ELEC2117: ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS DESIGN

5% lab work, 20% midsem, 45% major project, 30% final.

ELEC2141. Also I'd recommend taking ELEC2117 in third year after ELEC2142. I did this and found it very helpful.

Overall, this is a very useful course where you learn to build practical circuits using a microcontroller.

This course is all about programming the PIC16F886 microcontroller, which is in assembly language. That's why I recommend taking ELEC2142 beforehand (you learn assembly in 2142), because this course just chucks you in the deep end, so having no knowledge of assembly beforehand means you have to learn it pretty quickly, which is not impossible but not desirable in my opinion. Chamith is very knowledgeable so he teaches the content pretty well.

The first 5 weeks are lab work; writing programs to make LED patterns, multiplex seven segment displays, program a keypad, and display characters on an LCD screen. These labs are very important to complete because they make up the subsystems for the final design project. Our final design project was building a tuneable FM radio, using an RF module, LCD for station display, and keypad to select preset/seek/mute. This was incredibly fun to work on - but because it was done in assembly, the code was close to 1000 lines.
We only had 4 weeks to complete the project because of trimesters - previous years had the midsem break PLUS 7 weeks to work on this project, so more time would have been good, especially with other subjects having midsems/projects at the same time. The midsem was okay, and the final exam was a bit challenging.

5 hour mixed lecture/lab. Usually the lecture lasts about 1 hour, then 4 hours of lab time.

2/5

No.

Chamith Wijenayake.

This course has very little content, it's very practical so there aren't really any set notes besides the lecture slides.

4/5

None.

2019/1

98 HD