Lecture 2-2: Principles of Actuators and Drivers

We have studied the electromagnetic principle for generating forces/motion of actuators.

The working principle of a DC motor was illustrated. The relationship between the current and torque, torque and speed was explained.

The key driver, named H-bridge, and PWM control signal for DC motor was introduced and analyzed. In addition, we introduced the working principles of DC motors and Stepper motors, and how to control it, especially with Arduino board (using PWM signal generated by the Timers/Counters).

Lab exercises will be given to strengthen learnt knowledge.

Lecture 2-1: Introduction to Actuators and Drivers

We moved to the Module 2 to learn basics of actuators and their drivers.

In the first lecture, we studied the definitions and concepts of actuators. We now know fundamental knowledge of types and working principles of actuators, and compare their advantages and disadvantage in operations through real-world examples.

We will learn how to control different types of actuators in the Lecture 2-2.

Lecture 1-6: A simple computer

We have summarized knowledge learnt from lecture 1 to 4 in order to understand how a CPU works.
In general, ISA are used by CU to control all operations of the CPU, e.g load data from registers, then select the bus to transfer it to ALU or Shifter for computational operations, and then transfer back to another register. We also discussed about functional blocks of a CPU in details.

We have also discussed about the value of Assembly language in terms of machine language as well as code debugging. 

Mini-project 1 released!

Mini-project 1 (very tasty but spicy project :) has been released. Click on this link! 

You are recommended to carefully read through the requirements to know what you have to do. 

You should also pay attention to the deadlines for the submission and demo. 

Tomorrow's lab (Oct 08) is reserved to help you understand and start working this mini-project. 

Lecture 1-5: Arithmetic computation

We studied an important lecture of Module 1 about how an ALU of CPU is built up and functioning.

The key components such as half-adder and full-adder are introduced. An example of 4-bit Ripple-Carry Binary Adder (RCBA) is illustrated to show how a computer can do Addition in general.

Complement concept is refreshed to remind about how to do subtraction, then a RCBA-based circuit for both Addition and Subtraction is introduced. Based on the circuit, other functional circuit such as incrementer/decrementer, multiplier/dividers are discussed. 

Lab 1-4

Click on Lab assignments to access Lab 1-4.

I highly recommend you to complete Lab 1-3 if you haven't done it. 

 

Lecture 1-4: Digital circuits and combinational logic circus design

We have completed the lecture 5 - Digital circuits and combinational logic circus design.

In this lecture, we have learn how to build up an integrated circuit (functional circuits) from seven primitive logic gates (AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR, XNOR). 

We have also studied how to build up the key functional integrated circuits (Enablers, Selectors, Decoders, Multiplexers, etc) from the primitive logic gates and inherit them to build up larger circuits, e.g. 3-to-8 decoder, multiplexers.