MECH 217 FAQ for Fall 2021

Rick Sellens

11 MECH 217 FAQ for Fall 2021

Frequently Asked Questions

This section is here to give students access to answers before their official registration is complete at Queen’s.

Q: When will the lab kits be mailed / available for pickup?

A: Be sure to attend one of the lab sessions in week 1 to pick up your kit!

Q: What if parts in the lab kit don’t work?

A: We will find a way to help you succeed. Check in with a TA or instructor at any one of the lab sessions. We’re used to some hardware failures.

Q: What software will we use?

A: Office 365, Arduino IDE, Anaconda, Zoom in MECH 217 plus other programs in other courses. The recommendations at https://engineering.queensu.ca/Current-Students/First-Year-Studies/ComputinginEngineering.html have been updated if you are thinking about a new computer.

Q: Will you teach background for Arduino?

A: APSC 143 has been modified multiple times in recent years in the hopes of better preparing students to write C code in upper years. We still find many MECH students have difficulty. Some students have had similar background in MNTC 313. Although we will assume you took a C course, we will review each step in detail to remind you of material covered in APSC 143 and show how to apply it with the Arduino IDE.

Q: Will lectures be available ahead of time?

A: My own experience shows my best lectures result from review and revision shortly before I present them, so I would not expect the current version of any lectures to be available ahead of their first presentation. Some presentations will be recorded and I will do my best to post the edited results before the end of the next day for your review. A lot of MECH 217 course content is already recorded on video and will be available as soon as you have access to the onQ course. You can also get a head start at https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/rwsnotes/ where most of the course background will be located by the fall.

Q: How will we ensure that group members are held accountable for their share of the work?

A: This is always a challenge in team settings, either in school or in the workplace, whether working in person or remotely. In general, you should work with your team members to make sure you are all clear on responsibilities and deadlines, and identify problems early. If you can’t work them out among yourselves, get an instructor or supervisor involved early in the term. In MECH 217 we will be taking attendance during lab periods, so we will have some evidence if your group members are not participating, and can respond accordingly. Past experience has shown this is sufficient to identify non-participants and people have failed MECH 217 for not contributing to their group. The vast majority of teams work really well together, group marks are generally high and the difference between A+ and B is usually the exam performance.

Course Design Questions

Q: Why not PC and LabView or Matlab?

Complex tools are great for building complex systems that can be independent of the underlying hardware. We want to focus on some simple problems and learn some of the hardware details so you can make intelligent use of complex measurement systems in more complex projects in the future.

Q: Why microcontrollers?

Microcontrollers are cheap and can be built right into your product to measure what’s happening and respond to it in real time. They are single tasking, with no operating system, so they don’t bog down with load or take a long time to boot up.

Q: Why Arduino?

The Arduino IDE supports the most widely used and easily accessible family of microcontrollers available. The skills and concepts you learn with Arduino are transportable to other embedded systems.

Q: Why C?

First, because C is the language of the Arduino IDE. Second, because C is the language you learned programming in first year. Third, because basic C programming skills have been durable. In the 1980s I was writing C code for data acquisition much like you will be in this course. The equipment was way more expensive and less versatile, but the skills will probably be useful well into the future.

Q: Why Jupyter Notebooks and Python?

The notebook format lets you test little fragments of calculation code and keep notes about them all in one literate programming document. The matrix capabilities of Python let you test ideas with simple code before implementing something more complicated looking to do the same thing in C. You get the same interpreted matrix and plotting capabilities as MatLab in an open-source environment you can use on any platform inside or outside the university – many employers don’t have MatLab licenses. MatLab “Live Scripts” provide much the same functionality. you will also see Jupyter in other MECH courses, like MECH 202/203.

Q: The Internet of Things (IOT) is the future of measurement, why not focus on that?

IOT technologies are very much a moving target. We will just assume that once you get your measurement and control system working, interfacing it to the net will be simple. That was true last year and is just as true this year, but the hardware, the process and the price point have changed. MECH 217 focuses on the THINGS in the IOT.

Q: Why do we have to put all the pieces together?

It would certainly be faster if I connected everything up, took some data, and gave you video of what I did along with the data to analyze. Research in teaching and learning shows you would not learn and retain as much understanding from that process as you do from fully hands-on, active, experiential learning. Making configuration mistakes, then recognizing and correcting them drives deeper learning. We want you to make some of those mistakes along the way and we will help you figure them out. Getting error messages is normal. Circuits usually don’t work the first time. Debugging and troubleshooting are important skills.

Q: Why isn’t all the information in the instructions?

Becoming a professional means moving from following recipes to open ended problem solving and recognizing opportunities. At this point you will still be mostly following a general recipe and going to other sources for additional information, then making reasonable decisions based on analysis and what you already know. If you make a decision that doesn’t work out so well, you’ll have the opportunity to go back and make a better one.

Q: Why don’t you at least give us a link?

“Google is your friend.” If you use a sensible set of search keywords (some of which I’ll highlight in bold) you will find more information and more variety when you go looking for “Arduino” or “thermistor” than you would ever get from a single link. Lifelong learning is one of the key CEAB Graduate Attributes. Searching for new information helps you develop that skill you will need as a Professional Engineer.

License

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