project idea site:edaboard.com
I am in the fifth year at a Electronics Engineering Computer Science faculty. I have skills in C/C++ programming, microcontroller use, some knowledge of DSP algorithms. My initial intention was to combine these 3, but the guiding teacher didn't like that too much. I guess that he wanted to keep it simple, avoid any complications. And I wasn't too happy about he rejecting my ideea. I was planning to do some elementary speech recognition, but using a powerfull uC, not a DSP, for instance dsPICs. All my colleagues that are into "hardware" stuff, make electronic thermometers, or multimeters, and other simple things. I really don't like such things, because they are too simple, and you really don't learn much by doing them. For instance I made a working remotelly controlled light dimmer, powered directly form power line, using a single PIC12F629 uC, and a few extra components, from ground-up, using only the datasheets for the components, in about 1 week. Some thought that was tough...
I'm not a genius or anything but I don't like routine stuff, I like to lear something new. I know that this kind of project requires some work, but I'm not afraid of it. I'm just afraid that some teachers want to see a PIC that blinks a LED, and that makes them happy.
I thought once about making a remotelly controlled FM radio, with frequency display, using for instance, Philips' TDA7000 and a PIC uC. But that's again a problem. I actually had a quarrel with a teacher about the use of analog electronics in digital designs. He is against anything that's analog, and he's also a member of the evaluation comission That plainly sucks.
The perfect project for me would be one that incorporates a uC, maybe more than one for some parallel processing, some signal processing, some PC link, IRDA, USB, maybe a remote controller, data acquisition, some elementary analog electronics... I guess that's too much for just one project.