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Diary of a Trainee Electronics Engineer: March 2016

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Logic Gates, Graphene and Getting to Build.

IET Prestige Regional Lecture

One again March was a busy and productive month! In the middle of which I attended the Regional Prestige IET Lecture, the topic for this was Graphene – Unexpected Science in a Pencil Line. To be honest, prior to attending this lecture I didn't quite know what graphene is. I assumed it was to do with graphite (which I know is found in pencils) however, I wasn't sure of the applications or uses.

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I found this lecture so interesting! I learned far more than I expected I would; from the physical structure of graphene, how to make it and the current and future applications! I never imagined that a two dimensional single atomic layer could be so strong and versatile. I can't wait to see the development of future applications for this material. To read more about this lecture read the full post on DesignSpark.

Summing up Studies

So far my HND is going really well, things had died down as we were getting ready to break up for Easter. So far I’ve finished three out of the eight units for the first year, these are: Engineering Design, Advanced CAD and Analytical Methods.

The third and final assignment for Engineering Design was interesting, here I had to design a circuit using CADSoft Eagle. I have only used DesignSpark PCB and Multisim for schematic capture, so using another tool was good experience.

We're also progressing further with the mechanical side of Engineering Science. Although we've been thrown in at the deep end, I’m managing to rattle out assignments. For a change we did some group work and made a pendulum, where we altered the distance of the bob from the point of suspension to calculate the acceleration at different suspension points.

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This is one of my favourite areas of study as I particularly enjoy solving calculations and equations.

In Combinational and Sequential Logic we're using 555 timers to design test and build a traffic light system with two sets of 3 LEDs. Last month I did this with a single set of LEDs and enjoyed that, so incorporating another set was a fun challenge for me. I really enjoyed calculating the resistor values for the 555 timer to create my own time intervals.

Below is the truth table for the traffic lights, from which I developed K-Maps, boolean expressions and individual logic circuits, before combining them into a full logic circuit with a 555 timer in Multisim.

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R1, A1 and G1 represent the first set of traffic lights for red, amber and green, R2, A2 and G2 represent the second set of red, amber and green traffic lights. When the column is fitted with a 1 this represents that LED to be illuminated for 1 second.

An example K-Map is below for the one I derived from R1.title

 

The grouping of this K-Map was very simple and derived a boolean expression of Q3 and a very simple logic circuit of a single NOT gate. This process is repeated for each LED and then these are combined into a whole logic circuit.

Little Builds

I finished Part 1 of Building a River Level Display in the middle of the month. This was possibly one of my favourite projects as it's close to home. I still need to hook this display up to the river level monitor which my colleague Stuart installed earlier in the year.

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Once this is connected the unit will display the level of the local river on an etched display, providing increased visibility of when the river is getting close to full and is likely to overflow and flood.

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April is shaping up to be another good month!

Trainee Electronics Engineer, currently studying towards my degree in Electronic Engineering at the University of Hudderfsield. Completed my HND in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Bradford College 2017. Love to try new things and build interesting projects!
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