ECE 3400: Intelligent Physical Systems

Cornell University, Fall 2018

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Tutorials and Helpful links

We have and will continue to upload helpful tutorials and links on this webpage. We would love for you to contribute, please contact the TA’s to do this!

Related to Team Work

• Overview
• Here’s a very quick recap on Belbin team roles
• How to create Gant charts for free in Microsoft Excel for time management
• Excellent Ted talk for those who tend to procrastinate
• Team contract
• Managing conflict
• Leadership

Related to Webpages

• Desktop github
• How to make a webpage
• Making a webpage with a Bootstrap theme
• Example website made with Bootstrap
• Markdown cheat sheet pdf
• Markdown cheat sheet, Github
• Embedding google drive videos in markdown
• Fritzing, program to draw nice breadboard circuits

Solutions

Note that all labs have changed slightly, and no prior solutions are directly applicable to the current semester challenge.

Team Alpha Repository

This is the repository for the team of TA’s that solved all the labs during the Summer of 2017. Please use this website for support and inspiration; no credits will be given for close copies of these solutions. Also, the TA’s were under strict timelines - hopefully you will upload more comprehensive and better websites over the course of the semester.

• 2017 Team Websites
• 2018 Team Websites

Also, check out this brief on systems design early in the semester - it will help you prep for the final competition!

Making Tutorials

• Making tutorials is a great way to earn extra credit. Please confer with the professor before starting. Here’s a brief tutorial on making tutorials, with a list of possible tutorials we’d like to add.
• Also, here is a fantastic tutorial from Stanford on how to make interactive tutorials

Related to Control

• Intro to Arduino IDE
• Hate the Arduino IDE? You’re not alone. It was really made for beginners, and so often hinders more advanced developers. If you are willing to spend some extra hours getting up to speed, you may want to switch to the Bare-Arduino-Project. Be aware that there might be little help from the TAs if you choose this option.
• Arduino Uno online references and tutorials
• A useful script to report on the internal state of your Arduino and here
• Also, for problems with Arduino, look at wiring.c on your development machine to see the firmware settings that are being uploaded to your Arduino.
• Discussion of Source Code Compilation.
• Writing your own (basic) library for your robot.
• Intro to PWM (Lab1)
• A Polulu library reference guide for line following. We will not be using the same line sensors, so the library won’t be installed/used directly. However, reading through the example will give you an idea of how PID control can be used for line following, particularly the command reference for readLine() and the bottom section on PID control.
• State Machine Example Code, by Daniel Kim

Related to FPGAs

• FPGA tutorial
• Helpful FPGA-related Links and Tips
• Verilog for Beginners
• VGA Color scheme, by Angus Gibbs 2016
• Logic Analyzers

Related to Cameras

• Debugging your camera

Related to Sensors and Signal Processing:

• Download LTSpice lite for free here
• VL53L0X time-of-flight distance sensor
• How to use the Nordic Radio module
• Nordic Radio modules explained

Related to Electronics:

• Intro to soldering (video)
• How to solder components and wires
• Solder Wires Like a Pro! (video)
• [Wiring a robot] To be added.
• How to Splice USB Cable
• Tutorials on Eagle
• How to layout a PCB
• How to etch your own PCB from Sparkfun.

Related to Mechanical Fabrication:

We have a Skunkworks dedicated to the class. This is located in PH414 and is equipped with a laser cutter, two 3D printers, two PCB mills and a PCB etching station (to come). Please be aware that you only get to use these machines after training, and only when TA’s are present.

• How to calculate the cost of your robot?
• A zip file “ECE3400_Fall 2018_SolidWorks.zip”, with all the mechanical parts drawn in SolidWorks can be found here
• Solidworks is available in many of the Phillips Hall computer labs; it is very fast to learn, and the tutorials offered in the help-menu are very intuitive.
• Tutorials on Autocad. Autocad is installed on all the machines in PH427.
• Autocad example
• Autocad design for laser cutters
• Tinkercad is a nice free software that many of students have used successfully
• How to use the XYYZ and UPplus 2 3D printers
• How to use the Epilog laser cutter
• Tips on how to design pieces for a laser cutter

Related to Debugging

• How to build a simple Arduino oscilloscope
• Reading and writing to the serial port with Matlab
• This folder has software in Java, Processing, Matlab, and C++ for simulating robot search

Related to Ethics and Life!

• Great talk by Illah Nourbakhsh Founder of the CREATE lab at CMU on Ethics in Robotics
• Informal post by Director Martin Gomez, on how to best use your College experience!
• Great website to test your own implicit bias