My Experience with EPICS ekhall - Rhea

What I have done on the team

This will be my 7th semester with EPICS. I have been on two different teams, ISG and IS. Both of which worked for Imagination Station (IS)[1], a children's museum in Lafayette. I started out on the Laser Maze project, which was designed to teach children about LASER's, white light, reflection and refraction. The Laser kiosk was a two sided kiosk that had one side as a timed game, the user had about 100s to solve the maze. That project has been delivered last semester after IS asked that we remove the second side, which taught about white light, laser light and reflection. During my second year second semester with EPICS I recommended that we move from the 9S12, which is taught in ECE362, and move to an arduino[2]. The Arduino allows for faster easier development of code in an environment that is much more friendly then what is taught in ECE362.

I have spent the past year working on the Mars Rover Exhibit[3][4]. I took the exhibit from a working prototype to a working project, removing most of the flaws in the first semester. The second semester I worked on getting the project working so that we could deliver it somewhere. The second semester I worked on less engineering and more getting the project a new home, as IS decided that they no longer had the space for it. At the end of the year we found a new museum to take it. They will be receiving it early in the Fall.

Arduino

Microcontroller development is a hard process. The devices are all different and there can be a problem when trying to make code work on different platforms. In ECE362 we are taught assembly as a way to program microcontrollers, but this is extremely out of date as C can do everything ASM can and make the program development faster and overall easier to do. One summer I looked into getting my own microcontroller and found the Arduino after much research. The benefit of the Arduino is that the developers wrote most of the hard and boring code for you. This means you can do the fun stuff not the tedious things. I told my senior team mate about the Arduino and brought mine in, he was amazed as to how easy it was we moved from the ASM based 9s12 to the Arduino. Most of the code was ported in a day.

After using the Arduino platform for many different things, I decided that it would be a good idea to teach other EPICS students about it. So I held a skill session on it, the skill session was a little late in the year but it seemed to get some people interested. Next year I am going to be hosting one again, hopefully withing the first few weeks.

Undergraduate TA

Last semester I was a UTA for EPICS. I taught many people about the Arduino and how to use different devices in the lab. I also taught the students how to solder, as most had never done it before and they were doing it wrong, damaging the devices. I looked over circuits, looked over flow diagrams and many other things

I have completely enjoyed my experience in EPICS, I guess thats why I keep coming back.