Automation
Hello reader!
And by reader i don't mean in the general sense, i mean it in the singular sense.
I was about to write a little section here on how bad the weather here is, but that's just typical Irish weather. We must be the only people in the world who can maintain a whole conversation based on the weather. This is especially handy when exchanging small talk with taxi drivers. Anyway, i have to walk to the bank soon to pay my rent, teach Leaving Cert Ordinary maths in the Fountain of Knowledge and then go to the bus station to pick up my brother. All this and still manage to have time for maybe 6 hours of study.
The module i have been studying for lately is Industrail Automation. This is a very mechanical subject consisting of pneumatics, PLCs, robotics and motors. The sections on pneumatics and PLCs are relatively straight forward. When i was working for Irish Rail over the summer, i had to learn how to read pneumatic diagrams for the pneumatic door system in the DART trains, so i had a bit of an advantage over the rest of the class. The kind of PLC questions he gives on exam papers is all ladder logic programming and i like this. Motors is the biggest section but the information in the notes is very vague. For example, for permanent magnet motors, it doesn't have anything about their operation, it just says that they're the most widely used motors! I know this wont come up in the exam but it would still be nice to have more information on it, so i find myself checking wikipedia every few minutes.
I also get the feeling that the lecturer doesn't give a damn about teaching. His life seems research based and it's almost like teaching is just this secondary task which is more of a burden to him. He comes into class and just reads straight from the notes. Oh and he answers his phone if it rings, has a converstation and after a few minutes is like "anyway i'm in a lecture so i'd better go". He has a blackberry so he checks his emails at regular intervals too, heaven forbid they should go unchecked for an hour! This whole lax attitude towards teaching made me decide half way through the semester that his classes are pointless. I mean i can read the notes myself, i dont need him to do it for me! Judging by his past exam papers, he doesn't care enough to even alter the questions, so the papers are pretty identical from year to year. It's a bit of a joke.
I realise that this blog is becoming more of a college blog than an electronics one. This is only temporary while the exams are on. Come janurary, i'll be spending as much time as possible buliding the circuits for my FYP. I will possibly include the schematics on this page, but i'm not sure. One of the schematics is for a temperature sensor. It's designed for the WiRobot X-80 which is made by Dr.Robot. I could have bought this sensor from the Dr.Robot website for $50 and then there would have been shipping charges on top of that. In the end i just built one myself. I'll show the schematic in my next post. It's really basic but i'll run through it anyway.
For now i must get back to studying.
And by reader i don't mean in the general sense, i mean it in the singular sense.
I was about to write a little section here on how bad the weather here is, but that's just typical Irish weather. We must be the only people in the world who can maintain a whole conversation based on the weather. This is especially handy when exchanging small talk with taxi drivers. Anyway, i have to walk to the bank soon to pay my rent, teach Leaving Cert Ordinary maths in the Fountain of Knowledge and then go to the bus station to pick up my brother. All this and still manage to have time for maybe 6 hours of study.
The module i have been studying for lately is Industrail Automation. This is a very mechanical subject consisting of pneumatics, PLCs, robotics and motors. The sections on pneumatics and PLCs are relatively straight forward. When i was working for Irish Rail over the summer, i had to learn how to read pneumatic diagrams for the pneumatic door system in the DART trains, so i had a bit of an advantage over the rest of the class. The kind of PLC questions he gives on exam papers is all ladder logic programming and i like this. Motors is the biggest section but the information in the notes is very vague. For example, for permanent magnet motors, it doesn't have anything about their operation, it just says that they're the most widely used motors! I know this wont come up in the exam but it would still be nice to have more information on it, so i find myself checking wikipedia every few minutes.
I also get the feeling that the lecturer doesn't give a damn about teaching. His life seems research based and it's almost like teaching is just this secondary task which is more of a burden to him. He comes into class and just reads straight from the notes. Oh and he answers his phone if it rings, has a converstation and after a few minutes is like "anyway i'm in a lecture so i'd better go". He has a blackberry so he checks his emails at regular intervals too, heaven forbid they should go unchecked for an hour! This whole lax attitude towards teaching made me decide half way through the semester that his classes are pointless. I mean i can read the notes myself, i dont need him to do it for me! Judging by his past exam papers, he doesn't care enough to even alter the questions, so the papers are pretty identical from year to year. It's a bit of a joke.
I realise that this blog is becoming more of a college blog than an electronics one. This is only temporary while the exams are on. Come janurary, i'll be spending as much time as possible buliding the circuits for my FYP. I will possibly include the schematics on this page, but i'm not sure. One of the schematics is for a temperature sensor. It's designed for the WiRobot X-80 which is made by Dr.Robot. I could have bought this sensor from the Dr.Robot website for $50 and then there would have been shipping charges on top of that. In the end i just built one myself. I'll show the schematic in my next post. It's really basic but i'll run through it anyway.
For now i must get back to studying.
