Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1093246
MARCH 2019 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 13 faculty are responsible for interfacing with the customer and maintaining the integrity of the project. This better reflects the industry model and also helps provide the teams with close mentorship during the project. Students are generally expected to deliver a prototype at the end of the year. Shaughnessy: That's pretty cool. I understand you have a little more focus on PCBs and PCB design, and a lot of EE curriculum? Spivey: I can't speak to what other schools are doing, per se. What we do is during their fresh- man year, students work with Arduinos and learn how to code and build some systems. Sophomore year focuses on FPGAs and digital object for the EEs. At the start of their junior year, students take a microprocessors class, learn how to code everything on a couple of different micros, start with an eight-bit AVR, and move to a 32-bit ARM. In the spring of their junior year, EE students have an embedded systems class where they learn how to use Altium Designer. They design a simple board and have it manufactured using our Voltera PCB printers. Then, they use our LPKF pick-and-place system and reflow oven to assemble the board. Later, they design another slightly more difficult board and have that fab - ricated using a PCB house, such as Sunstone. They complete the semester by developing their own project. I help them do all of this, but each student does their own project. The goal is for students to design the schematic and lay - out, order the parts, have the board fabricated, solder it together, code up the microprocessor, and make the whole system work. Also, in that same semester, for our appli- cations of microelectronics course, students build a power amplifier and do another PCB design and layout. While learning all of this, they might also do a PCB as part of their Ser- vant Engineering Program, and in the follow- ing year, it is quite common for them to build more PCBs as part of their senior design expe- rience. Thus, many of our students come out having built five PCBs with all except the first couple being completely their own design. Shaughnessy: That's definitely not the norm. We talk to EE grads and other students, and a lot of them have never designed a board or heard of copper pour. And of course, their instructors say, "Well, that's a manufacturing discipline." Spivey: I think it's a thinking discipline. I teach digital system design, and I've done microcode and FPGAs for years. When I teach microproces- sors and talk about coding styles, I think that's important to teach. It isn't just a style; it is a proper way of abstract thinking. Further, I don't use a textbook for microprocessors or embedded systems; we just use data sheets. Good, bad, or whatever, it's not my problem; I want them to read it and figure it out because that's what stu - dents will have to do in real life. So, I teach them how to think on their own and find answers. In my professional career, I designed wire wrap boards using discrete integrated circuits, and moved on from there to ASIC design, FPGAs, and embedded coding, but I've actu- ally never designed a PCB. So, that's my PCB knowledge. Of course, I've read about pour and other techniques, but at the level we're doing it, it's not rocket science. I tell the students to research it, figure it out, and just get it built. There's a whole career to learn details later, and we're not going to get to everything as under- grad. We're not going to get into EMAG and crosstalk, etc. But they should be able to figure out how to utilize the tools on their own with a little guidance from me when they get stuck. I grade it like a professional project. I don't have tests and such. I have some milestones that I want them to hit, but it is a competency-based outcome largely. I typically give students an A, a B, or an F. I can tell who has taken on a hard challenge and who has done well at it. I teach them how to think on their own and find answers.