Straight forward question. What was your Engineering Capstone project?

how to peel a banana?

Mine was a pill dispensing machine that dispensed different pills as required by an old person at set time intervals. It was supposed to use computer vision to determine that it has dropped the correct pills without mechanical failure.

It also had a body monitor thing connected through Bluetooth to tell the person it's time to take their pills, monitor their heart rate, determine if they've fallen down, and provide two way voice communication with 911 should something go wrong.

The whole thing was supposed to be configurable remotely through a webpage.

Basically my group mates didn't do anything except redress a blogging web page and hook up an accelerometer to an arduino over the 8 months of the course.

Ended up saying screw it to the body monitor thing after I accidentally blew up my Bluetooth audio thing that took a million years to ship from China and after failing to build an accurate heart rate monitor.

I did manage to build the pill dispensing machine (sort of) in the last few days before it was due, after I realized the mechatronics guy on my team fucked everything up in his CAD model. I made a video of it here. It later melted in the summer weather.

Overall though, fuck that class and fuck shitty unreliable and spineless Dr. Wassyng. Nice way to sum up how I felt about the software embedded program as a whole.

Mine was a pill dispensing machine that dispensed different pills as required by an old person at set time intervals. It was supposed to use computer vision to determine that it has dropped the correct pills without mechanical failure.

LOL for that Wassyng comment.

Does that mean they taught you how to do some sort of image processing for the robot to operate with camera?

It is neat actually, because all I thought tron students do is those pathetic collision avoidance bots some people do in high schools.

Originally Posted by GeorgeLucas

Does that mean they taught you how to do some sort of image processing for the robot to operate with camera?

No, they don't teach any image processing at McMaster. It was supposed to use OpenCV and run on a Raspberry Pi connected to the camera. My group member who was working on that got as far as doing the tutorial for shape detection and detected the outline of some pills in a single image... and that's about it.

My group member who was working on that got as far as doing the tutorial for shape detection and detected the outline of some pills in a single image... and that's about it.

EE has image processing class, but I actually meant what you said. That's so cool, my microcontroller knowledge only allows me to do a push button.

Originally Posted by GeorgeLucas

LOL for that Wassyng comment.

Does that mean they taught you how to do some sort of image processing for the robot to operate with camera?

It is neat actually, because all I thought tron students do is those pathetic collision avoidance bots some people do in high schools.

Hey I did that! I thought it was pretty cool.... :(

It is A LOT more complicated especially if you only use a single camera for lane detection as well as obstacle avoidance.

My team also added some extra features such as a speed controller and a wireless remote (Emergency Stop, Reset and toggling the speed controller). It was a ton of fun and I had great team members! Agreed with the Wassyng comment though.

www.youtube.com/embed/P1W1-KpbaC4

It is A LOT more complicated especially if you only use a single camera for lane detection as well as obstacle avoidance.

Well I was talking about it in general compared to other departments and schools.

For me that would be impossible to do. Don't know what they taught you, but I have no fucking idea how to interface a camera let alone do obstacle detection.

Originally Posted by GeorgeLucas

Well I was talking about it in general compared to other departments and schools.

For me that would be impossible to do. Don't know what they taught you, but I have no fucking idea how to interface a camera let alone do obstacle detection.

You won't learn that in class, and you'll need to do that on your own time. Heck, you could probably find a tutorial online that does just what you want.

Get yourself an Atmel/Microchip/TI development board and play around with it, flashing LEDs, using the ADC, sending data serially via UART, etc. This stuff isn't complicated, you just need to put the time in to get comfortable with it, just like anything in life...

Once you get that down, you can tackle bigger fish like the projects mentioned above.

You won't learn that in class, and you'll need to do that on your own time. Heck, you could probably find a tutorial online that does just what you want.

Get yourself an Atmel/Microchip/TI development board and play around with it, flashing LEDs, using the ADC, sending data serially via UART, etc. This stuff isn't complicated, you just need to put the time in to get comfortable with it, just like anything in life...

Once you get that down, you can tackle bigger fish like the projects mentioned above.

Hmmm, good idea. You think I can ask McMaster for my money back too?

Originally Posted by GeorgeLucas

Hmmm, good idea. You think I can ask McMaster for my money back too?

Do you want your education served on a silver platter too? Take some initiative, no one is going to spoon-feed you practical knowledge.

I do agree that university does a lacklustre job at preparing for the real-world, but it is what it is. It is what you make of it.

Do you want your education served on a silver platter too? Take some initiative, no one is going to spoon-feed you practical knowledge.

If I can get everything on my own, why do I pay money?

Originally Posted by GeorgeLucas

If I can get everything on my own, why do I pay money?

Society looks at your experience at university as a test of how well you can pick up new information and learn it under a fair amount of pressure. Grades then become an easy way for employers to judge the new crop coming out of quasi-standardized learning institutions.

Unfortunately, as it stands now, without solid connections it is difficult to bypass this process to get a job (engineering in this context) because everyone and their brother is going to university now.

In order to stand out, employers want to see people who go above and beyond classroom knowledge. Plus, there are only a handful of classes you actually gain practical knowledge applicable to jobs, and that still puts you in the same boat as everyone else.

What is bad about Dr.Wassyng? I have him next semester. :S

Originally Posted by jp1390

Do you want your education served on a silver platter too? Take some initiative, no one is going to spoon-feed you practical knowledge.

I do agree that university does a lacklustre job at preparing for the real-world, but it is what it is. It is what you make of it.

YES. This! Thank you.

Your follow-up post responding to, "Why do I pay money for this?" --- also pretty well spot on.

"Why do you pay money?" "Why don't you just learn it all on your own right after high school." It's easy to make those comments after 4 or 5 years of studying the theory and getting into the groove of a field of study. High school-grads don't have a fraction of the appreciation for a field of study, as those who have spent a few years paying for that background.

And for those who do understand and appreciate it without paying for it --- well, they're the successful entrepreneurs who didn't go through high school, that are quite often idolized (especially tech start-up geniuses).

But really, back to jp1390's post about school being what you make of it... There are plenty of opportunities to make more of your education --- Capstone projects are a great start, alas its quite a poor situation when your Capstone group wants to treat that like just another regular course.