Grading Scheme

The grading scheme for the course, as well as links to specific requirements for each assignment/deliverable and evaluation sheets, are given in the table below. Due dates for each assignment/deliverable can be found on the course Calendar. Please note:

There is a 25% penalty per day for any late submissions. "Late" means handed in after the deadline. Thus, if the deadline is 5pm and you hand in an assignment at 5:01pm, you will be penalized. The penalties are cumulative. If an assignment is due at 5pm on Monday and you hand it in at 5:01pm on Tuesday (two days late), your grade will be (1-25%)^2 of the grade you would have received had you turned it in on time.
Some assignments are "Individual" and team members are individually responsible for completing the assignment on time and will receive an individual grade. Many assignments are "Team" assignments and a single deliverable is handed in by the team. In most cases, all team members will receive the same grade on these assignments. However, the course staff reserves the right to "break up" any group's work and grade individually. This will be done if we feel the work or work quality has not been evenly distributed between group members.
The evaluation sheets provide a sense of what we are looking for with each deliverable. You should keep in mind, though, that the evaluation is not strictly binary. In other words, just because you have "checked off" each component described in the evaluation sheet does not ensure that you will receive a perfect score.

Below is the points breakdown for all assignments/deliverables for the course, sorted chronologically:

Item	Team / Individual Score	Points	Evaluation Sheet**
Initial Post	Individual	5
Lab Notebook	Individual	50	PDF
Lab Safety Training	Individual	Lab Access
CAD Assignment	Individual	10	PDF
Soldering Assignment	Individual	10
Request for Approval	Team	5
Weekly TA Meetings
Project Proposal	Team	25	PDF
Team Contract	Team	10
Design Document Requirements and Verification	Team	40	PDF
Design Review *	Team	20	PDF
Board Review
Individual Progress Report	Individual	25
Mock Demo	Individual	5
Mock Presentation	Individual	5
Final Demo *	Team	150	PDF
Final Presentation *	Individual	50	PDF
Final Report: Technical	Team	30	PDF
Final Report: English/Format	Team	20	PDF
Checkout			PDF
Contract Fulfillment	Team	20
Continuing your project		Priceless

* Grades for these will be the average of the TA and Instructor grades; peer review grades will be used to provide feedback.
** Evaluation Sheets are subject to minor changes.

Featured Project

Jackson Lenz

James McMahon

Our project is to be a reliable, robust, and intelligent irrigation controller for use in areas where reliable weather prediction, water supply, and power supply are not found.

Upon completion of the project, our device will be able to determine the moisture level of the soil, the water level in a water tank, and the temperature, humidity, insolation, and barometric pressure of the environment. It will perform some processing on the observed environmental factors to determine if rain can be expected soon, Comparing this knowledge to the dampness of the soil and the amount of water in reserves will either trigger a command to begin irrigation or maintain a command to not irrigate the fields. This device will allow farmers to make much more efficient use of precious water and also avoid dehydrating crops to death.

In developing nations, power is also of concern because it is not as readily available as power here in the United States. For that reason, our device will incorporate several amp-hours of energy storage in the form of rechargeable, maintenance-free, lead acid batteries. These batteries will charge while power is available from the grid and discharge when power is no longer available. This will allow for uninterrupted control of irrigation. When power is available from the grid, our device will be powered by the grid. At other times, the batteries will supply the required power.

The project is titled S.I.P. because it will reduce water wasted and will be very power efficient (by extremely conservative estimates, able to run for 70 hours without input from the grid), thus sipping on both power and water.

We welcome all questions and comments regarding our project in its current form.

Thank you all very much for you time and consideration!

Grading Scheme

S.I.P. (Smart Irrigation Project)

Featured Project