Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

There is one irregular fourth year engineering student who plans to submit his work in his digital communications lab class as his project also for my intermediate robotics lab, metaphorically to hit two birds with one stone.

Besides all of these Hollywood dramas about high school telling me it is not fair to all the other students though, there is also the fact that the requirements of both classes are somewhat different. In his digital communications class, he can control the robotic arm (which is what his project is) from the computer with the mouse or keyboard inputs. For my class, that is not acceptable.

To be classified as a robot project, the machine should be programmed to have external input not from a computer standard device and has to have a loop having different actions depending on the input. And I will not allow him to just have a touch sensor or a switch for a “package” that the robot is supposed to react to when something is placed there.

If something could be dropped near the robot to pick up, then it has no practical application, because the robot will just do something a human already performed bringing the package into its limited field of operation.

So it will have to be a motion sensor or something that will reflect what he learned in my class and not just what slacker co-teacher approved of (but most likely did not teach about) in that other lab class they're working on.

Now the thing is that even the regular third year students are worried they might not have enough time to complete all their requirements in all of their subjects, because they also have to make interface cards for their Interfaced Computer systems class. They want a project they can construct right out of a book, but where's the innovation there, and all they will present will therefore be just cookie cutter clones of each other.

For their lab sessions this week, they will implement the binary to decimal three-bit counter I gave them as an exercise during the last meeting.

After that, they will finally try to work out that game show buzzer, only this is limited to six inputs.

We could probably go as high as eight inputs, and have the output be just binary which will have to be converted by logic gates outside of the programmable IC, but I will let them implement a two-buzzer system first, then work up from there.

Session 1853 wants two credits for one work, only using the principles from one of the subjects. Class dismissed.