Attended: Kevin, Nathan, Gordon, Brian

• Eagle tutorials due by February 15, finish by end of week
• Begin microprocessor module
• Begin BOM and Power Budget

• Continuing Arduino and Eagle tutorials
• Finished Gantt chart
• Data sheets on Google Drive

* None

• Next week meeting changed to Wednesday February 17 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM since Monday is holiday
• Lab hours for next week Wednesday, Thursday, and or Friday 2:30 PM and on

 1.  What is an embedded system?
     - The integration of sensors, actuators and intelligence into a system
     - Allows the system to produce more capable and robust performance
 2.  What is a microcontroller?
     - A microcontroller is esentially a small computer on a single circuit board
     - Usually contains a processor, memory and programmable I/O
 3.  SPI, ADC, UART, I2C
     - I2C stands for inter-integrated circuit and is a serial computer bus
     - Used for attaching lower-speed peripheral I2C to microcontrollers
     - UART is a universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter 
     - Translates data between serial/parallel forms.
     - It is used for serial communications over a computer or serial device port.
     - Analog to digital converter (ADC) is a device that converts a physical quantity (voltage) to a digital form
     - Enables the conversion of a physical quantity to a digital number 
     - Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) bus is a synchronous serial communication interface specification 
     - Used for short distance communication, primarily in embedded systems
 4. How do you think this information will relate to this lab?
     - They are all communication protocols
     - These capabilities are integrated into the embedded system 

 1. What is Arduino?
     - An “Arduino” is a microcontroller platform 
     - Allows you to write programs to interact with the world via sensors
     - Provides I/O pins that can be interfaced and communication ports
 2. What is an Arduino Uno?
     - It is a very commonly used model
 3. What kind of programming language does the Arduino IDE support?
     - C/C++/Python and many others
 4.  What are the two functions that are present in an Arduino program?
     - The "setup()" and "loop()" function are essential
 5. How is it different from a regular microcontroller?
     - It wraps programming into a easy to use package
     - Open source, inexpensive, simple IDE, cross platform
 6. Why do people use the Arduino?
     - Simple and accessible user experience
     - Advantages include easy-to-use software for beginners
     - Disadvantages include limitation of MCU (Atmel AVR)

 1. Were you able to program the Arduino?
     - Yes we complied, uploaded and tested the examples
 2. Did you have any problems during the Arduino process?
     - It initially would not upload onto the board
 3. What you think is the next step after this?
     - Learn the functions that interact with the board
  

• Finish Eagle tutorials

Meeting was from 10:30 - 10:45

Contributing authors:

Created by nlam on 2016/02/05 21:36.