Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
August 26 th , 2013
Dr. Marco Tacca
 EE/TE/CE Senior Design Day: TBA (December 11 th tentative)
 Oral Presentations: (times to be determined)
 Poster Session: (times to be determined)
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
Why is Senior Design so Important for your
BS - EE / CE / TE Degrees?
 It represents the “Open Design” Experience resulting from 4 years of coursework
 It is the ONLY class, where the students are completely responsible for direction & content of their work
 It is the ONLY class where students have direct feedback from Industry
 Projects are “Open Ended” – not cookbook/structured
 Failures can happen – you need to overcome these!
 No Excuses! – You MUST deliver a solution (or repeat!)
 It is your time to “show us what you have learned!”

 Step 1: EE Faculty identified skills necessary for BS in EE
 Step 2: Individual EE Faculty assigned/determined skills/knowledge for each class
 Step 3: EE-IAB reviews to determine skills and knowledge appropriate
 Step 4: EE Sub-Areas Assess Collectively (Digital Area reviewed, etc.)
(EE faculty have made 8-10 full passes on fundamentals chart in AY 06-07)

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08

EE 4388 Senior Design Project I (3 semester hours) First of two sequential semesters devoted to a team project that engages students in the full engineering design process. The goal of senior design projects is to prepare the student to run/participate in engineering projects related to an appropriate industry. Thus, all project teams are to follow standard industrial practices and methods. Teams must carry the engineering project to completion, examining real world constraints, following applicable industrial and business standards. Such constraints may include but are not limited to: economic, environmental, industrial standards, team time/resource management and cross-disciplinary/departmental result integration. In Senior Design I, project proposals will be written, reviewed and approved. Initial designs will be completed and corresponding constraints will be determined. All students will participate in a public oral presentation following departmental approved guidelines at a departmental approved time and location. Teams will also submit a written end of semester progress report and documented team communication (complete sets of weekly reports and/or log books) following guidelines approved by the faculty. Students must have completed ECS 3390 and one of the following prerequisite sequences: (CE 3311, CE 3320, CE 3346, and CE 3354), or (EE 3300, EE 3302, EE 3311, and
EE 3320), or (EE 3300, TE 3302, and TE 3346; pre- or corequisite EE 3350). (Same as CE/TE
4388) (3-0) S
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

EE 4389 Senior Design Project II (3 semester hours) Continuation of the Senior
Design project begun in the previous semester. In Senior Design II, projects based on approved project proposals will be completed. All limitations of the design will be determined and addressed. All students will participate in a public oral presentation following faculty-approved guidelines at a faculty-approved time and location. Teams will also submit a written final report and documented team communication (complete sets of weekly reports and/or log books) following faculty-approved guidelines.
Prerequisite: CE/EE/TE 4388. (Same as CE/TE 4389) (3-0) S
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
What are You responsible for? (1)
 Form your team (pick members carefully; know the technical needs of your project)
 Wednesday: change section if necessary
 Decide between regular senior design and UTDesign
 Set up weekly meetings with instructor
 Meet weekly with instructor
 Discuss Proposed SD1 Project with instructor
 Prepare written “Project Proposal” by the end of
September
 Prepare project “fact sheet”
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
What are You responsible for? (2)
 Hold regular meetings – DOCUMENT interactions and exchanges (all of the documentation must be included in the final report)
 Note Successes, Failures, etc.
 Know the Trade-offs of your Solution
 Know your Customers
 Have single slide ready (draft) by beginning of April
 Participate in the training session (date TBD)
 Have final version of slide and poster for senior design day ready one week before senior design day (possibly earlier for
UTDesign projects)
 Prepare final report
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
What are You responsible for? Summary
 Attend classes when required
 Project Proposal
 Abstract
 Participate in the training session
(date TBD)
 Weekly reports
 Senior Design Day
 Prepare final report
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
This week assignments:
 Form teams
 Attend class on Wednesday 08/26
 Prepare a 1 page resume
 Email to mtacca@utdallas.edu
 PDF format (word can save as pdf, or many distillers available)
 Filename should be lastname_firstname_resume.pdf
 Due Wednesday 09/04 at noon
 Sign up for first or second class “shift” (by
Wednesday 09/04 at noon)
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
What are You responsible for?
Project Proposal


Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
What are You responsible for?
Final Report


Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
Note on Workload
This course will require to work on realistic and challenging engineering design projects.
Consequently, students should expect to spend a considerable amount of time outside of class working on the project. Students should be aware of this requirement and should plan their schedules accordingly. Students with significant extra-curricular obligations (especially jobs) should be aware that they will need to be available to fully participate in all course activities.
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
SENIOR DESIGN 1: eight teams

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
SENIOR DESIGN 2: sixteen teams

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
SENIOR DESIGN 2: sixteen teams

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
EE/CE/TE Senior Design Training Sessions
First two weeks of November for Fall ‘12
 ALL Teams REQUIRED to send at least 1 member
 Review SDD Evaluation Form (Poster & Oral)
 Review Format and Goals for Slide & Poster
 Highlight what makes a “Good” Slide & “Bad” Slide
 Student Teams have option to give “Practice Runs” during the training sessions http://ecs.utdallas.edu/students/senior-design.html
VIDEO DOWNLOADS HERE!

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
EE/CE/TE Senior Design Training Sessions
April 15, 2011

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
Combined Senior Design EE/CE/TE Scores [Dec. 2, 2010]

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
Senior Design 1:
1 st Place: Haptic Shoe for the Visually Impaired [Team 7]
Dec. 2, 2010
Rodolfo Guzman, Whitney Scott, Laura Shagman, Steven Truong
2 nd Place: Micro Air Cycle System I [Team 8 tie]
Clement Wong, Sven Moon, Brady Spenrath, Brandon Geil, Michael Galuardi
Remote Alarm Management System (RAMS) [Team 2 tie]
Adam Sidelsky, Don Vinson, John Dalton Stringer
3rd Place: Wireless & SMS Based Appliance Monitor And Update System [Team 6]
Alan Jurcak, Effat Sharmin, Jastine Thomas, Uzma Azim
Senior Design 2:
1 st Place: Wireless Bullet Counter [Team 10]
Dec. 2, 2010
Zack Mai, Adrian Reese, Michael Arrambide, Michael Hanschke, Justin Elliot
2 nd Place: Micro Air Cycle System II [Team 9]
Robert Brisco, Nosa Endokpayi, Steven Foland, Amsalu Gedamu,
John-Paul Lum Hee & Yuriy Savchyn
3rd Place: Audio Video Avatar Tele-Conference at Remote Location [Team 13]
Ajay Patel, Jimmy Kirk, Peter Kariuki, Amare Worku

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
UTDesign Senior Design Teams:
1 st Place: Temperature Sensing in a UHV Environment [Team 24]
Dec. 2, 2010
Long Nguyen, Alan Wisler, Ward Parsons, Wai Law
2 nd Place: Celestial Star Tracker [Team 19 tie]
Stephen Blystone, Jeffery George, Noah Robb, Tom Schmidt
Stress in FE-RAM devices [Team 23 tie]
Eddie Burgess, Muhammad Khan, Rifaz Iqbal, Vikas Poddar, Faisal Akhtar
3rd Place: Automatic Hole-Punch System [Team 20]
Lauren Bagen, Dallas Bartlett, Evan Bone, Anthony Stillo

Faculty Meeting – Sept. 15,’08
 EE/TE/CE Senior Design Day April 29, 2011

Faculty Meeting – Sept. 15,’08
 EE/TE/CE Senior Design Day April 29, 2011

 EE/CE/TE Senior Design Day: April 29, 2011

 EE/CE/TE Senior Design Day: April 29, 2011

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

Faculty Meeting – Sept. 15,’08
 EE/TE/CE Senior Design Day Dec. 2, 2010

Faculty Meeting – Sept. 15,’08
PREVIOUS
 EE/TE/CE Senior Design Day July 25, 2008
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting

Faculty Meeting – Sept. 15,’08
 EE/TE/CE Senior Design Day Dec. 2, 2010

EE/TE/CE Senior Design
April 30, 2010: EE/TE/CE IAB Reviewers

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
MANY THANKS! to all our EE &TE & CE
Industrial Advisory Board Members for their participation

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
Tektronix
MANY THANKS! to all our EE &TE & CE
Industrial Advisory Board Members for their participation
Texas Institute of Science
Research in
Motion
Raytheon
National Instruments
Nortel Communications
VI Technology
CISCO Systems
Convergys
Kruvand
Alcatel-Lucent
Mustang Technology
Technicolor – Thomson
Communications
Micro-Technology
Services

EE/TE/CE Senior Design
External Industry Evaluator Results for: Summer 2008 SDD
Don’t Let This be YOUR team!
SD1
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting (Hansen)

EE/TE/CE Senior Design
What Should your Slide & Poster Contain / Address?
 What is the Problem you are addressing? [limited amount of text]
 Why is this Problem Important? Why is the Impact? [know your facts! Give some examples]
 How does YOUR solution compare with what is available in the field? (did you get independent feedback on the effectiveness of your solution?)
 Identify 12 New/Novel Ideas or Aspects about your team’s solution
 What are the Challenges you faced? Lessons Learned? [what was something you tried and it failed and how did you overcome it?]
 What Are Your Plans? [Senior Design 2; where could this go?]

EE/TE/CE Senior Design

EE/TE/CE Senior Design

Smart Walking Stick for the Visually Impaired
Previous Design
GOALS:
1. Navigation around obstacles
2. Indoor navigation through RFID
3. Outdoor emergency position broadcast
4. Alert others of users’ presence
Current Design
APPROACH:
• SONAR Navigation: Detects proximity and depth, alerts via vibration in handle.
• GPS Locator System: Relays the co-ordinates of the user to an email address.
• RFID Indoor Navigation: Uses Breadth First
Search based algorithm to navigate e.g. entrance to rest-room.
• LED Warning System: LEDs flash in low light conditions.
• Audio Warning System: Speaker beeps when activated
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting (Hansen)

EE/TE/CE Senior Design
Aug. 24, 2009
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting (Hansen)

Fall 2013
Erik Jonsson School of Engineering
& Computer Science http://ecs.utdallas.edu/students/utdesign/

• Kickoff meeting: Students are presented with the problem at the kickoff meeting. Objectives and deliverables are discussed in detail with the students (and the faculty mentor) in detail at the kickoff meeting
• Students prepare a written document (project proposal) that includes:
1.
Problem definition
2.
Proposed solution approach
3.
Project deliverables
4.
Timeline for the solution
5.
Budget

• Students prepare a project fact sheet and send it to
Marco Tacca: mtacca@utdallas.edu
• Students implement the solution
• Students prepare a final written report
• Students deliver a final project presentation to the sponsoring company
• Students prepare for senior design day (due to possible NDA constraints, the sponsor must clear both the slide and the poster before it is presented to the public)

•
•
•

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
Grading Policy

Project outcome points : up to 80 points
 Student self-assessment: up to 5 points
 Soft-skills: up to 10 points:
 Ethics (final reports and senior design day poster): up to 2 points
 Lifelong learning (proposal, final report, and class assignments): up to 2 points
 Contemporary issues (proposal and final report): up to 1 point
 Multi-disc teams (proposal and final report): up to 2 points
 Communications (semester project work, meetings, weekly reports, and class assignments): up to 3 points
 Feedback from Senior Design Day judges (if available): up to 5 points. If feedback from the judges is not available, the points will be based on the instructor evaluation.
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting (Hansen)

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
Project Outcome Grading
Project objective should be CLEARLY spelled out in the project proposal, for example the proposal should have a section that specifies:
 If the project achieves MEASURABLE feature set A (the way the measurement is performed should be clearly indicated) -> 80 points
 If the project does not achieve MEASURABLE feature set A, but reaches MEASURABLE set B -> 70 points
 If the project does not achieve MEASURABLE feature set A, nor set
B, but reaches MEASURABLE set C -> 60 points
 If the project does not achieve MEASURABLE feature set A, nor set
B, nor set C, but reaches MEASURABLE set D -> 50 points
 If the project does not achieve MEASURABLE feature set A, nor set
B, nor C, nor D but reaches MEASURABLE set F -> 40 points
The instructor MUST approve the proposal objectives
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting (Hansen)

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
Project Outcome Grading
NOTE: during the progress of a project, it is always possible that unforeseeable circumstances affect in a negative way the outcome of a project. Should this happen, the grade might or might not be affected. The following procedure will be in place:
• If the project achieves MEASURABLE set A, then you get the maximum points for your project
• If MEASURABLE feature set A is not met, then
Present evidence to demonstrate that the team did everything possible to achieve MEASURABLE feature set A:
• The first piece of evidence is men hours: each team member is REQUIRED to keep a time log (in half hour increments) about his/her work related to the project. Each team member is expected to allocate
7/10 hours per week to the project. If even a single team member fails to meet the 7/10 hours per week criteria, no further evidence will be accepted and the project will be graded solely based on the
MEASURABLE feature set achieved, i.e., B, C, D, or F. NOTICE THAT IT WILL BE REQUIRED THAT
EACH TEAM SUBMITS A WEEKLY REPORT WITH TIME LOGS FOR EACH TEAM MEMBERS FOR
THE ENTIRE DURATION OF THE SEMESTER.
• If the criteria above is met, then the team must include in the FINAL REPORT a section that explain in great detail why the project failed to meet MEASURABLE feature set A. The final decision about how many points will be assigned for the project outcome points portion of the grade is the sole responsibility of the instructor. NOTICE THAT EXPLANATIONS THAT ARE BASED ON UNAVAILABILITY OF PARTS
OR UNAVAILABILITY OF FUNDS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting (Hansen)

Faculty Meeting – May 12,’08
Tasks for Wednesday
 Form teams
 Be ready to change sections in such a way all team members are in the same section
 Attend class on Wednesday 08/26
 Prepare a 1 page resume
 Email to mtacca@utdallas.edu
 PDF format (word can save as pdf, or many distillers available)
 Filename should be lastname_firstname_resume.pdf
 Due Wednesday 09/04 at noon
Senior Design 1 Kickoff Meeting (Hansen)

• More realistic professional experience (similar to internship)
• More realistic projects & constraints
• Studies show that students prefer them
• Projects have importance & useful deliverables
• Great for recruitment
• Sponsors typically provide time, materials, & funding
– Demonstrates company’s commitment
– Provides resources to build quality prototypes
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• Sponsor
• Team
• UTDesign
• Course Coordinator/Course Instructor
• Industry Mentor
• Faculty Advisor
• Team Leader
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• Faculty advisor
– EE/TE/CE (sometimes ME) faculty member
– Subject matter expert
• Industry mentor
– Technical point on contact within company
– Represent company’s interests
• Roles are advisory (coaches)
– Not team members
– Will not lead team or solve technical problems
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• Teams assigned by project bid process
• Conflict resolution procedure
– Internally first
– Involve faculty advisor
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• Most sponsors will present their projects
• Use this information to select your preferred projects
• Project bid
– Individual assignment
– Select and rank preferred projects
– Describe relevant qualifications
– Justify why you should be added to the team for a particular project
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• Tackling a big engineering project can be intimidating
• We will talk about systematic ways to approach the design process and strategies to manage a project
• Our commitment
– Faculty, staff, and industry mentors are here to help and they want you to be successful
– We will provide the resources to help you complete your project
• Your commitment
– You will work hard, put in the required time, and produce high quality deliverables
• Come to my office hours if you have questions or concerns
• This is a learning experience. Have fun!
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