Teach Embedded Design

[hanwairen]

I am interested in teaching and training embedded design in China. It will be tailored for college students who know C language and some basic electronic and logic. It could also be for some exceptional bright high school graduates who have a lot of curiosity.

I am a Chinese American (born in a 3rd country) with around 30 years of experience in embedded design in California Silicon Valley. I also taught for couple semesters training technical people in electronic field. I have several issued patents and some pending and also international ones. I could write and read elimentary Chinese, speak pretty fluent Cantonese and passable Madarin. The classes and training will be conducted initially in English since a lot of information about this subject in online and in English. My goal is to train young people how to put together gadgets and let million flowers bloom.

[geek_frappa]

My goal is to train young people how to put together gadgets and let million flowers bloom.

This sounds like a great effort, but there might be a surplus in the amount of people who teach electronic and logic design course. However, your program would be fantastic in the countryside, if you would teach for free.

Is this a serious endeavour?

[johnmck]

If you want to build up an embedded design vocabluary go to the www.atmel.com site. They have translated most of their datasheets into chinese. The correspondance with the english datasheet is pretty much one-to-one so it is not too difficult to pick out the vocab. Cut-and-pasting the text into a software such as DimSun (www.mandarintools.com) will even format the vocabulary listing for you!

PS. Shouldn't that be, "I love thee ..."; "thy" is the equivilent of "your" (for more details see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thee)

[geek_frappa]

If you want to build up an embedded design vocabluary go to the www.atmel.com site. They have translated most of their datasheets into chinese. The correspondance with the english datasheet is pretty much one-to-one so it is not too difficult to pick out the vocab. Cut-and-pasting the text into a software such as DimSun (www.mandarintools.com) will even format the vocabulary listing for you!

actually, you can create a vocabulary list in Google Docs,

http://docs.google.com/ <---

Then you can add it here

http://www.corgilabs.com/add/ <---

You can even submit in French, more details here...

http://www.corgilabs.com/blog/2006/10/17/use-google-docs-to-help-people-learn-chinese-and-find-chinese-youtube-clips/

Cut-and-pasting the text into a software such as DimSun (www.mandarintools.com) will even format the vocabulary listing for you!

Dim sum is awesome!

[hanwairen]

A lot of electronic and logic design classes here in America and I am sure also in China are very fragmented (segmented), spread out and heavy on theory. They usually are consisted of the following classes such as: Basic Electronic, Switching Logic Design, C Programming, Assembly Language, etc…and are spreaded out over several semesters/quarters. A typical student who completes these classes finds it very hard to put together a real functioning project unless he/she thouroughly reviews, recollects studied materials over multiple scattered subjects and perseveres in spending a lot of time cruising the internet for the related information.

With 30 years of embedded design experience in Silicon Valley including couple years of technical training, I can envision a workshop where mere 3rd-year EE students (with C Programming background) could be trained to understand and put together a real practical working project. The materials should not be that complicated to understand as long as they are explained in precise manner and accompanied by real-life practical examples. In other words, you combine together all the subjects, teach only the essential components and show them the interconnections. The students can always go back to the books for detailed in-depth knowledge later on and that is the essential part of being a design engineer.

You need to teach the students the followings:

How real CMOS components (gates, FF, decoder, counters, memory, CPU, …) work. Their timings, functions and real life applications.

Block diagram & State flow.

Schematic capture, component placement and board layout guideline for the prototype.

Use of Programmable Logic (EPLD) and how to program and do simulation by using Altera or Zylink downloaded software.

Common I/O peripherals such as: RS232, I2C, Ethernet, …

Power supply, Scope and Logic Analyzer.

Go over one popular CPU and some of its essential components, its registers and assembly code.

Examples of Assembly language programming for Start-up code, vector and interrupt routines.

How to use ICE (In-circuit Emulator)/Development Software to load the start-up code (without OS) so one can debug the hardware.

Assemble, compile, link and debug the C language development firmware and finally program burn the final embedded project.

geek_frappa

Is this a serious endeavour?

I have in mind the main center in one big city in the east coast for all the R&D and then move west. I love Yunnan, Guizhou, Tibet and Xinjiang. This project is only for young people with some EE technical background “C Prog” who really want to do the real world design or at least want to complete one practical gadget.

johnmck

PS. Shouldn't that be, "I love thee ..."; "thy" is the equivilent of "your"

Thank for pointing out… I thought I saw “yours” in the dictionary but I was wrong.