Last year, TI was thrilled to open a new $2.2 million engineering lab with the University of California, Berkeley. As we’re approaching the 1-year anniversary of the lab space, we wanted to highlight what has transpired over the course of a year and highlight some of the cool student projects that were made possible through this new state-of-the-art electronics teaching lab.
More than 1,000 students last year were able to experience hands-on learning with TI components both in the lab and in the nearby “maker lounge.”
In addition to the creation happening inside the lab and the increased flow of students, the space itself is getting some attention. It’s been submitted for the 2014 Institute Honor Awards for architectural achievement elevating the general quality of architecture practice and establishing a standard of excellence. Congrats all around!
Now for the cool projects:
Roy K. Tu, an engineering student at UC Berkeley, has created several innovative projects over the course of the year:
His two-player Tic-Tac-Toe board was made for a class Roy took last semester. The board is entirely hand-soldered and LEDs light up when a player presses corresponding buttons on a 3x3 grid. The logic stores whoever’s turn it is and detects whether someone has won.
Another project Roy developed in the lab was a distortion guitar pedal. It works with any conventional electric guitar. It's a simple circuit with input/output adapters that connects to a guitar and amplifier and adds a "crunchy" element to the sound. The schematic is based off of the commercially-available MXR Distortion Plus pedal, and was requested by a floormate who played a lot of metal music. Building the circuit manually cost a fraction of the price of purchasing a commercial pedal and yielded similar results.
A third project was made for IEEE’s Micromouse competition, which involves building a small car to traverse a maze. Currently in development, the car must rely on infrared sensors to determine where walls are and must be able to turn sharp corners quickly and accurately. This project is in development with a team of three: Ashvin Nair, Saavan Patel, and Roy.
Reah Miyara, a senior at UC Berkeley, along with classmate Rishi Sharma, created an autonomous quadcopter. The TI maker lounge in Cory Hall at UC Berkeley served as the “Mission Control Center” for every flight of the quadcopter, which they named Sophie. Both students had an interest in aerial robotics and used tools within the maker space to develop both the software and hardware that enabled Sophie to fly. Once Sophie developed stability in the air, they knew there were other interesting projects to pursue which explored different aspects of personalized, unmanned flight.
For example, the students used the lab’s MakerBot 3D Printer to fashion a case for a GoPro video camera that they attached to Sophie. The result? Amazing, aerial photos and videos of the UC Berkeley campus.
Their latest project incorporates a NeuroSky MindWave Mobile single channel EEG to control the quadcopter through thought. The project has helped us push the limits of their understanding of neurophysiology and signal processing as they attempt to extract consistent and clear features that they can use to fly their quadcopter. They have been able to achieve flight through simple concepts such as focus, relaxation and blinking.
Engineering undergrad Sam Fall already knew how to make a basic EEG analog board from his class “Introduction to Circuit Design,” but he wanted to expand on the capabilities and the overall appearance of the project. Sam and his team used a digital backpack board and a TI MSP430™ microcontroller to enable an easy-to-use interface for the project. They created a case, displays and keypad that looks much more like a conventional consumer product that the EEG analog circuit board.
We’re so excited to see all of the amazing projects that have been created in the lab in just one year and are looking forward to the future of the lab.