BISON ACADEMY

Courses taught in the

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

North Dakota State University

 

ECE 476/676: Advanced Embedded Systems

Comments

 

Syllabus - HW & Solutions - Resources - Comments


Spring 2025

 

Please give an example of something that was done well in ECE 463/663

In-Person

§   Good examples given in class and on the website. Good real life applications explained as well.

Online

§   Bison Acadamy is a great resource to use!

§   Lots of examples

 

Please give an example of something that need to be improved in ECE 463/663

In-Person

§   None

Live-Stream

§   None

Online

§   Some hyperlinks on bison academy dont work (Rare chance tho)

 

Fall 2024

Please give an example of something done well in this class

In-Person

·         Lots of notes. Really good considering this is the first time this class has been taught in years.

Live-Stream

·         The sample code and lecture notes on Bison Academy made learning the material and completing the homework very doable, even though some of the concepts in the class were difficult.

·         Great amount of resources for programming. Plenty of example programs. Always a fan of bison academy

Online

·         I like the semester projects that are done in the class as it allows you to create something cool with everything you learned throughout the semester.

·         Having Bison Academy is a great way to help me go back and look at past lectures.

·         Good homework assignments that were hands on and practical, I can see how itd be used in real life/engineering fields

·         the course was so organized and logical. tnx

·         I like how this course is not too different from the other courses like 376 so I feel more confident going to the homework

·         I like how this is a project based course.

·         I thought, for it being the first time this course ran in years, it was very comprehensive and informative. It gave pretty thorough coverage of python.

·         I thought it was fun to go through a variety of projects

·         Very clear examples of how a lot of the coding functions work and what each one does. Makes it very easy to learn and understand.

Please give an example of something that needs improvement

In-Person

·         None

Live-Stream

·         Some of the homework sets seemed like they were too long to get done in just a week, like the week where we had an assignment on the heart sensor and the weather sensor together.

·         Could go over hardware references more, like microcontroller datasheet and system architecture diagram.

Online

·         In this class, it felt as if it was less advanced than embedded systems. The really only difference between this class and embedded systems is the microcontroller and we now code in Python. I feel as if advanced embedded systems should go through more different topics such as RTOS, DMA, etc. I feel this could be done with the Pi Pico still but instead of using micropython, use the provided C SDK that raspberry pi provides in order to have a less abstracted version of the class. So overall, if this class was less of a copy paste of embedded systems and went through more difficult topics using C as the primary language that would be super beneficial to students in the future.

·         I felt tests were more focused on the python language rather than concepts on embedded systems. So if tests were more focused on the concepts instead of the python language I think that would be a more fair assesment of peoples' knowledge. This can be hard for embedded systems though as I am huge proponent of projects for a class like this one (maybe there could be a bigger focus on small projects instead of three midterms? Or could have 1 or 2 midterms and several small-medium projects throughout the semester demonstrating your knowledge)

·         N/A

·         I think there was an issue with the BM sensor for pressure, humidity, etc. that didn't match up with material. Would be good to verify this/update homework expectations if the sensor doesnt match the homework (or double check parts order)

·         in some points, I felt that instructor was focused more on detailed grading, instead of teaching. cause I believe many of students will learn trough their mistakes, and in some cases, detailed hard grading will not courage students to learn, and works reverse.

·         The course should get better with more information regarding the software and hardware with time as it is offered more and more

·         Nothing glaring here. Might be cool to do a lecture on the touch screen for future courses. It's pretty new stuff with little resources; maybe someone will figure it out in their term project.

·         I thought we covered a lot of things at a surface level. Python kind of encourages surface level learning. I think it could be good to have some projects that are required to implement communication protocols from scratch.

·         Had issues with certain hardware at points, such as the GPS sensor, sometimes the code on bison academy was incorrect but Glower was always willing to help if you went to him!