Gyanix: Part-1
Learning Electronics by doing it.
Memorable fests, late-night mischiefs, last minute preps, and submissions, violent birthdays, fun-filled trips, free treat food, early morning contemplations, midnight convos etc. etc. etc. are a major part of any engineering student’s life at college. And for many of us, these are the ones that actually keep us running. Along with all of these, any student in India would have definitely done one other thing: grumble about how horrible the education system is, almost every single day. Been there. Done that :)
Not so good teachers, poor quality of evaluation, excessive stress on rote, minimal focus on application, heavy reliance on rigidity, little stress on labs and a very wobbly foundation. They take a toll on our curiosity and can seriously blunten us.
Now out of college and when I reflect back, there is one thing I realize: most of the time, I simply went along, without questions. Have you been doing the same and feel not so good about it? Ever wanted to dig deeper into the what, how and why of things you are told about in class? Ready to explore? This set of articles are for you. The articles are a collection of various tools, forums, and wisdom that you can use as a supplement to understand, experiment, learn and get more curious about electronics. This is an effort to make your electronics learning holistic, interesting and meaningful. Whether or not the articles fetch you a stellar GPA, stuff here will definitely strengthen your base, make you wiser and give you some motivation to explore things by yourselves.
Ever wanted to dig deeper into the what, how and why of things you are told about in class? Ready to explore? This set of articles are for you.
So, let’s get started, shall we?
Start with hobby projects.
Get yourself a basic toolbox consisting of a bunch of resistors, capacitors, push buttons, op-amps, LEDs, a few wires, a microcontroller, a breadboard and a multimeter (Not gonna cost much). Atmel’s Atmega or TI’s MSP430 series microcontrollers are a good point to start with Arduino/ Energia platforms. What you do can be anything from dancing disco lights with LEDs to solving the tic-tac-toe (the X-O game) to swipe lock pattern recognition. Some questions you can ask yourself: How are the connections made? What is the power consumption? How can I make the system more power efficient? What is happening in the code?
Once you experience the joy of looking at your working circuit after a long and difficult debug, you will undoubtedly be motivated to move forward and try more. The blogs that you can look out for: Instructables, Hackaday, EngineersGarage, TechCrunch and many more cool DIY (Do It Yourself) blogs just a Google search away. I’d stress that you look out for arduino/ Energia based codes only and not delve into Embedded C based codes for now. We’ll get there in some time.
Some useful links:
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/projects/tags/sensor
https://www.engineersgarage.com/microcontroller/arduino-projects
https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-42/ (Google search gives many more results)
Add more colours to your creation!
Interested to level up? Let’s take your hobby project to the next level! Design a PCB for your project and enjoy burning your hands while soldering :). Further, optimise your designs by making smaller PCBs.
EAGLE offers a free PCB design software suitable for hobbyists. Fritzing is another option. Again, many other softwares are just a Google search away! And, a soldering iron costs less than 200 rs.
At the end of this, you will have a fully functional, customised embedded system to your credit. Kudos!
Diving deep
You have made a good start and come a long way. There’s plenty more to learn and experiment with! Now to more pertinent questions: What happens inside the various functions in your Arduino/Energia code? How does your microcontroller understand what you want out of it? Embedded C is an effort to understand hardware in a deeper sense.
Start looking out for basic Embedded C tutorials for your microcontrollers. Understand how properties are configured, how things happen at a register level. Also, develop the habit of reading datasheets of your chosen MCU. Through this process, you gradually learn to converse with your microcontroller in a language that you are not native to. This can be difficult and might take time to understand. But, this is an important milestone in understanding hardware better. Keep going when the pace seems slow.
While learning, make an effort to convert your hobby project code into an Embedded C code. This way, you are actually applying what you are learning.
Some suggested sources:
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_Tutorials
https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/179.php
Going Wireless
Wireless communication is everywhere (in and) around us! Why not in your hobby project as well? Add a Bluetooth/ RF module to your project for communication. Now a wiser engineer, do the coding in Embedded C. Also, try to understand how your microcontroller talks to you. What is the kind of language it uses? This is called a protocol in tech terms. How many languages does it know? Some basic set of “languages” that you can go through are: UART, I2C and SPI. Try making your MCU talk in these languages!
Also, let’s try to understand how a Bluetooth/RF module works. Try to understand various layers through which information passes through before getting to the destination. Want to know the bigger picture? The gigantic internet works in a similar fashion to transfer information among trillions (maybe more) of systems.
Stay Tuned!
Here ends the first part of the series. Hope this article gives you some motivation to start making efforts to explore electronics with a more positive attitude. Your suggestions on ways of presenting better are most welcome! I’d love to look at the working videos of what you’re up to!
In the next article, I intend to interconnect what is taught in courses to practical learning. It will talk about making courses interesting and how one can understand stuff better by actually implementing and analyzing them by yourself. Thanks for reading! :)
-Written by Akash Suresh, an alumnus of Spider, the Research & Development Club of NIT Trichy.
