I am trying to pick my final tech elec, and having completed my internship, I thought it would be wise to take a control systems course.

There are two available that I know of, one offered by the Mech department and one offered from ECE.

I was wondering if anyone here has taken either one and could offer me feedback on how the course was and how the theory might be different from the counterpart in another department.

Being in Eng Phys, the ECE one is probably more relevant to me, but I thought id check and see if anyone has some input to give.

BTW here are the links to the UC page for the respective courses, or the pages they are on anyway:
Mech 4R03:
http://registrar.mcmaster.ca /CALEN...nt/pg1816.html
Elec 3CL4:
http://registrar.mcmaster.ca /CALEN...nt/pg1860.html

any feedback is appreciated.

Mech 4R03 was brutal. The only good things are that there are solutions for the textbook floating around...and you get cheat sheets for test/exam.

For the love of god, do not take 4R03 if you don't have to. I just finished it, and brutal is a good description. Glad its done!!

As for the differences, in 4R you have to model electrical systems AND mechanical systems (ie: spring-mass-damper systems). Also, in the electrical course, you get to use computer software to solve things, and I believe there are labs and tutorials. 4R is all by hand with 2 midterms and a final, no labs, no tutorials.




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that brutal eh?

my boss here at my internship said that it would be a big help to take a control systems course one day... im not afraid of getting a lot of work, but if its unessecarily hard then i might have to reconsider. The elec one is 4 units too i think, but from what you guys are saying it seems like it might be less work. Labs and tutorials are always a pain in the butt though.

Hopefully some people who have taken the elec version can chime in.