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:

* 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

Problem: It can be difficult for a new player to learn chess, especially if they have no one to play with. They would have to resort to online guides which can be distracting when playing with a real board. If they have no one to play with, they would again have to resort to online games which just don't have the same feel as real boards.

Proposal: We plan to create an assistive chess board. The board will have the following features:

-The board will be able to suggest a move by lighting up the square of the move-to space and square under the piece to move.

-The board will light up valid moves when a piece is picked up and flash the placed square if it is invalid.

-We will include a chess clock for timed play with stop buttons for players to signal the end of their turn.

-The player(s) will be able to select different standard time set-ups and preferences for the help displayed by the board.

Implementation Details: The board lights will be an RGB LED under each square of the board. Each chess piece will have a magnetic base which can be detected by a magnetic field sensor under each square. Each piece will have a different strength magnet inside it to ID which piece is what (ie. 6 different magnet sizes for the 6 different types of pieces). Black and white pieces will be distinguished by the polarity of the magnets. The strength and polarity will be read by the same magnetic field sensor under each square. The lights will have different colors for the different piece that it is representing as well as for different signals (ie. An invalid move will flash red).

The chess clock will consist of a 7-segment display in the form of (h:mm:ss) and there will be 2 stop buttons, one for each side, to signal when a player’s turn is over. A third button will be featured near the clock to act as a reset button. The combination of the two stop switches and reset button will be used to select the time mode for the clock. Each side of the board will also have a two toggle-able buttons or switches to control whether move help or suggested moves should be enabled on that side of the board. The state of the decision will be shown by a lit or unlit LED light near the relevant switch.

Item	Team / Individual Score	Points	Evaluation Sheet**
Project Selection Form	Individual	5	None
Lab Notebook	Individual	50	PDF
Weekly TA Meetings	Team	N/A	None
Weekly Team Update Meeting	Team	3/session	None
Team Contract	Team	5
Project Proposal	Team	25	PDF
PCB Design Exercise	Individual	10	PDF
Soldering Exercise	Individual	10	PDF
Design Document Requirements and Verification	Team	40	PDF
Individual Progress Report	Individual	25	PDF
Mock Demo	Individual	5	None
Final Demo *	Team	150	PDF
Final Presentation *	Individual	50	PDF
Final Report: Technical	Team	30	PDF
Final Report: English/Format	Team	20	PDF
Peer Reviews (2 total)	Individual	40 (total)	None
Teamwork & Participation	Individual	20	None

Grading Scheme

Assistive Chessboard

Featured Project