ENGG * 4480 – Advanced Mechatronic Systems Design W (3-3) [0.75]

I had higher expectations for this course. It seemed disorganized and sloppy, all while trying to teach harder and more complex concepts than intro mechatronics. Overall, it was worse than intro mechatronics (different profs). The lectures for this course were straight matlab code which was unexpected, however there was no matlab on the midterm which almost seemed bizarre. Other than that it was straight reading from the slides. It was nice that he told you what would be on the midterm. Literally write down what he says will be on the midterm cuz it will be. Midterm was relatively easy with an average of around 75. The best thing about this course is that you will get some coding experience with matlab, lines up fairly well with digi pro. The labs for this course were super mediocre. The first lab was so easy it was hardly a review of intro mechatronics. The second lab introduced filtering, and the complex filter part even the TAs didn\'t really get and had a hard time teaching it. Every single lab manual was incomplete with missing information. These labs were marked so easily, even if the group didn\'t completely understand concepts. Lab 3 was perhaps the most disorganized lab I\'ve seen so far. It was worth 10% and about 100 times as much work as the previous labs. Basically you had to build a self balancing robot, and no groups had it fully balancing. I emailed the prof and TAs probably about 20 times for clarification on this lab, and still didn\'t complete the lab to full functionality. I spent about 20 hours on the Matlab code simulation, only to have the prof and TAs not be able to tell me what we were doing wrong, we never got it working. On one occasion, I emailed a TA and he said that my work \'seemed\' right, how is this possible, it’s a matrix, its either right or wrong. Later, he said he was away from his computer and he would get back to me later, he never responded, unacceptable. This same TA posted Arduino code that was full of errors and incomplete, I had to ask him multiple times to correct the code and repost it. It was determined that the Kalman filter was too complicated for any group to obtain, the TA literally recommended us to use an easier filter instead. I don’t think anyone actually understood what the Kalman filter was or how to implement it. Here comes the best part, the \'demo\'. The amount of marks the demo was worth was never officially posted, it was said that the report was worth \'most if not all of the marks\'. Now it gets to \'demo day\' and people are working on it, but throughout, the TAs do not mention demo-ing or anything, which was strange because of a large class size, this would take some time and the lab was 3 hours long. It gets to be 11:20, the time when the lab is done, and 4 of 5 group members leave the lab as the lab session is done, they have other classes, and there was no sign or information about a potential demo. Luckily, one group member stays in the lab to write an email. The TA comes by AFTER the lab session is done and asks him if he is ready to demo. At this point this group member didn\'t even have the code and the physical robot is in the locker. I emailed the prof after the lab was over and asked if they would be posting working code and info for the lab so we could see where we went wrong. He said it was a great suggestion and he would discuss something to post with the TAs. He never posted anything! I\'m convinced they didn\'t even have working code for this lab. Also the prof said he would go over PID code, crucial to the lab, after the lab was due. The worst thing about the labs was that they were SO vague, no guidelines, no links to data sheets or specifications, completely unacceptable considering the intro course was much better for that. The project for this course can be almost anything with controls and arduino, so do something easy that will work, rather than trying to do something impossible. Work with the materials you have instead of trying to order custom parts that will arrive late and give you a week to do your project. He mentioned multiple times that digi pro was a prerequisite for this course so we should understand the discrete time math. Digi pro is not a prerequisite for this course. If your design didn\'t work, there was no help or feedback and you could still get a good mark. I wanted to get more out of this course than just an easy 80%. There was a lot of things wrong with this course, hopefully it improves for future students.