1. ECE 445: Lecture 1
Prof. Rakesh Kumar Prof. Arne Fliflet Prof. Xiaogang Chen
ECE Main Slide

2. Agenda 4:00pm - Welcome, Introductions, Course Overview
4:15pm - Project Pitches
Jacob Bryan: Tin Can Telephony
Michael Oelze: Lazy Fisherman
Channing Philbrick: Pass the Butter Robot
4:30pm - Guided Brainstorming and Ideation
5:30pm - May is Coming

3. Meet the Professors Prof. Xiaogang Chen Prof. Rakesh Kumar
Prof. Arne Fliflet

4. Meet the Teaching Assistants
Channing Philbrick
Jacob Bryan
Tony Caton
Yuchen He
Kexin Hui
Yamuna Phal
Zhen Qin
Nick Ratajczyk

5. Meet the Teaching Assistants
Dongwei Shi
Zipeng “Bird” Wang
Xinrui Zhu

6. Project Pitches Jacob Bryan: Tin Can Telephony
Michael Oelze: Lazy Fisherman
Channing Philbrick: Pass the Butter Robot

7. Tin Can Telephone upgrade for the digital age
Jacob Bryan

8. Easy Mode: One Way CommunicationTX RX
Must transmit and receive using vibrations in the string

9. Hard Mode: Two Way CommunicationTX RX RX TX
Must transmit and receive using vibrations in the string

10. How can it be done? Microphone Speaker ADC Amplifier Encoder Decoder
vibrations
Actuator (TX)
Sensor (RX)

11. Some Suggestions and Advice
Reliability is more important than latency
Coding scheme and/or communication protocol
Consider sensor/actuator/materials selection very carefully
What is the string made of?
Do you need a microphone? Would something else work?
Can you measure string tension and adapt protocol?

12. Interested? Talk to me after class
Come to my office hours (Tuesdays 2pm in ECEB 2072) me
Discuss on the web board

13. The Lazy Fisherman High Level Requirements: A fishing bob with water
proof housing
Sensors to detect a tug
from a fish
Wireless capability to transmit tug from bob to fisherman
resting comfortably on the shore
4. Mechanism to attract fisherman’s notice that he needs to
pay attention to his fishing line
5. Other features???

14. Pass the Butter Robot Possible Requirements Facial recognition
Speech recognition
Locate and retrieve butter
Have an existential crisis
Interested?
Office Hours: Friday 12-1pm, ECEB 2072

15. May is Coming
February 1st: Project approval (16 days from now) • Brainstorming, team formation, successful RFA
February 8th: Project proposal (+7 days) • Refinement of project idea, requirement specifications, schedule
February 22nd: Design Document (+14 days) • Complete paper design of project, requirement & verification, parts list, cost
May 3rd: Project demonstration (+60 days) • Implement design, order parts, assemble, test, and document everything, demonstrate a fully functioning project