What should an electronics lab in college have?

[ivan747]

Yesterday I was checking out some college labs (and the colleges themselves too) to decide where I am going to study. I visited two colleges and the labs were quite different one from another.

That got me wondering, what would you guys have in a college lab and why?

[ivan747]

Here's what I found in these Dominican universities.
Lets call these institutes Institute I and University A. Right now I am choosing between these two. Choosing is not all about labs but, your comments can help.

Institute I has one lab dedicated to electronics, one for mechatronics and some more not very related. I was only able to enter the electronics lab. An assistant allowed me into a room where they store all the goodness. They have around 12 Tektronix TDS2001C (not sure about the C) oscilloscopes, a bunch of bench top BK precision multimeters which I find not very good.

The multimeters have 0.5% basic accuracy. It almost seems like they took the guts of a handheld multimeter and put it in a box with a transformer in it. In fact when I found the schematic, it did seem like it had one of those chips all handheld meters have. No 10A fuse either. They had a couple of spectrum analyzers, digital ones. I can't remember the brand or model. Most of their gear is BK Precision. I recall adequate lab-grade power supplies, BK again, a basic function generator, not that $99 Victor thing that's floating around eBay but not a $300 bit of kit.

They have heaps of Microchip ICD 3 programmers, so they must teach real PICs. I didn't see any dev boards around, but I can only assume (actually I hope!) they are stored somewhere.

 There are around 20 seats in the lab. The arrangement is hard for me to describe. Imagine how church benches are traditionally arranged. Now change that with simple desks that take 3 students each. There are two rows and maybe 8 benches total. These all have computers, makes me think a good part of the practice includes simulation. On one corner there is a CNC machine. I assume they use this to make boards. On a different corner there is table with an antistatic mat. I presume this is where they handle delicate circuits. ESD is not big deal in our humid, hot weather.

One thing I like is that this lab always seems to be open. I arrived there at 8:30 in the morning and the campus was relatively empty, but the lab was open and the assistant was there.




On University A, everything is different.

There are several labs.

The labs are all equiped with Lab-Volt equipment. Here's how they describe themselves:

For 50 years, Lab-Volt has been a global leader in the design and manufacture of hands-on training laboratories [...]. Our products prepare students for technical careers in the fields of Electricity and Electronics, Electric Power, Telecommunications, Fluid Power, Hydraulic & Pneumatic Systems, Mechatronics, Mechanical Systems, Instrumentation and Process Control, Automation and Robotics, HVAC and Refrigeration.

This company makes all their training modules, but Lab-Volt doesn't make test equipment.

They have an Electric machinery lab with all the high power stuff, for electric engineering students. Has all sorts of high power AC motors, beefy diodes inside a Lab-volt branded case, Variacs and all of that. There must be more than 5 tones worth of copper in there. I didn't see any clamp meters around, no test equipment, really. I am not sure if students are supposed to get their own multimeters or what. The mechatronics lab has sort of like a mini-production line, Lab-Volt branded, with a robotic arm, and all sorts of actuators I couldn't identify. Not much else. They had a CNC machine and a 3D printer.

They have a Control lab loaded with PLCs, or rather, PLC training modules. I spotted a Siemens poster on the wall, so I assume these are Siemens brand.

They had two electronics labs. Actually one of them was for tele-com, but they have more or less the same equipment. They have these training boards with interchangeable faceplates. The faceplates provide circuit blocks you can interconnect. The base presumably provides power and communication with a PC. I was shown a DSP faceplate. It has a TI chip, but I don't think they are gonna teach you that so there comes my first point. All these Lab-Volt stuff, is it designed like the real world? I suspect this Lab-Volt thing is like Picaxe or Arduino. Everything is pre-wired, prebuilt and limited. And of course you have to follow their textbooks.

Here's a picture of the DSP module: http://www.labvolt.com/products/electricity-and-electronics/microprocessors/digital-signal-processor-91027#

That's why I only see one or two oscilloscopes per lab , three or four power supplies and no multimeters. I saw only one spectrum analyzer, which was analog. I asked the person who showed us around if this was all the equipment they had, and it was. I guess it's not needed because you are using these pre-wired modules.

The lab themselves have a different layout from the Institute I ones. The rooms are square-ish, and there's a table that goes all around 3 walls. The last wall has a whiteboard. In the center there's usually a table the size of one of a twin bed. These labs seem to be hard to get access to. This area is open from 3PM onwards because part of it is a school in the morning. We were given access at 4, but al the labs were locked before that. No lab assitants, the teachers are in charge. Most classes start at 6, and labs are closed by default. Besides, there's not much test equipment you can use anyway. If you were to get involved in an extracurricular project, it would be a pain in the butt to develop it using solely their labs.

So what would be your ideal lab? Take into consideration things like budget, safety and robbing  I will think about mine for some time 

[komet]

I don't think you should choose your college based on its lab. If the lab is shit you will be rid of it very soon, but the degree they award you will stay with you for life.

In any case what college only has one lab? You probably only saw the undergrad lab. The good stuff will be hidden away but available to you if you ask nicely.

[FenderBender]

I don't know college tuition rates in other parts of the world but here in the US for the price of education, I'd darn well expect a quality lab even (and especially) for undergraduates.

What's more frustrating for a newcomer to EE than trying to use equipment that has a tendency to go askew or act-up? Not much.

I think I'll be attending Rowan University this fall and they seem to have a more practical approach to engineering education, which I like, and they also have some awesome labs. They have about 4 undergrad labs, each teaming with Agilent 2000 series scopes, Agilent power supplies, bench meters, and SAs, and I saw a few big bad Tek curve tracers. Pace soldering irons. The goods!

This isn't a wildly expensive place either. About $12k w/o room and board (~$22k with).

But where my brother went for engineering (CE), at TCNJ, a slightly more "prestigious" school in the area, the story is a bit different.

They have a few CRT (digitized) Agilent scopes, Elenco "precision" power supplies, and some Agilent multimeters. Not the worst of course, but this place is about $30k (or thereabouts with room and board).

Does this say anything about the educational experience at either places? I'm not completely sure, but I think it says something about how much the school values its engineering program.

[olsenn]

I agree with the previous post; don't choose your school based on their lab equipment, choose it based on their teachers and their reputation.

Most undergrad electronics labs are dealing with low voltage (<30V), low power, low frequency (<100kHz) applications, because these are the applications where your op-amps, transistors, etc work ideally, so it reinforces your theory well. There's not much need for precision equipment in this case, and as you move up in the program, the labs will get more advanced as well. Actually, more expensive equipment tends to be worse, as they are often easier to break (50-ohm input impedance vs 1Mohm for instance) and their increased number of features make using the device more difficult for people who are just trying to grasp the most basic concepts of electronics.

[bradleytron]

I think you should make your choice based on as many features as you can assess, this includes the quality of the teaching staff, quality of support staff and resources, the fullness of the curriculum in terms of the lab experience. At the very least I would say you should expect to have access to sets of very good quality oscilloscopes, function generators, power supplies, DMMs together with generous parts supply. Student's and lab equipment generally don't do well together so the higher quality equipment will take a lot more abuse over the long term. Also, are there enough instructors and lab support people, what are the student/instructor, student/teaching assistant ratios.  Are the labs accessible outside scheduled lab sessions? Do the instructors and or staff offer voluntary workshops to cover non syllabus stuff like how to solder (obviously a very important skill)?

Just my two cents!

B

[EEVblog]

That got me wondering, what would you guys have in a college lab and why?

Enthusiastic teachers.

[ivan747]

Well, my choice won't depend exclusively on labs, but bradleytron has a point. You should be given access to labs outside classroom hours. I didn't intend this thread to be about which of the two universities I described is best, there's a lot more to be considered, of course. I wanted to share some examples of how these labs are setup because I found them to be quite different.

One thing I would like to have in a Digital Electronics Lab is updated materials. Today I fount that University A's DSP training modules were designed before 2001. The screenshots were taken in Windows 98. The main chip has been declared obsolete by Texas Instruments (It's 12 years old!).

If I had the opportunity to set up a set of college labs, I would set up on two labs: analog and digital electronics. The analog lab would have a large stock of jellybean parts and equipment to solder and mill boards. In a lab like this you could teach a class called "Prototyping Techniques". Here you can learn how to solder PTH and SMD, use breadboards, layout boards, etch them or mill them on a CNC machine, assemble them. I would like a "Board level design" class were they teach you proper PCB layout techniques and design for production (panelizing, fitting into enclosures and so on).

This means this lab needs a CNC machine. Etching can be done at the chemistry lab.

With a good stock of parts comes great responsibility. The parts can be stored in reels and the spares in component cabinets. Maybe consumables can be sold to students. You buy a PIC16F628A and the assistant points that down. Then someone takes care of charging you the next time you pay for tuition.

Equipment-wise, all desks should come equipped with one of each: digital storage oscilloscope, dual power supply, bench multimeter and function generator. Multimeters are always fused on the 10A range. The analog electronics needs an analog oscilloscope to teach people not to use the Auto button and to have the intensity-graded display.

The digital lab should have recent development boards and use real-world compilers. Whatever microcontrollers they use, teach an easy C compiler first, the ones that have functions for everything, then move to a less friendly C, like the one Microchip offers and then assembler. That should give the student very good experience with different compilers.

I think the university could have more obscure test equipment to teach people the basic concept, so that you don't get a job wondering what a curve tracer is. Not need to get 3 curve tracers or 2 brand new network analyzers, just what it takes to explain the concept.

The communications lab should be enclosed in a basic faraday cage to remove interference when students are testing antenna designs.


But the most important thing is to have teachers who know what they are doing. People with actual experience that know the limitations of a school environment and encourage students to take the extra step.

[larry42]

The multimeters have 0.5% basic accuracy. It almost seems like they took the guts of a handheld multimeter and put it in a box with a transformer in it.

What's you're point? The school didn't waste money on buying a room full of HP 34401A's?

As long as the multimeters are safe and reasonable quality (and from what I've seen the BK's are good enough) then I think that the school is better off spending money somewhere other than 25ppm accuracy multimeters.

Hopefully they then teach kids how to calculate error margins, like what we had to do in chemistry labs.

Now, I never did an undergrad class in electronics (went straight onto master's), so I don't know what the curriculum contains, but to be honest, you can teach plenty with basic tools. Who needs 1Gsps, 1Mpt scopes when you're showing the principles of the measurement? They didn't have those went they sent man into space...

Now that I think about it, it's far more important that they have useful teachers, than having a brand new 13GHz spectrum analyzer.

[larry42]

DSP: Murphy's law of processors: your CPU of choice is not going to be the one being used at company X. How about: teach people how to structure SW programs before they write a single line of code.

Curve tracers: after 14 years of electronics in industry, including working as an RA at University and for a major blue chip IC design company, I've never had to use a curve tracer. I have never seen one being used. I've seen them in the basement however.

Faraday cage: these are not used for antenna testing (anechoic chambers are). Most universities have one. If yours doesn't, then don't worry, because 99% of electronics companies don't either.

[bradleytron]

Just thinking someone may want to have a look at this option by Analog Devices, http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,842,1018&Prod=ANALOG-DISCOVERY&CFID=614303&CFTOKEN=59599217

b

[ivan747]

Looks interesting, but I think a more traditional setup benefit students because they learn the tools they will probably find in an average lab.

[c4757p]

Ew. That thing looks like a real pain in the ass to use - and that's just the hardware! The worst part is that, at least at my school, when we have to have some wanky little gizmo like that, we pay for it in an additional course fee. My tuition is already stocking the labs with real test equipment, I'm going to use it. And a few oscilloscopes cost a lot less than decent professors - if they can't afford to stock the labs I don't think I want to go there.

[marshallh]

Looks interesting, but I think a more traditional setup benefit students because they learn the tools they will probably find in an average lab.

I disagree, if you want to build things and not just cruise through school to get a piece of paper you will want to outfit your own space with tools and equipment, usually far more specific and immediately useful than any school lab.

You can get everything short of a VNA in your own bedroom. If you want to actually build things I would not count on the school doing diddly-squat to help you there. Imagine my shock when I found out I could graduate with an EE/CE degree without having designed a single PCB. And it's not just the uni I went to, this is all over.

It's not the TOOLs you have, its the THINGS you build.

[c4757p]

Imagine my shock when I found out I could graduate with an EE/CE degree without having designed a single PCB.

Is it cold in this forum? I just shivered.

[krish2487]

Well,
my 0.02$

I have peers pursuing masters in electrical engineering who do not know how to use an oscilloscope.

 

and this is a college which has HP Agilent over pretty much every equipment what they have.

and no, not outdated equipment but recent (<3 years old).

[ivan747]

Just... no 

This is why we need a "Practical electronics design" course. They can teach you how to design a real product from concept to a pre-production prototype and teaching you all what is required to achieve that. That includes PCB layout, taking a look at commercial products to see how they build them, soldering, schematics and documentation. I would make it 2 semesters long 

[rdl]

Just thinking someone may want to have a look at this option by Analog Devices, http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,842,1018&Prod=ANALOG-DISCOVERY&CFID=614303&CFTOKEN=59599217

b

The Analog Discovery Kit is actually a pretty nice little piece of equipment, especially for someone on a tight budget. If you look at what you actually get, it's not a bad deal at all for $99. Newark is selling them at that price to anyone, not just "students", but I don't know how long the deal lasts - may be over at the end of the month. I bought one last month.

http://www.newark.com/digilent/410-244e/design-kit-analogue-discovery/dp/62W3442?Ntt=62W3442&COM=celebrating-engineers

[bradleytron]

Ew. That thing looks like a real pain in the ass to use - and that's just the hardware! The worst part is that, at least at my school, when we have to have some wanky little gizmo like that, we pay for it in an additional course fee. My tuition is already stocking the labs with real test equipment, I'm going to use it. And a few oscilloscopes cost a lot less than decent professors - if they can't afford to stock the labs I don't think I want to go there.

I think it is meant as an option for students to have at home or anywhere other than the lab. If I recall correctly the scope function has a 5 MHz BW, not a bad deal for $99!   

B

[westfw]

Imagine my shock when I found out I could graduate with an EE/CE degree without having designed a single PCB.

Back in my day, I'm pretty sure we had some senior EE candidates that had never soldered...

Enthusiastic teachers.

Yeah.  That.

I never got along well with the EE labs at my school.  It seemed like they were about learning to use the equipment, but they wouldn't quite admit that, so there were all these fiddly lab reports analyzing some circuit that you didn't actually design, and wasn't actually interesting.  Sigh.

[Skimask]

This is why we need a "Practical electronics design" course. They can teach you how to design a real product from concept to a pre-production prototype and teaching you all what is required to achieve that. That includes PCB layout, taking a look at commercial products to see how they build them, soldering, schematics and documentation. I would make it 2 semesters long 

And after that course, they'll know exactly how to design, prototype, build, document, and overall make "Product X".
And nothing else...

[AndyC_772]

This is why we need a "Practical electronics design" course. They can teach you how to design a real product from concept to a pre-production prototype and teaching you all what is required to achieve that. That includes PCB layout, taking a look at commercial products to see how they build them, soldering, schematics and documentation. I would make it 2 semesters long 

That's all very well, but it's also the sort of thing that's covered as soon as a student gets their first job in an electronics company. I'm not convinced it's something that specifically needs the time in an academic environment, where there are so many other things that could be taught which industry is less able to do.

[megahz]

We have labvolt equipment at the electronics lab in our school and its crap

[ivan747]

We have labvolt equipment at the electronics lab in our school and its crap

Well, thanks for confirming that 

[vk3yedotcom]

A pile of milk crates in the corner overflowing with circuit boards and defunct equipment.

Useful for component identification, design and salvaging purposes. 

Students should be free to take stuff on the condition that they:

1. use at least 1 component from it for a project
2. add another item to the pile to keep stuff turning over