Plans for 09
Happy new year! Only, it feels just like anyother time and nothing's really changed but i guess people need a new year to make a fresh start. I dont really have new years resolutions, because i generally make my them up as i go along. For instance, back in October i decided to give up sweets and chocolate. I was sucessful in this venture until christmas day which was followed by about 5 days of bad eating. Now i'm back on the wagon and it'll be interesting to see how far i get. Also, around exam time i gave up on exercise and locked myself away for a month. Lately i have started back running and it's been tough. Any fitness i once had is gone and i'm starting from scratch again.
My two main plans for the year are to finish my Degree with at least a 2.1 and to get a Postgrad course in Southampton or Denmark. Both colleges offer a course in Mechatronics. The Southampton one is only 1 year long but will cost 3500 in tuition fees and the one in Denmark is 2 years long but is free. I'm waiting to get my christmas results before i apply for either of these courses.
This month will be dedicated to my Final Year Project. I'm had a nightmare last night about this so i need to really work hard on it. At the moment i'm building the keypad decoder circuit. This is similar to a project i had to do in 3rd year but this time around i'm using a decoder chip instead of making one from a bunch of gates. This might sound easier but now i'm confused as to wether i should be debouncing the switches, pulling up the inputs etc or is the chip already doing that? I'm pretty sure it's as straight forward as feeding the keypad inputs into the chip and then passing the outputs on to the counter and BCD-7 segment display chip but i could be wrong. Another thing i noticed was weird is that the schematic i had drawn in 3rd year uses a 3 input NAND gate to clock the latch. So the X1, X2 and X3 inputs of the keypad are passed into the NAND gate and when one of these inputs goes high, the output is high. But this is wrong because when all the inputs are low then the output should still go high. That means i must have been using an XOR gate instead but then why did i put down a NAND gate in the schematic?!
Once i figure out this Keypad circuit, it'll be on to my Infra Red door beam circuit which is a huge part of the project. I think this will take the longest to complete. Now i'm freaking out again over the time left. I'm going to email my project partner for reassurance.
My two main plans for the year are to finish my Degree with at least a 2.1 and to get a Postgrad course in Southampton or Denmark. Both colleges offer a course in Mechatronics. The Southampton one is only 1 year long but will cost 3500 in tuition fees and the one in Denmark is 2 years long but is free. I'm waiting to get my christmas results before i apply for either of these courses.
This month will be dedicated to my Final Year Project. I'm had a nightmare last night about this so i need to really work hard on it. At the moment i'm building the keypad decoder circuit. This is similar to a project i had to do in 3rd year but this time around i'm using a decoder chip instead of making one from a bunch of gates. This might sound easier but now i'm confused as to wether i should be debouncing the switches, pulling up the inputs etc or is the chip already doing that? I'm pretty sure it's as straight forward as feeding the keypad inputs into the chip and then passing the outputs on to the counter and BCD-7 segment display chip but i could be wrong. Another thing i noticed was weird is that the schematic i had drawn in 3rd year uses a 3 input NAND gate to clock the latch. So the X1, X2 and X3 inputs of the keypad are passed into the NAND gate and when one of these inputs goes high, the output is high. But this is wrong because when all the inputs are low then the output should still go high. That means i must have been using an XOR gate instead but then why did i put down a NAND gate in the schematic?!
Once i figure out this Keypad circuit, it'll be on to my Infra Red door beam circuit which is a huge part of the project. I think this will take the longest to complete. Now i'm freaking out again over the time left. I'm going to email my project partner for reassurance.
