Diary of a Trainee Electronics Engineer: November 2016

Mammoth Assignments, Getting RC2014 to Work and First Experiences With Wearable Tech.

November always seems to be a crazy busy month – between work and my HND I don’t seem to have a moment to spare. Here at AB Open we had a rather large batch of kitting up to do, so much so I asked the other girl from my HND course, Natasha, to come in and help out.

Mammoth Assignments

As per usual my HND is quite busy at the moment and as we get closer to Christmas things will begin to pick up some more, before starting a new term in January.

There was a mammoth assignment due in the middle of the month, which incorporated three modules in one assignment brief. As some of the content of the three overlapped it was thought best that it be included in one assignment instead of cross-referencing later on. I didn’t find this method was greatly effective, and quite a few others as well as myself agree that perhaps in future it would be better if the content is divided into three separate assignments, one for each unit so it is easier to follow. Other than the layout of the assignment brief itself I found this assignment particularly interesting. It included the following:

Falstad

For the first unit we were required to calculate the characteristic impedance of Pi and T-model two port networks, validating the results by using an alternative approach to arrive at the same results.

In order to validate my calculated results I learned how to use Falstad, a free online circuit simulation tool (shown above).

Thevénin equivalent circuits

In the second unit of this assignment we were required to take the previous T-model two port network, and convert this to a Thevénin equivalent circuit. Using this we could then go on to calculate the maximum power of the circuit and further convert it to a Norton equivalent to prove that other circuit theorems arrive at the same results.

Power systems

This unit included quite a large chunk of one of the modules which I studied last year in HND1, Utilisation of Electrical Energy. A large section from an assignment I submitted last year for this was included in this section of the assignment.

For this I included explaining the construction and properties of an overhead line as well as comparing different types of cables used in power systems and methods of fault location. The area which overlapped from last year, was various types of protective devices and what applications each are best suited to.

Finally getting RC2014 to work!

After quite a lot of debugging I finally managed to get the Z80 Retro Computer working and detailed this in the post, Further Debugging RC2014 and First programs. Here I managed to narrow down the fault to the Serial I/O board, after a friend of a colleague sent me his completed set of modules to compare against mine.

This fault was then further narrowed down to the MC86B50/MC63B50 ACIA, as this is the only component which is not brand new but is actually reclaimed, we believe a faulty chip may have slipped through the quality control checks and ended up in with the Serial I/O board I was supplied.

Following getting my modules to work I was able to use BASIC to complete some calculations which relate to some modules of my HND, as well as running through some simple examples of using BASIC to print.

I’m really looking forward to being able to use the RC2014 in future projects now that I have it working!

Events

I was due to go down to London at the end of November/beginning of December to attend a FPGA workshop and the IET Young Women Engineer of the Year Awards. Unfortunately, due to a nasty case of tonsillitis I wasn’t able to attend either of these…

Although I’m extremely disappointed that I was unable to attend, I would still like to wish a massive congratulations to all the winners and runners up at the Young women engineers of the Year Awards:

Jenni Sidey, a Lecturer in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, who won the Young Woman Engineer of the Year (YWE) award.

Gemma Dalziel, an Apprentice Network Consulting Engineer at Cisco Systems, who received The Mary George Memorial Prize for Apprentices.

Bethan Murray, a Manufacturing Systems Lead at Rolls Royce, who was presented with the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) Prize.

The finalists were Emma Wilding, a Vehicle Safety Engineer (Degree Apprentice) at Jaguar Land Rover and Nadia Johnson, a Software Engineer Degree Apprentice at Thales UK.

More details about the awards ceremony and all the winners/finalists can be found here. I have every intention of making sure I can attend the awards again next year! Hopefully there will be another FPGA workshop in the pipeline scheduled for the not too distant future which I can attend too.

Planning for December

This post has come out a bit later than usual, one of the reasons for this was that I was keen to design and build this year’s festive project, A Winter Wearable, where I looked at up-cycling a drab Christmas jumper by adding Adafruit Flora and Flora NeoPixels.

I’m really looking forward to the rest of December. I’ve already squeezed in a night away to see my favourite band Biffy Clyro at Manchester Arena and I also have a trip planned to Dublin just before Christmas!