Since the invention of first electronic transistor in 1947, there is a tremendous development of electronic technology over the past 70 years. Nowadays, electronic technology has been penetrating almost every aspect of our life and creating huge impact in our community. A few examples are mobile phones, TV, and Octopus card which are all popular electronic products used by everyone. In fact, our ways of living are greatly influenced by these technologies. All these products consist of a key electronic component – a tiny computer chip for executing all the desired functions of the devices or appliances. Attributed to the years of efforts by different scientists and engineers, these computer chips are now much faster, smaller, cheaper and easier for users even without much technical background.
Regardless of your science or arts background, have you ever thought about building an electronic product to control a system or to measure signals such as heart pulses? In fact, there are endless ideas in applying these fascinating computer chips in project design relevant to your specific needs.
The course teaches the basic electronic systems, signals and basic computing theory. The aim of this course is to develop students from different disciplines on their fundamental understanding of simple electronic systems, in order to allow students to turn their ideas into a simple design work, supplemented by lectures and hands-on training. At the final four weeks of the course, students from different majors will form multi-disciplinary project groups for exploring real problems and their possible electronic and computing design. Each project group will be provided with a low-cost and easy-to-use tiny computer board (unit) with some build-in features for sensing body movements, displaying texts and graphics, informing the environmental temperature, etc., that allow the students to realize their own functional products.