
Get yourself a good tutorial on C programming. There are many readily available online.

Learn the following:

1) Data types and data structures
2) Algebraic and boolean operators
3) Programming keywords (tokens)
4) Control structures and structured programming

Then immerse yourself into programming simple tasks:
1) Make an LED turn on.
2) Make an LED turn off.
3) Make an LED flash. Change the flash rate.
4) Make an LED turn on when a push button is pressed and off when the button is released.
5) Make an LED turn on when a push button is pressed and off when the button is pressed a second time.
6) Make an LED flash n-times when a push button is pressed.

Begin each exercise by drawing a flow chart.
Do all of the above without looking at other people's code.

There is so much more you can learn on your own with a single LED and a pushbutton. Don't wait for your tutor to assign you exercises.

I should add, no one learns programming overnight. You have to write thousands of lines of code to become good at it. Start with baby steps and learn one thing at a time.

 

I'm with DerStrom8 on this one - I'm working as a lab assistant here in my own campus, and seen many students struggled with the microcontroller projects. It seems that the lessons are paced a bit way too fast there, and they were given very large projects and they have to fumble and fumble a lot. Even the advanced microcontroller classes have the same problem.

On MrChips' advice, I started on that one exactly, many years back. On that lonely PICKit2 board. All using assembly.

 

I had a chemistry teacher that made me believe his job security depended on how many students dropped his class. Fortunately, there was another chemistry teacher that taught in alternating semesters with the bad teacher. Just wait one semester and sign up with the other teacher.

 

Wish I could dodge her. Embedded and Logic are basically her bag. The change this spring, word has it, is that her FCQ's (student assessment things you fill out) were so bad they put someone else in for that. Catch there is he never touched verilog once. I couldn't secure the lab along with the lecture because of Physics 1 and the lab with that so I had to take the logic lab this semester. Guess who writes the labs? Yep. None other than ms. X we'll call her. So, since that one is nothing but verilog, I'm drowning in the code for the lab as well. The things you don't find out til its too late.

 

Sad but true, some careers are stopped by college level teachers.

 

Winter break project #2. Still have an old tube echo machine that needs to be mapped out/diagnosed too.

Well glad to know arduino is kinda a crappy educational tool to begin with and shouldn't be used as such...I guess. Sucks that's what she picked... or the department picked.

Anyway, the thing that really kills me with this whole mess is this teacher is a student. Older grad student. I have no idea what she did before coming back to school. Lemme paint the picture: mid 50s, tiny little thing, kinda androgynous, very very dry. Frequently just keeps talking w/o pause for questions. She basically just reads her powerpoints, assuming those are free of errors. Last week on pointers, she re-wrote one slide 4 times and only then thought that was "probably right." Code wouldn't compile one day and she couldn't explain why... not easy with this kinda thing going on. Buddying up has helped somewhat. Now we all need a higher level up... Like Walt and Jesse... we need a Fring to distribute haha

Then I could be a teacher just from reading the slides, heck I can read compiler errors too.

That teacher probably learned programming back in 85' but didn't use it for a while and forgotten everything and now has gotten a job in the school only because on the paper it says that she knows programming.

 

Wish I could dodge her. Embedded and Logic are basically her bag. The change this spring, word has it, is that her FCQ's (student assessment things you fill out) were so bad they put someone else in for that. Catch there is he never touched verilog once. I couldn't secure the lab along with the lecture because of Physics 1 and the lab with that so I had to take the logic lab this semester. Guess who writes the labs? Yep. None other than ms. X we'll call her. So, since that one is nothing but verilog, I'm drowning in the code for the lab as well. The things you don't find out til its too late.

I feel your pain. I used to have this problem back in the "Numerical Analysis" class. Some mathematician went and teach us engineering groups, and 80% fail rate. The end product: students memorize questions and its flow without understanding. The examples were sparse and he was drawing a lot of equations on the board without knowing what is it for.

The exam questions were of postgraduate level. I'm not kidding! I could only answer that right after my MEngSci tenure when I looked back that past year paper I had many years back!

 

I had a chemistry teacher that made me believe his job security depended on how many students dropped his class...

At my university, the whole point of Chem 101 was to get at least 90% of the EE majors to change their major to Communications...

 

At my university, the whole point of Chem 101 was to get at least 90% of the EE majors to change their major to Communications...

 

HAHAHA oh man that movie... funny I only recently have 1. come to appreciate the gold of this era of films... especially this one and 2. been willing to laugh at such "dark humor." But hey didn't grow up during that era. Funny my CHEM 1130 class was also quite a disaster two years ago. In the age of nothing but online homework, that teacher never even checked what we were getting assigned to do! We'd take in the the questions that homework would generate to our recitation instructor, and she'd go, "yeah you guys could not answer this without taking O-Chem II for this..." many many times. I really do wonder about the validity of University Education intent now. I'm convinced it's their job to make it as difficult as possible to keep banging out money from people retaking classes. Just a pocket-lining scam most of it now I'd say.

 

And yet you paid for that education ... at least you will be able to say ... I can't answer that because I never took CHEM II.

Of course if you received a government grant, you have zero cash in the game, so you school would wonder why you care since your not "out" any money.

 

No time to read all the replies, but I will say that if you truly hate programming, they you have probably chosen the wrong path. In 20 years on the job, not only have I been required to write many more programs than I ever imagined I would, but also hundreds of scripts and macros, learned different operating systems, deal with all kinds of network technologies, learn different computer interconnects, communication protocols, and the list goes on and on. Either you have a passion for this business or you don't.

 

No time to read all the replies, but I will say that if you truly hate programming, they you have probably chosen the wrong path. In 20 years on the job, not only have I been required to write many more programs than I ever imagined I would, but also hundreds of scripts and macros, learned different operating systems, deal with all kinds of network technologies, learn different computer interconnects, communication protocols, and the list goes on and on. Either you have a passion for this business or you don't.

Just a brief recap, the only reason he said he hated programming was because he had a terrible teacher who didn't introduce it properly. It's not actually programming that he hates.

 

Succinctly stated Matt.

 

Thanks DerStorm8. It's just that type of assumption that pretty much discourages further and gives you a 'do it and be quiet or gtfo' kinda message. Something I keep receiving a lot from this university lately.