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Aksense: A General-purpose Wireless Controlling and Monitoring Device for Teaching First-year Electrical and Computer Engineering

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Conference

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Salt Lake City, Utah

Publication Date

June 23, 2018

Start Date

June 23, 2018

End Date

July 27, 2018

Conference Session

First-Year Programs Division Poster Session

Tagged Division

First-Year Programs

Page Count

12

DOI

10.18260/1-2--29765

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/29765

Download Count

526

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Paper Authors

biography

Farid Farahmand Sonoma State University

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Farid Farahmand is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Science at
Sonoma State University, CA, where he teaches Advanced Networking and Digital Systems. He
is also the director of Advanced Internet Technology in the Interests of Society Laboratory.
Farid's research interests are optical networks, applications of wireless sensor network technology
to medical fields, delay tolerant networks. He is also interested in educational technologies and
authored many papers focusing on eLearning and Active Learning models.

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biography

David Andrew Story Sonoma State University

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David Story is currently a Sophmore Electrical Engineering student at Sonoma State University. He works on a plethora of research projects, mostly working on embedded systems that are used to educate and to improve the human condition. He has lead the development of an educational development board meant to introduce High School and first-year college student to wireless sensor systems. Other projects he has worked on including designing new subsystems for EdgeCube, Sonoma State's CubeSat, as well as a variety of other personal projects. This summer David will be working as an instrumentation engineering intern at NASA Johnson Space Center. Outside of school, David enjoys stargazing and astrophotography with his telescope, and enjoys playing guitars and tinkering with tube amplifiers.

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David Anthony House Sonoma State University

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Robert Evan Rowlands Gap Wireless

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Rob received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in electrical engineering from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1971. He was a Transmission Engineer in the NZ Post Office for 22 years, followed by 21 years with HP and Agilent in the SF Bay Area in Business Development and sales of communications test equipment. He is semi-retired but still selling test equipment for Gap Wireless. Rob is a life member of IEEE.

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Abstract

This Work in Progress paper* describes the integration of Aksense, a low-cost general-purpose wireless controlling and monitoring device, within the first-year Introduction to Engineering at xxx. A unique feature of the course is that it is also offered as a General Education (GE) laboratory to all non-engineering students. Our focus in this project has been creating an affordable educational open source wireless platform that enables first-year engineering and non-engineering students with any background to design their own engaging experiments. A key advantage of utilizing Aksense board is that students, particularly non-engineering students, do not have to have any prior knowledge about electronics, programming, soldering or wiring different electronic components together in order to create exciting individual projects. In this paper we elaborate on architecture and utilization of Aksense and present the limited feedback we have received from our first-year engineering students. -------- * Aksense has been fully developed and tested. However, we only have limited feedback from students at this point. More feedback is expected to be obtained by May. 2018.

Farahmand, F., & Story, D. A., & House, D. A., & Rowlands, R. E. (2018, June), Aksense: A General-purpose Wireless Controlling and Monitoring Device for Teaching First-year Electrical and Computer Engineering Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--29765

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