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Proposing the Feasibility of a Circuit Design Challenge-- What Do You Think?

rscasny

All of our design challenges to date have been what I call "system design" challenges. What I mean by that is element14 gives the challengers a kit of a few pre-built dev boards that are designed for rapid prototyping. The challenger use the boards to build a prototyped system. I think this approach works quite well to build something quickly in the 11 weeks that we give the challengers to build their projects.

 

But unlike some other project building sites out there, element14 is a community of engineers, not just makers, or hobbyists. Part of our mission is to promote the whole electronic design process. So, we want to offer something that promotes sound electronic circuit design.

 

This I mentioned to my bosses at element14 the possibility of offering a "circuit" design challenge. So, the goal of this challenge would be to design a circuit -- say, a switched-mode power supply -- with certain specifications. My guess is that the "kit" would include a tray of board-level components -- resistors, caps, inductors, diodes, MOSFETs, et. al -- pcb board, soldering tools, and a piece of test equipment (i.e., o'scope).

 

The deliverable of this design challenge would be a circuit soldered up on the pcb board and functioning within specs. Additional functionality would be given extra points. Of course, there would be prizes. The panel of jusges would probably be technology educators or academics; individuals who understood basic circuit design.

 

The required blogs would focus on how you designed the circuit, circuit analysis, why you made the decision choices that you made? What resources did you use to help and/or improve your circuit design? How you limited component count? How you dealt with a limited pcb board size?

 

The idea would need to be fleshed out some more.

 

But I personally want to build on the rapid prototyping concept of a design challenge to one that focuses on basic and complex circuit design.

 

Okay, that's my proposal.

 

What do you think of it?  How many would be interested in participating in this kind of design challenge?

 

If you were interested, how would you improve on the concept I have presented?

 

Randall Scasny

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  • Thanks everyone for your feedback.

     

     

    I should say that the reasons I had proposed this was to (a) involve current and "quiet" community members who are interested in electronics in another way and (b) involve kit suppliers who don't normally sponsor our regular design challenges such as passives, discretes, etc. But, of course, if we were to offer a Circuit Challenge, it needs to be something that is fun and rewarding for our members, which is more important than anything else.

     

    After reading your comments, you all gave some great feedback. Just having the challengers design a power supply is probably not that challenging since tons of power supply schematics are available in books, blogs, schools, etc. And if someone is going to take the time to design a circuit from scratch, it should be something he or she would have a need for. I like the point system for judging, but maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

     

    My hope is to have the challengers design a circuit instead of relying so much on a dev board. Not aonly circuit design skills would be utilized, but also board layout, etc. Or at least require a good portion of the challenge require basic circuit design. Matching an arduino board with a self-designed board would be okay. But I had wanted to give the challengers the microcontrollers, cvap,s resistors, inductors, Qs, etc. and design their circuit.

     

    You gave a mix of opinions, both plus and minus. But it sounds like the "Design a Lock" example is the way to go.

     

    Douglas W. had 2 ideas that were along the lines of my thinking; however, he articulated it better than I did in my original post:

     

    Example 1: suppose the objective is to design a circuit board that contains all the circuitry for a small animatronic puppet. A sponsor might supply a microcontroller chip and a J-Tag programmer (plus IDE) and some small motors. Such a circuit board could be re-used as a platform in any number of automation applications.

     

    Example 3: perhaps you allow a COTS MCU card to be embedded such as an Arduino Micro - this provides a free development system for software, but the challenge could still require a certain minimum number of interfaces to be part of the custom motherboard.

     

    Both of these example provide flexibility and a range of design possibilities.

     

    Perhaps a Circuit challenge needs to pose a problem: Design a circuit to (fill in the blank) using these components (kit that we develop). I also see developing the kit would be a tad bit more challenging.

     

    I appreciate your time and thoughts.

     

    Randall

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  • Thanks everyone for your feedback.

     

     

    I should say that the reasons I had proposed this was to (a) involve current and "quiet" community members who are interested in electronics in another way and (b) involve kit suppliers who don't normally sponsor our regular design challenges such as passives, discretes, etc. But, of course, if we were to offer a Circuit Challenge, it needs to be something that is fun and rewarding for our members, which is more important than anything else.

     

    After reading your comments, you all gave some great feedback. Just having the challengers design a power supply is probably not that challenging since tons of power supply schematics are available in books, blogs, schools, etc. And if someone is going to take the time to design a circuit from scratch, it should be something he or she would have a need for. I like the point system for judging, but maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

     

    My hope is to have the challengers design a circuit instead of relying so much on a dev board. Not aonly circuit design skills would be utilized, but also board layout, etc. Or at least require a good portion of the challenge require basic circuit design. Matching an arduino board with a self-designed board would be okay. But I had wanted to give the challengers the microcontrollers, cvap,s resistors, inductors, Qs, etc. and design their circuit.

     

    You gave a mix of opinions, both plus and minus. But it sounds like the "Design a Lock" example is the way to go.

     

    Douglas W. had 2 ideas that were along the lines of my thinking; however, he articulated it better than I did in my original post:

     

    Example 1: suppose the objective is to design a circuit board that contains all the circuitry for a small animatronic puppet. A sponsor might supply a microcontroller chip and a J-Tag programmer (plus IDE) and some small motors. Such a circuit board could be re-used as a platform in any number of automation applications.

     

    Example 3: perhaps you allow a COTS MCU card to be embedded such as an Arduino Micro - this provides a free development system for software, but the challenge could still require a certain minimum number of interfaces to be part of the custom motherboard.

     

    Both of these example provide flexibility and a range of design possibilities.

     

    Perhaps a Circuit challenge needs to pose a problem: Design a circuit to (fill in the blank) using these components (kit that we develop). I also see developing the kit would be a tad bit more challenging.

     

    I appreciate your time and thoughts.

     

    Randall

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