Hi,

I am just about to enter my third year and was wondering if someone can recommend and good project ideas (basic/medium difficulty) which could be done at home. Wanting more practice with all electronic components, atmel microcontrollers and PCB design.

I know its pretty vague but just need something to get the ball rolling. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks heaps.

 

Build a game. I have designed lots of simple games using PIC chips. The micro always wins. When they are played, they appear to have intelligence and those that have copied the games for their final year have received a distinction. Mainly because the teacher did not know how they worked and could not find fault with the project. Because he never won.

 

Hi,

I am just about to enter my third year and was wondering if someone can recommend and good project ideas (basic/medium difficulty) which could be done at home. Wanting more practice with all electronic components, atmel microcontrollers and PCB design.

I know its pretty vague but just need something to get the ball rolling. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks heaps.

I may not be much help on novel ideas, but just to clarify your needs a little better, is your focus on hardware or software/firmware?

A game using a microcontroller and a modern display wouldn't take much in terms of electronics design, but might be a great way to showcase coding capabilities.

If hardware is the focus, you might want to focus on technical challenges, like reading sensitive sensors with high accuracy. Or maybe work on efficiency challenges, like doing some large-ish lighting project with minimal wasted heat.

 

I may not be much help on novel ideas, but just to clarify your needs a little better, is your focus on hardware or software/firmware?

A game using a microcontroller and a modern display wouldn't take much in terms of electronics design, but might be a great way to showcase coding capabilities.

If hardware is the focus, you might want to focus on technical challenges, like reading sensitive sensors with high accuracy. Or maybe work on efficiency challenges, like doing some large-ish lighting project with minimal wasted heat.

Hi,

Thanks for the comment.

I would like to focus more on hardware but would like to do a little coding just to get better.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the comment.

I would like to focus more on hardware but would like to do a little coding just to get better.

To be honest, I have no idea what level of work is expected from a third year student (I have no formal education in electronics or programming - just what I've learned through both personal and work projects.) There's a fair chance that what you need to do will be way over my head!

What sort of projects have you done so far? What are some of the tougher skills that you've learned most recently? I would think that you want to reach a little - you want to try something that pushes your limits, demonstrating what you know so far while forcing you to learn a little more along the way, but not reaching so far that you have no chance of success. But I could be approaching this all wrong - again, with no school experience in this field, I don't know what educators are looking for!

 

Make a basic switching mode power supply using a microcontroller. For example a buck or boost converter but making PWM with microcontroller and measuring output voltage with microcontroller ADC. It can be just a small power/current, but even that can be difficult to make working for beginner.

 

To be honest, I have no idea what level of work is expected from a third year student (I have no formal education in electronics or programming - just what I've learned through both personal and work projects.) There's a fair chance that what you need to do will be way over my head!

What sort of projects have you done so far? What are some of the tougher skills that you've learned most recently? I would think that you want to reach a little - you want to try something that pushes your limits, demonstrating what you know so far while forcing you to learn a little more along the way, but not reaching so far that you have no chance of success. But I could be approaching this all wrong - again, with no school experience in this field, I don't know what educators are looking for!

Thanks for that.

We have done a basic regulated power supply, mini piano and line follower robot. However all of them were with supervision.

One idea I did have was trying to make a solar panel tracker that could power some kind of fan or store the energy it absorbed.