Design Learnings

Back in August, I was invited to share a selection of my personal electronics "design learnings" to a class of Monash University 3rd-year electrical engineering students. The class itself is centered around a design challenge where students would spend the entire semester planning, designing, prototyping and testing a robot to perform a specific task, which would then have to compete against other team's robots at the end of the semester (video from 2012). The presentation focused on a number of simple things which are often overlooked during the design process, but in a competition such as this, could ultimately give your design an edge in terms of reliability and performance. Topics covered were:

1. Conserving Power
1. Regulator choice
2. ADC input circuit
3. MCU operating conditions
2. Circuit Protection
1. Input supply protection
2. Undefined MCU pin states
3. MCU input pin protection
3. Firmware
1. Watchdog timer
2. Real-time operating system (RTOS)
4. PCB Design
1. Level translation
2. Filtering

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