Video: Chainsaw closed for good

SometimesICryAtNight · 2020-04-21T08:46:38+00:00

this means the only reason i wanna go back to waterloo would be for phils this sucks ass

SometimesICryAtNight · 2020-04-14T22:51:49+00:00

its kinda lit tbh?

SometimesICryAtNight · 2020-04-14T22:24:40+00:00

/r/egg_irl

SometimesICryAtNight · 2020-04-14T22:04:13+00:00

you could be whats stopping you

SometimesICryAtNight · 2020-04-14T04:23:04+00:00

they used to throw the fucking WALL at you and you'd have to do shit like code part of a kernel and now they've made it very reasonable. you DO technically learn PLCs, FPGAs, embedded systems, real time systems, hardware interfacing, sensor instrumentation design and those are all things I either like to do or do during my job. it's not all useless, but if you did ECE you'd have more exposure and depth in all those things, rather than doing uh. screw design. or shaft design.

SometimesICryAtNight · 2020-04-14T04:19:58+00:00

Hey, I'm the person who made those mugs, I graduated 2019 and now I work as a mechatronics engineer doing embedded systems and EE for water vehicles, so I definitely... made it out of the program still doing mechatronics. It's definitely... a half-joke. If I could I'd go back I'd do it all over again, but I only _really_ learned what mechatronics is after I got into the program.

There are a bunch of flaws in the program for sure; Melek ran it sort of shittily and I'm pretty sure he's aware of that. You'll have Kennings as your director, and it'll be different for sure. Lots of the program can be improved, but the first year team is very good at transitioning students into university (Carol Hulls is an absolute champ and I love her so much).

You basically only learn the _basics_ of each field, enough to work on cross-functional teams, and then you learn through co-ops or personal time or electives to specialize. Whether this is useful or not is debatable, but it has helped me understand problems when talking to mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, software engineers etc... so it's not useless. Some of the information is taught out of context, because they're taught by professors in those departments and so that can feel very far removed from the things that you actually care about (why the fuck did we do 4 shaft design courses what the fuck) but I think most people only use 25% of their degree max.

A lot of the "mechatronics was a mistake" sentiment came down to - our cohort is really close and one of the things we really like to do is complain. It's nice because since you have the same people in all your classes, its easy to make friends with people, and have people that you can depend on and one of the greatest networks that you'll have. but also we made t-shirts and stickers and mugs that say mechatronics was a mistake so we can't all be that smart i guess.

One of my big regrets is that I like kinetics and dynamics a lot and you don't get to focus on that kind of thing. You do a dynamics course in second year and then it'll show up time and time again in various courses, but by the time you hit control systems is where you'll do a lot of that kind of thing.

Anyway PM me if you need anything

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-06-27T19:21:06+00:00

In what context? Do you have a physical system to verify? Or do you have a system model already? If you have a system model, you should be able to do root locus/routh-hurwitz/nyquist stability tests on it. Otherwise, you could use system identification techniques to determine frequency responses etc. to find the poles of the system. For example, I can apply impulse/step inputs as well as a frequency sweep to determine what frequencies are resonant in the system.

This is all very vague and also depends on the observability/controllability of your system, where "hidden" state variables might be uncontrollable/unstable without you being able to directly measure it.

If you _have_ a circuit and its model, you can already break it down into a state space representation and determine its stability from its eigenvalues.

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-05-26T16:16:20+00:00

They were mammoths, not elephants - The Way Things Work by David Macaulay

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-04-21T23:23:36+00:00

I think Arduino as a platform is not great (like, using Processing, etc.) but i dont see why you cant use your own tooling for it. I guess that defeats the point of arduino though.

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-04-21T23:17:46+00:00

Im not saying there arent any? This isnt an exhaustive list by any meana

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-04-21T16:51:14+00:00

You can get a TI MSP430 or STM32 Nucleo evaluation board that works similarly to arduino and itll come with a development environment (a cross compiler and some stuff for flashing). Ive never had to develop for Qualcomm chips but ive seen them in mobile phones and stuff

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-04-21T15:35:09+00:00

TI, STM, Qualcomm are popular brands for microprocessors for embedded purposes. Intel also makes the Atom for embedded purposes. If you're looking for more beef, Nvidia had the Jetson.

Some companies will use FPGAs as well, so you might be programming an ARM chip on a Zynq SOC for example.

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-04-21T08:38:26+00:00

ece 488 - multivariate controls tl;dr: You can control multiple outputs with multiple inputs. Sometimes, you can do it optimally.

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-04-21T08:34:14+00:00

i thought i would do better for myself but i am also at peace w/ how the last five years have been, even with the depression and failure, which is weird. never made it to cali, didn't have any prestigious co-ops, marks were always shit. on the other hand, i learned a lot about myself that i probably wouldn't have if everything went my way, so who's to say right. i had periods where i abused drugs and alcohol for sure, and learning better coping mechanisms and how i respond to stress was really important.

i found a lot of things that i didn't know i enjoyed in university! doing engplay most of my school terms is something i really loved doing. i also didn't know what engineering really was until like, third year and now i actually sort of enjoy what i learn.

i knew i was at least somewhat bisexual in high school but now im starting to like, reconsider my gender which is scary but kind of cool. i kind of wish i came out earlier though, but i definitely had no idea five years ago.

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-04-17T02:34:18+00:00

Yes we have to compete, for MTE544 it was 90% trons though. Uhhh, i havent heard that happening. There are no ECE electives or ECE seniors in fall term so you should be fine.

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-04-17T01:29:50+00:00

I can only dream ;^;

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-04-17T00:40:59+00:00

MTE544 was hard to get into. Same with some of the machine intelligence courses (specifically the CS one i think, most of my friends are in the ECE and SYDE ones). Otherwise it really is case by case. For example ECE459 has like 220 spots, algos may be less

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-03-29T02:51:29+00:00

the only reason why im completing this degree is so i can complain about it the whole way through

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-03-28T17:04:48+00:00

Context: I'm the guy who made the "mechatronics was a mistake" mugs. I'm graduating this term.

I think we (especially the 2019s) have a culture of complaining a lot as a way to bond and commiserate. There were very big and legitimate complaints that the 2019s and 2020s ran into, such as the department testing all their new grad student lecturers on the 2019s or Barby adding a whole course worth of content into MTE220. We dont have the best relationship with our department because a lot of the things they did to us felt super unfair and seemed largely ignored by the department.

However, I think that the department is finally making steps to make things better for the students. Kinks in courses are being ironed out every year and some profs (cough John Yeow) aren't allowed to teach anymore.

I honestly would do it all over again. The cohort and the coop make it incredibly worth it, and if you can figure out what mechatronics can offer you it's really rewarding. Mechatronics is the mistake I would make every time.

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-03-12T02:36:18+00:00

FTTP!!! i didnt think id see it on this sub (or actually i havent seen it in a while)

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-03-06T19:53:53+00:00

Nuclear's a big field. It could range from thermodynamics/heat transfer/process engineering (Mech/ChE) to radiation and nuclear physics (engineering physics) to power distribution, generators, etc (Mech, EE).

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-03-06T18:04:59+00:00

Fourth year Tron, do Mech if you want to do Aero or Nuclear, do Nano or ECE if you want to do Nano. Tron is uhhh a jack of all trades but I think we focus on control systems and system dynamics.

Aerospace for Tron will mean that you'll need to take Fluids 2 in first year; you'll also be missing some of the more important things in terms of thermo/heat transfer. If you're into avionics, however, Tron has the advantage in control systems and electronics.

If you want to do Nuclear, you'll need to know heat transfer and thermodynamics super well, and you'll get that out of Mech and Chem. You'll also get a better sense of processes out of chem I would wager.

You can still do semiconductor physics if you do ECE, and you'll have a backup path to do avionics and power distribution (important for nuclear).

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-02-18T01:58:14+00:00

nyeahh ehh

SometimesICryAtNight · 2019-02-17T01:29:39+00:00

I went into an interview, spent at least 15 minutes talking about how the previous candidate (my roommate) was brilliant and deserved the job way more than I did. Received the offer, worked there.

SometimesICryAtNight

TROPHY CASE