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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

  • This is definitely an interesting idea which I like a lot. So I'm assuming there would be a guiding end result such as the design challenge is "Build a Lock". Then challengers can develop circuits for a keypad lock, NFC lock, etc. or something along those lines. I would be interested in participating in a Design Challenge of this nature.

  • So my question is then who are you aiming at? If professional engineers arn't you just replicating what they do as a day job?.

     

    The 11 weeks of a design challenge can go quickly and if you wanted to get PCBs made then the lead time for that would need to be factored in.

     

    Switch mode PSU is a good choice. Perhaps also Audio amp.

    And for the Makers, build your own Arduino clone?

  • in reply to Workshopshed

    I had a conversation with one of our managers about whom I would be targeting with this type of design challenge.

     

    The first one was engineering students in their 2nd to 4th year of college.

     

    Perhaps professional engineers but I'm not sure as you say they would be hot on replicating what they do on their day jobs.

     

    Other people who are interested in circuit design.

     

    Good feedback. Thanks Andy

     

    Randall

  • Sounds like fun.  How do you keep the contestants from just copying a circuit from the internet?

    Based on your example, someone who designs switch-mode power supplies for a living would probably win, and

    someone with no power supply experience would most likely fail.  How would you try and level the field?

    When you have a challenge that involves new product that no one has used before, at least all the contestants start out

    with the same handicap.

    I would propose some set milestones and a point system to keep everyone on track:

     

    Week 1,2 : Block diagram and flowchart

    Week 3,4 : Circuit simulation

    Week 5,6 : Prototype PCB

    Week 7,8 : Working Model and Video

    Week 9,10: Test results from working model based on specifications

    Points awarded for completed milestones

     

    Scott

  • Randall

    I can understand there is a desire to attract a wider audience, but from what I've seen over the years the current scheme attracts a wide audience already with varying degrees of capability and experience.

     

    The last two challenges showed all of the features you are seeking to showcase, and highlighted the issues around supply timelines mentioned by . 11 weeks is a very short time especially when the kit of parts arriving can take 2-4 weeks.

    I doubt many Engineers can sit down and design a switched mode supply without building and testing parts of it, before designing a board.

     

    I believe we've been down the road of supplying components before in the form of vouchers.

    While it wasn't as targeted as this proposal, it did provide flexibility. The voucher wasn't linked to any particular products but could be viewed as compensating the participants for expenditure made elsewhere.

     

    For me, this type of Design Challenge has no interest and I doubt if I'd even bother following it.

    I feel that theme has much better merit.

     

    Cheers

    Mark

  • Kudos for creativity in dreaming up new types of creative challenge. I like this idea a lot. The specifics of the circuit challenge will of course attract different members depending on what the target circuit is, but there is a lot of scope to attract different segments of the membership. For me this type of effort is attractive if it ends up to be a circuit I have a real use for, or a circuit that is a base for multiple uses, or possibly a circuit that could be sold as a product.

    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 2: an IoT platform with a certain minimum complement of built-in interfaces. Again such a card becomes a base platform that could be used in wide ranging 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.

    Example 4: a solar cell power supply with battery. This could be used to power any green project. There are reference designs for things like this, but it is still a challenge to make your own variant with a few extra features and get it working.

  • Wasn't In the Air Design Challenge  attempting to get people to design their own boosterpack? The kit consisted of many individual components (Components - In the Air Challenge ), requiring competitors to come up with their own design.

     

    There was also a $500 budget available, which many used to purchase a hot air rework station, solder paste, etc ...

  • I like the idea - could even be tempted to contribute - but I think you should try very hard not to be too prescriptive in how the result is presented.

     

    A working model and some test data is probably the baseline.

     

    Things like video, simulation, flow charts are all matters of taste - some do and some don't.

     

    For example, I hardly ever breadboard anything - I usually go from paper to pcb CAD to a board - sometimes there might be some simulation. Other people work in different ways - diversity is good (no evolution without !!).

     

    @ Andy Clark: I haven't designed a nice audio power amp for ages ....... minimum 2 channels,  100W into 8ohms, 200W into 4, no Doug Self rip offs, no power ICs. image

     

    MK

  • I like the idea too, I think it'll be really interesting to see the different circuit design approaches people take and how they compare with each other. This is something I would definitely find of interest. I'm in agreement with Michael, don't be too prescriptive on the requirements. My way of designing is similar, I do my design straight to schematic and if there are things which are a bit tricky I will create small test PCB's to prove sub circuit concepts before committing them to a larger design. I might have several iterations of the designs before I actually go to the PCB as I analyse things further and refine my ideas. Everybody's different, the results will be better when people are allowed the freedom to work in their own way (within reason).

     

    Best Regards,

     

    Rachael

  • 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