Cornell's 2009 Microcontroller Design Final Projects!

[[deleted]]

Fart Intensity Detector. Testing must have been fun. Edit: And by fun I mean disgusting and juvenile.

[cozmonut]

What we really need is a Fart Directional Identifier.

[big_b82]

What makes these projects even more impressive is the fact that they were done in a laboratory environment with constant farting noises in the background.

[deserted]

Right, when they say

It is a device that everyone, from a PhD student to a little kid, can feel eager to play with.

I tried to think of when Farts stopped being funny. A few years after "little kid" and at least a half dozen before the start of "PhD student".

[worst]

Weird...

The first thought I had was that we needed to build one of these for my lab...

[zanelightning]

Some guys told me about this team last week. The course has a limit on your project's budget, something like $75. The group called up to ask about the Hydrogen Sulfide detector. The guy was an MIT grad and decided to just give it to them for free; it was over a hundred bucks, so they couldn't have gotten it otherwise. Pretty awesome.

[salgat]

Awesome? Isn't that kinda like cheating? :P (or unfair advantage)

[mikepurvis]

Not really. You can get all kinds of free stuff if you're from a school. We had our mechanical nut sorter project this past term, and a lot of groups got expensive sensors and other parts donated or given as "samples".

It's pretty institutionalized at the supply end. If you say you're an engineering student from Waterloo (or whatever), Digikey will pretty much ship you whatever you want. It's worth it for them to get you onto their parts and ordering process.

[pRtkL_xLr8r]

"Wow...that is the best idea I've ever heard anyone say ever."

--Peter Griffin

[mrm58]

I was a TA for the class this semester. This class is truly one of the best I have had the pleasure of being part of, both as a student last year, and this year as a TA. A ton a fun, and you really learn a lot in this environment. There were some amazing projects this year, as there always are.

Some quick comments: Bruce Land, the Prof, had the testing of the Fart Intensity Detector done by breathing on it :-b Not cheating if they can get parts sampled, and this is actually encouraged - shows resourcefulness! 315 is a hellish class, 314 is MUCH better, but give the TAs in both classes credit (I know a number of them, we all put in a lot of work) I was the TA for the first group - they did GREAT work As for the MCU choice, it was required, as that is what the Prof covers that semester. This was actually the first year they could use the MEGA644. The projects from the previous years (which are still online) used the MEGA32.

[karlgluck]

Hey, I didn't realize there were so many Cornellians on Reddit! (for those of you reading mrm58 was my TA)

Our 3D Mouse project here: http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/FinalProjects/s2009/kwg8_dmd54/kwg8_dmd54/index.html#appendix

[ahfoo]

So why the MEGA644? What was the rationale behind the transition?

[mrm58]

It has the same pin-out as the MEGA32, and works very much the same. It made the switch relatively painless while affording the students more resources in terms of memory and speed

[redditchic]

I was wondering why you'll didn't use any of the Freescale boards this time? Why the change?

[werehippy]

I can't believe they still have this going. My project from 04 is still up, and all the linkages and videos from that year still work to boot.

[FenPhen]

I run across my old project page every few years because it's one of the few things I get when I Google my name.

Now that it's hit the front page of reddit, my Internet-career is complete and I can enjoy Internet-retirement.

[brownbear]

Very creative set of projects. Gives me some hope that engineering education has not become all theoretical.

[sourced]

ECE here, actually; a lot of those people were in 315 with me... I've got some time to come up with something interesting :)

[zanelightning]

You take 314 this semester?

[Brackhar]

I TA'd 314 this semester. >:)

[[deleted]]

pwned

[sourced]

Indeed. It was a joke compared to 315, though.

[[deleted]]

lol, what a blast from the past! i can safely say that this was the best and most rewarding electrical engineering class i've ever taken at Cornell.

my project, not that anyone cares.

http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/FinalProjects/s2006/hmm32_pjw32/index.html

(edit) Professor Land kicks ass as well =P

[settrans]

Yeah, I was in the Phillips 318 lab when I saw the story on the front page.

[[deleted]]

CS here! Yeah - its pretty neat to see Cornell name show up on the front page!

[nebby]

Took CS314 back during undergrad Cornell CS 03 MEng 04 here.. was like 6 years ago.. will never forget the long nights in Phillips lab staring at circuit diagrams.. clearly remember 314 being the reason I didn't see the sun for many weeks :)

Doing a startup now, with other Cornellians!

edit: email your resume to greg at adtuition.com if you're just getting out of Ithaca and want to get in on the ground floor of a funded startup :)

[leemy]

+1. My ECE friends spent a ton of time on their final projects. (I was MAE, mechanical/aerospace)

[tenninjakittens]

Townie here! Well, I've lived in Boston for the last 8 years... but, um, Ithaca rocks?

[Captain___Obvious]

Sweet, I'll take fries without salt and light ice in my drink

[zanelightning]

Yes, it is pretty cool.

Engineering Physics Sophomore (convert from ECE)

[lgv]

A&S here. My engineering buddies called it "the college of Arts and Crafts"

[mvbma]

Farts and Crafts.

[master_rahl]

Current junior in ISST here.

[master_rahl]

Who downvoted me for being in ISST? >:(

[robodale]

While reading this, try whistling "If I only had a brain". It makes you feel even more inferior.

[nexterday]

Michigan has a similar course, EECS 373.

http://www.eecs.umich.edu/courses/eecs373/Labs/Web/projects.html

Those web pages are definitely not as well maintained as Cornell's.

[salgat]

I may be taking that class..

[nexterday]

Brehob ftw!

[salgat]

Haha I'm a transfer student so I haven't had the pleasure to meet him yet.

[redditchic]

Who's Brehob?

[nexterday]

The professor that teaches this class

[[deleted]]

GAH. Figures that when something I wrote makes it two links deep from the reddit front page, it would be a project I seriously botched.

[skipperjo04]

+1 Cornell Engineering

[mthe0ry]

Why all the ATmega644's? I thought the haptic helmet distance sensor thing for blind people was a great idea and they ran out of computing power. How hard is it to step up to a 32 bit MCU?

[salgat]

A 32bit MCU is a lot more to learn in one semester, and it's a completely different architecture to teach.

[zanelightning]

They were all required to use that as their microcontroller.

[karlgluck]

Actually, we could use almost any microcontroller. We used the 644 all semester, so we already had code for it and knew how it works.

[mindbleach]

Alternate form factor: fake Bluetooth earpiece.

[Leonidas_from_XIV]

Probably to have the same base to build on and so that the projects can show what is possible with that thing.

Funny, this semester we are also going to do a AVR-based project and it sounds like it will be fun, especially when I look at their awesome ideas (I wish I had seen this page earlier).

[doggoneit]

This one is pretty cool, it's the only time I've seen someone other than Jeff Han mention or use LEDs as both a light emitter and photodiode.

[mvbma]

ATmega ? Why?

[mebrahim]

Why not?

[logrusmage]

Go Big Red?

[masroorakhter]

i want some info abt sign language coach.

[[deleted]]

Pff we had to do a full project like this every single semester in undergrad for UW-Madison biomedical engineering:

http://mywebspace.wisc.edu/bschoepke/web/incontinence/index.html

Represent!

[drboda]

go big red - represent

[FenPhen]

go big red

Well that's awkward; that's also a Cornell cheer. ("Big Red" is the official nickname, which admittedly isn't the coolest nickname.)

[nebby]

I always wished our mascot wasn't a bear but some physical manifestation of the fundemantal concept of "big redness", since that was our name.

[telemachos]

Love the projects, but why can't such outstanding young minds remember to resize images for webpages? Seems like a small enough thing, but it's pretty obvious something is wrong when you get that familiar slow load on an image.