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Education

Ideas For High School Electronics Class? 11

Posted by Cliff from the fun-projects-for-bright-students dept.
mithrandirFan asks: "I am about to teach an electronics class at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, a school for academically gifted 11th and 12th grade high school students. There is no set curriculum for this class. In the past, the class has been taught with BASIC Stamps. By the end of the class, the student had built a fairly simple robot that could do things such as running away from light, following a wall, etc. I was wondering if the /. community had any other ideas that I could use in enhance the class. Keep in mind that there is no past electronic or programming experience required for the class, but also these are academically gifted students."
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Ideas For High School Electronics Class? More

Ideas For High School Electronics Class?

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  • First, I think the Basic Stamp is a great little device for doing projects without a lot of special tools. Here is a description of a project that I did with a BS2:

    Over winter break of my freshman year (university), I designed and built an addition to my Mr. Coffee 12-cup coffee maker and attached it to a Linux webserver. Unfortunately, the machine is turned off for winter break, but you can check status on things such as the pot temperature, air temperature, water level (I used a resistive ladder attached to a bunch of conductors spaced on a ruler, which goes IN the pot. So far, no one other than myself has dared to drink from the machine), a 16-bit webpage hit counter, and switches to detect if the pot and filter are in place. A small C++ program on the web server requests and receives data over a serial port to the stamp, then formats a HTML document.

    So, basically automating or placing sensors on home/office equipment might be an interesting and useful project. It's not terribly complicated, but it integrates programming, serial communications and a number of interesting electronic circuits (R-C circuits for the thermistors, the R-2 ladder). Other neat things (which might be geared more towards a software person) would be to add an LCD display, these are a lot of fun to play with! I used a backlit alphanumeric panel from Digikey (make sure you order the datasheet, too) with a 68HC11 microcontroller (you'd need to use around 6 - 7 IO pins on a stamp to control it in 4-bit mode, or, perhaps use 2 pins and a shift register chip).

    I can make the source code available for the mrcoffee website (http://mrcoffee.res.cmu.edu, when it comes back on around January 15).

  • It depends upon the purpose of the class and where the time will be spent -- they can either spend their time designing sensors or the processor. If the processor is already built, they have more time for sensors. And a lot more people work with off-the-shelf processors than build their own...
  • Notice the One-Wire sensors [ibutton.com] and think of what projects you could make with some of these, all connected to a single serial port. Other than the obvious weather sensors.

  • elite (Score:1)

    by matman ( 71405 )
    It's too bad that it's only 'gifted' students who are exposed to this sort of environment. I didn't get great marks because school was totally uninteresting - a course like this would have interested me... I really wish that normal students would get a chance at this sort of learning.
  • Trinity college [trincoll.edu] sponsors a large robotics competition [trincoll.edu] up in CT. I've never been there, but am entering the Senior Division (they have 4 classes: Junior, High School, Senior, and Expert) for my senior project for school... Judging from videos of past events everyone seems to have a good time participating... I know Mississippi is a long way from connecticut, but it might be worth a look, even if you just do something similar at your own school rather than entering the actual contest...
  • One of the things that I really like about my electronics class now is that my teacher told me that I could basically do anything I wanted - if there was a pet project that I wanted to do, he'll find out how to wrap our lessons around it. Although I'm a CS geek by nature, having that kind of an open environment - compared to traditional cookbook-type electronics classes - has really encouraged me to look up stuff on electronics.

    We don't have much to do with robots yet, since our lab isn't equipped with BASIC stamps. However, I'm planning to do one of those quizbee systems that are perpetually needed but never seem to be available - not just your typical buzzer system, but maybe something wireless, with microphones and who knows what else I might dream up.. =)

    It's so much more fun than the old make-an-amplifier-circuit projects we had in high school, and I always look forward to my lab sessions. =)

  • Looks like a perfect opportunity to adhere to the following RFCs:

    • RFC2325 [faqs.org] - Slavitch - 1 Apr 1998
      Definitions of Managed Objects for Drip-Type Heated Beverage Hardware Devices using SMIv2
      This memo defines an extension to the Management Information Base (MIB) for use with network management protocols in the Internet community. In particular, it defines objects for the management of coffee-brewing and maintenance devices.

    • RFC2324 [faqs.org] - Masinter - 1 Apr 1998
      Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)
      This document describes HTCPCP, a protocol for controlling, monitoring, and diagnosing coffee pots.

  • I am a highschool student in South Florida and i dont have any electronics classes, but i am involved in the US First competition. I recommend that you look into making the classa team. If they are as gifted as you say they will be very competative.

    US First is a national robotics competition unlike any you have ever seen before. It is about gracious professionalism, and the main point is learning not winning. Winning is fun though. Last year my team was number 11 in the nation.

    Anyway... You can get information about it at US FIRST's site [usfirst.org]. And if you feel you have any question is would be happy to help! Goodluck

    -Windchill2001
  • Two things i forgot to mention, the robots you build for US first are controlled by the basic stamp 2sx. And of course programmed in parallax basic. Also i would like to point out the first post status of my last message :o)
    -windchill
  • Hi,

    My Highschool electronics class was probably the most enjoyable class I took in High School. However, in order to get a really good understanding of robotics in general, I think it is extrememly important to build the robots out of discrete compononents.

    No, I don't mean transistor by transistor. I mean logic gates and ICS. For one project, we created what were effectively turing machines (email me for the source, err schematics.) These were fiarly easy to make with a 555 a few gates and a counting chip.

    There are a few reasons why this is better. First, electrical engineering really requires a different kind of thinking than programming does. (I'll never forget the look on my friends face when we got the assignment. He said: "But wait! That means we would need ifs...") Second, people feel more comfortable tinkering with stuff with electronics when they know exactly how all of it works. (I would love to hear one of you guys explain to me how a basic stamp works...) Finally, there are no expensive components to buy!

    Also, another project you guys might enjoy is buying a cheap R/C car from radioshack, and hacking it to do something interesting, like follow a path, or come towards a noise or something.

    Good Luck!!
    --Alex Fishman

  • Crystal radios. Home-brewing different variable capacitors can be pretty educational.

    Digital logic design. We had a number of projects in my freshman year of college that were good for a classroom. Each had you build a circuit to fit a standard interface. On one challenge, you switched model trains based on inputs from magnetic sensors. (Though the trains broke a lot). Another fed your circuit a 4-bit counter and got back turtle-graphics coordinates (4 bits for x, 4 bits for y and 1 bit for pen up or down). The result was drawn on a scope (though now you'd do it on a PC). Another had to play a version of the old "Mastermind" game. For each of these, part of your grade depended on the circuit cost (chip count) and part depended on your performance. (For the drawing one, people judged each others pictures).

    Animated displays/art. Kids always got a kick out of building animated homecoming, halloween, etc. displays.

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