(Last Update: 2016 May 31 13:08 PDT )
The course is intended for sophomores and juniors in bioengineering with priority given to bioengineering majors, but is open to anyone who meets the prerequisites:
Students considering the bioelectronics concentration should take BME 101/L early (before EE 101/L), which may be difficult to schedule because of the prereqs. Students who did well in high-school physics may request a waiver of the physics prereq, which may be granted if there is room in the course and the student is sufficiently convincing about their ability to handle the material.
Note: starting in Winter 2017, we plan to split BME 101/L (7 units) into a sequence of two 4-unit courses, BME 51A (Winter) and 51B (Spring), to make the pace more manageable for both students and faculty, and to increase the capacity in the course, which is currently constrained by the number of lab hours needed a week.
The theme for the course is "connecting real-world signals to computers using analog electronics", and we will be working with interfacing thermistors, microphones, electrodes, photo-detectors, capacitance sensors, and strain-gauge pressure sensors to microprocessors (Arduinos or Freescale's KL25Z). The final lab will be the design, implementation, and testing of a small single-channel electrocardiogram (or electromyogram).
The old bioengineering curriculum (before the 2014–15 catalog) will accept this course as fulfilling the EE101/L (circuits) requirement, but EE will not be accepting it as a prerequisite for further electronics courses. It is possible to take both the Applied Electronics course and EE 101/L for credit, though there is some overlap in content. The new (starting 2014–15) curriculum for bioengineers requires BME 101/L for all concentrations, and EE 101/L in addition for the bioelectronics and assistive technology: motor concentration.
Currently, the best description of the course is on Prof. Karplus's
blog:
http://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/circuits-course-table-of-contents/
but most students probably don't want to read the hundreds of pages of
notes there on the design of the course—there is a more compact description
in the textbook.
Students will learn to use standard electronics equipment (multimeters, oscilloscopes, function generators, power supplies) and tools (pliers, wire strippers, breadboards, soldering irons). The course is an engineering design course—I tried to make the labs require design, not just cookbook procedures. The complexity of the design tasks should ramp up through the quarter.
Although BME 101 is no longer a prototype but a regular course, I will seek frequent feedback from the students in the course about improvements that can be made. There are substantial changes from the previous runs of the course, including a rescheduling of the labs and a new draft of the text.
This year the parts and tools are covered by the course lab fees. There are about $75 worth of tools, parts, microcontroller board, and USB cable—the charged lab fee is $130, because the fee also covers wire, solder, printing, fuses for the ammeters, broken oscilloscope probes, and cost overruns from having to use UC-approved vendors (who often don't have the cheapest prices). I think that the lab fee is bigger than it needs to be, but BELS thinks it is too small (we have different views on how much extra should be in the budget beyond the parts kit itself). These tools and parts will be provided in the first lab meeting, as we will be using them immediately. Dropping the course does not result in a refund of lab fees if you have already gotten the tools and parts. We have ordered only enough kits for the maximum enrollment in the course, so dropping after the kits have been issued does not open up any slots for more students.
Data acquisition software was developed specifically for this
course, and is available
from http://bitbucket.org/abe_k/PteroDAQ/downloads
under the "Tags" tab. Select the "default" branch under the
"branches" tab and download in zip, gz, or bzip2 archive format.
A version is installed on the lab machines at C:\ProgramFiles\PteroDAQ
.
Documentation is downloaded with the source, but only the
installation is reasonably documented right now.
To run the PteroDAQ data acquisition system, you will need Python2.7 or Python3. (Note: I've had some problems with Python 2.7 and PteroDAQ on Mac OS X, but it works fine with Python 3.4. ) Note: Mac OS X often comes with an ancient version of Python, so you are likely to need to update your Python. See the documentation at python.org
We'll be doing plotting and model-fitting examples with gnuplot. You can choose to use other tools if you are more familiar with them and have sufficient mastery of them to fit complex functions and produce good-looking graphs, but no help will be available for systems other than gnuplot. Gnuplot can be downloaded from the http://www.gnuplot.info/ website, but installation on Macs is sometimes tricky. See the post and comments on Karplus's blog about installing gnuplot on a Mac. The comment by Chuy is probably the most useful.
All the software you need to use is installed on the lab computers, but you should get your own copies for use on your laptop. All the software is free:
To offset the high parts cost, we'll be using only free on-line material for the textbook.
The book is a fairly large file (16MBytes), so you may want to keep it on your laptop, rather than trying to read it from the LeanPub site each time you need it.
I have been writing a book specifically for this class, and it is not quite done. If there is time, I will be rewriting or expanding portions of the book during the quarter, so you may need to download the PDF file more than once.
In the early years (before my book draft), students found this the most useful of the on-line sources, as the tutorials assume no prior knowledge.
The author of All About Circuits has also made a number of video lectures and practice worksheets available. Not all the worksheets are relevant to this course, but it should be fairly evident which are and which aren't. I may assign some of these, but you are encouraged to try them on your own whether or not they are assigned.
In previous years, many students found the Wikipedia articles too difficult for them, though they are often a better reference than All About Circuits, allowing you to go deeper into the material.
The labs are now contained in the textbook, rather than as separate lab handounts. It is essential to read the lab chapters and do the design work before coming to lab—this is a design class, not lab-demo class, so most of the writing and thinking has to happen before the lab time. Students in past years who did not have completed designs before lab generally wasted a lot of lab time doing pencil-and-paper work and had trouble getting their designs built and tested.
Lab reports will be due at the beginning of class every Friday, starting with Lab 2 on sampling and aliasing. Labs 5 and 6 are in the same week, and will have a combined report, so there are a total of ten reports. I will endeavor to have lab reports graded and returned with detailed feedback in the next class (Monday).
Each lab will be done with a different partner (and occasional singletons). There should be no repeat pairings. Pre-lab work should be done separately, but postlab work can be done together or separately.
Read each lab chapter (twice) the day before the lab—there will often be pre-lab design work to do due on Mondays, and there won't be time during lab to do the design work. Some weeks have two lab chapters—read both the weekend before the labs and do the pre-lab exercises, so that you can ask questions on Mondays.
Date | Lab |
---|---|
Tues 29 Mar 2016 | Lab 1: setting up |
Thurs 31 Mar 2016 | Lab 2: sampling and aliasing |
Tues 5 Apr 2016 | Lab 3: temperature measurement |
Thurs 7 Apr 2016 | Lab 3: temperature measurement |
Tues 12 Apr 2016 | Lab 4: electret microphones |
Thurs 14 Apr 2016 | Lab 4: electret microphones |
Tues 19 Apr 2016 | Lab 5: loudspeaker modeling |
Thurs 21 Apr 2016 | Lab 6: hysteresis, touch sensor |
Tues 26 Apr 2016 | Lab 7: low-power audio amplifier |
Thurs 28 Apr 2016 | Lab 7: low-power audio amplifier |
Tues 3 May 2016 | Lab 8: pressure sensor (blood pressure) |
Thurs 5 May 2016 | Lab 8: pressure sensor (blood pressure) |
Tues 10 May 2016 | Lab 9: optical pulse monitor |
Thurs 12 May 2016 | Lab 9: optical pulse monitor |
Tues 17 May 2016 | Lab 10: class-D power amp |
Thurs 19 May 2016 | Lab 10: class-D power amp |
Tues 24 May 2016 | Lab 11: electrodes |
Thurs 26 May 2016 | Lab 11: electrodes |
Tues 31 May 2016 | Lab 12: EKG |
Thurs 2 Jun 2016 | Lab 12: EKG |
Anyone caught cheating in the class will be reported to their college provost (see UCSC policy on academic integrity for undergrads and for grad students), will fail the assignment, and may fail the class. Cheating includes any attempt to claim someone else's work as your own. Plagiarism in any form (including close paraphrasing) will be considered cheating. Use of any source without proper citation will be considered cheating. If you are not certain about citation standards, please ask, as I hate having to fail students because they were improperly taught how to cite sources.
Collaboration without explicit written acknowledgment will be considered cheating. Collaboration on lab assignments is expected, even required—but that doesn't remove the requirement to acknowledge the collaboration.
Due | Read | Turn in | |
---|---|---|---|
Tues Mar 29 | (Preface optional), Chapter 0, Lab 1 | ||
Wed Mar 31 | Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Lab 2 | ||
Fri Apr 1 | Chapter 5 | Lab report for Labs 1 and 2 (beginning of class) on paper | |
Mon Apr 4 | Lab 3 | Exercises and pre-lab design work from Chapter 5 and Lab 3 | |
Fri Apr 8 | Sections 7.1, 7.3.1, 7.3.2 | Lab 3 report | |
Mon Apr 11 | Chapters 8–10, Lab 4, oscilloscope video | Prelab exercises for Lab 4 | |
Fri Apr 15 | Sections 7.2, 7.3.3, Chapter 12, Lab 5 | Lab 4 report | |
Mon Apr 18 | Chapter 14, Lab 6 | Prelab exercises for Labs 5 and 6 | |
Wed Apr 20 | |||
Fri Apr 22 (Guest lecture) | Chapter 16, Lab 7 | ||
Mon Apr 25 (Guest lecture) | |||
Tues Apr 28 | Labs 5 and 6 report, prelab exercises for Lab 7 | ||
Wed Apr 27 | Chapters 18–19 | ||
Fri Apr 29 | Lab 8 | Lab 7 report. | |
Mon May 2 | Pre-lab exercises for Lab 8 | ||
Wed May 4 | Chapter 21 | ||
Fri May 6 | Lab 9 | Lab 8 report. | |
Mon May 9 | Sections 23.1–23.5 | Pre-lab exercises for Lab 9 | |
Wed May 11 | Sections 23.6–23.11 | Lab 9 report. | |
Fri May 13 | Lab 10 | Lab 9 report. | |
Mon May 16 | Chapter 25 | Pre-lab exercises for Lab 10 | |
Fri May 20 | Lab 11 | Lab 10 report. | |
Mon May 23 | Chapter 27 | ||
Wed May 25 | Lab 12 | ||
Fri May 27 | Lab 11 report. Pre-lab for Lab 12 | ||
Mon May 30 | Memorial Day, no class | ||
Fri Jun 3 | |||
Mon Jun 6 | Putative exam time, not used. | ||
Tues Jun 7 noon | Lab 12 report. Last call for redone or late lab reports. |
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| BME101 home page |
Questions about page content should be directed to
Kevin Karplus
Biomolecular Engineering
University of California, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
USA
karplus@soe.ucsc.edu
1-831-459-4250
318 Physical Sciences Building