Hello all, I conducted a 14 -day workshop on EDA at BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore from August 12 to August 30, 2013. The target audience were students who were going to begin their third semester (second year). That's when we all get specific about our streams. All students were from electrical/electronics branches. There was a mix of both 3rd and 5th semester students with a total of 25 participants. It was conducted in collaboration with BMSCE IEEE and the Medical Electronics department. It was sponsored by TEQIP (Technical Education Improvement Programme) II. Highlights of the sessions: 1. Fedora Linux - Two days were spent on getting the familiar with the terminal, Makefiles and basic shell scripting. All participants were given a bootable pendrive containing Fedora + the FEL package and some more software (Scilab, sagemath). 2. Circuit simulation using gEDA. For the next three days, the students were trained in schematic capture, custom symbol creation and circuit simulation. 3. Scilab. This three day session introduced the students to Scilab. I first taught them how to use this for mathematical analysis and then for signals analysis, DSP and control systems. They had a lot of fun running music clips through filters :-) 4. Python. I structured this mostly based on MIT's 6.00x course. This was also a three day session where the students learned the language and the pylab library. I wrapped it up by introducing them to Monte Carlo simulations and showing them how statistics works while explaining electron diffusion. 5. Arduino. This was the last session. The students were given kits containing an Arduino UNO R3 and several assorted components (resistors, capacitors, breadboards, a couple of sensors, LEDs, LCD displays). The students were taught to use all these to come up with some nice projects of their own. All students received a certificate as well as a textbook - Microelectronic Circuits by Sedra and Smith. I had a couple of reasons for doing this. I wanted students to get familiar with the tools early on so that they could spend more time using them to learn their subjects, Normally, they are introduced to these only when they need it in labs and time is divided between learning to use the software and learning the subject that uses it. SPICE is never even touched. I also wanted to introduce students to the free and open source alternatives available out there and convince them that they are as good (I'd say even better) that the standard proprietary tools they will use. This would increase support for FOSS. At the end of the workshop, I'm glad to say that most students agree that these are better options and they really do find the Linux terminal easier than standard GUI. About the selection of the sessions: I know there are a ton of tools out there which I didn't cover. I shared what I know and I'm sure that the students will be able to learn more themselves. I chose Scilab over Octave because the students would be interested Xcos because Simulink is very popular there. The code, presentations and handouts are being uploaded to https://github.com/ashwith/workshopfiles I'm a bit busy at the moment so things will go online gradually. I'd like to thank Vignesh Ag, (Student Chairman, BMSCE IEEE), Prof. Abhishek Appaji (Medical Electronics), Prof. Ajay Kumar D. (Instrumentation Technology) and Dr. H. N. Suma (HOD, Medical Electronics) for their support and for the the work they did in organizing the event. They handled all of the logistics, kit procurement and several details so that all I needed to do is go each day and teach. Thanks also to the BMS administration, the Principal Dr. M K Babu and TEQIP for supporting and sponsoring this event. Thanks also to Chitlesh and the wonderful FEL team that's worked hard in building Free electronic lab for us! I'm posting this here because I was introduced to these tools by Shakthi and Aanjhan when I was in my second year of engineering (November 2007) at a talk organized by my senior, Shashank Bharadwaj. This a long overdue to thank you to both of you as well Shashank who helped me get better at Linux. Thanks to the two of you, I got introduced to the GNU/Linux world and haven't turned back ever since. This workshop is the outcome of the session you conducted. It's taken a while but the next step of my workshop is that these participants will train the first years who have started their engineering this month. I'm hoping that more students will use FEL and become better engineers in the process. Links -------- Pictures of the workshop: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjHRCDP4 BMSCE Website: http://www.bmsce.in/ TEQIP website: http://www.aicte-india.org/teqip.htm Electron Diffusion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkrzoTuPgpI Novemeber 2007 session details: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/pipermail/ilugc/2007-November/038176.html Best Regards Ashwith J. Rego ----------------- My Webpage: http://ashwith.wordpress.com/ Find me on LinkedIn at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ashwith Follow Me on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/Louisda16th _______________________________________________ electronic-lab mailing list electronic-lab@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/electronic-lab
