Lectures :: ECE 445 - Senior Design Laboratory

Lectures

Fall 2025 Lecture Material:

 

Pre-Lecture #1:


(before the first lecture)

 

 

Brainstorming and Ideation

  • Brainstorming and Ideation slides (pptx)
  • Videos (watch before coming to class)

 

 

Lecture #1:


(August 26th )

 

Getting Started

  • Course Overview and Requests for Approval (slides)- Prof. Arne Fliflet
  • Conflict Management Workshop (slides)- Prof. Olga Mironenko (olgamiro@illinois.edu)
  • Pitches
    • Sound Asleep (slides) - Maggie Li
    • Double Sequential External defibrillation (slides) - Varun Gopal
    • Neuroguard (slides) - Meenakshi Singhal
    • Fadex (slides) - Shrey Patel
    • Lab Escape - spinning LED globe (website) - Paul Kwait
    • Smart Home for MS (slides) - Dr. Manuel Hernandez
    • Ant-weight, 3D Printed Battlebot Challenge (slides)- Prof. Viktor Gruev (vgruev@illinois.edu)
  • Brainstorming

 

Pre-Lecture #2:


(before the second lecture)

 

 

Beyond Ideation

 

 

Lecture #2:


(September 2nd)

 

 

Moving Forward

  • Introduction - A. Fliflet (slides)
  • IP - Dr. Michelle Chitambar (slides)
  • Pitches
    • Skin integrated pace maker (slides) - Shiyuan Duan
    • Wearable neuro-modulation (slides) - Shiyuan Duan
    • Adherascent (slides) - Brian Mehdian
    • Suction Sense (slides) - Sharon Chao
    • Underground root imaging (slides) - John Hart
  • Proposal and design doc - Jason Jung (slides)
  • Modular design - Weiman Yan (slides)
  • Lab notebook - Wesley Pang (slides)
  • Requirements & Verification Table - Jason Zhang (slides)
  • PCB Tips - Jason Jung (slides)
  • Comments on Web Board - Prof. Rakesh Kumar (notes)

 

Pre-Lecture #3:


(before the third lecture)

 

 

Design and Writing Tips

 

 

Lecture #3:

(September 9th)

 

 

Last Stop Before RFA

Spring 2023 Video Lectures:

Brainstorming

Finding a Problem (Video)
Generating Solutions (Video)
Diving Deeper (Video)
Voting (Video)
Reverse Brainstorming (Video)
Homework for Everyone (Video)

Important Information

Using the ECE 445 Website (Video)
Lab Notebook (Video , Slides)
Modular Design (Video, Slides)
Circuit Tips and Debugging (Video , Slides)
Eagle CAD Tutorial (Video)
Spring 2018 IEEE Eagle Workshop (Slides)
Spring 2018 IEEE Soldering Workshop (Slides)

Major Assignments and Milestones

Request for Approval (Video, Slides)
Project Proposal (Video, slides)
Design Document (Video, slides)
Design Review (Video, slides)
Writing Tips (Video, slides)

Smart Frisbee

Ryan Moser, Blake Yerkes, James Younce

Smart Frisbee

Featured Project

The idea of this project would be to improve upon the 395 project ‘Smart Frisbee’ done by a group that included James Younce. The improvements would be to create a wristband with low power / short range RF capabilities that would be able to transmit a user ID to the frisbee, allowing the frisbee to know what player is holding it. Furthermore, the PCB from the 395 course would be used as a point of reference, but significantly redesigned in order to introduce the transceiver, a high accuracy GPS module, and any other parts that could be modified to decrease power consumption. The frisbee’s current sensors are a GPS module, and an MPU 6050, which houses an accelerometer and gyroscope.

The software of the system on the frisbee would be redesigned and optimized to record various statistics as well as improve gameplay tracking features for teams and individual players. These statistics could be player specific events such as the number of throws, number of catches, longest throw, fastest throw, most goals, etc.

The new hardware would improve the frisbee’s ability to properly moderate gameplay and improve “housekeeping”, such as ensuring that an interception by the other team in the end zone would not be counted as a score. Further improvements would be seen on the software side, as the frisbee in it’s current iteration will score as long as the frisbee was thrown over the endzone, and the only way to eliminate false goals is to press a button within a 10 second window after the goal.