Arduino Workshop for Freshmores

Date of Event: 25/10/2018

SUTD IEEE HKN has successfully conducted an Arduino workshop for the Freshmores in SUTD!

The Freshmores are now facing their first challenging project in SUTD which 3.007 Introduction to Design. Most of them do not have basic prototyping skills such as soldering and coding on Arduino. These are essential skills that will allow them bring their creative ideas to life. Thus, the club held the workshop for them in the spirit of serving our community.

Vinh going through soldering techniques with them

 

Freshmores hard at work bringing their LED design to life

Results of their hard work and creative designs:

A clownish LED design

A starry constellation design

 

Our happy participants with their circuits!

We have received feedback that they understood the workshop and that it is useful for them! We hope to see them again in another workshop!

Karen Galuchie visits SUTD IEEE-HKN

Event Type: Site Visit

Date of Event: 3rd May 2018

SUTD’s Eta Kappu Nu chapter was excited to host Ms Karen Galuchie, IEEE Foundation Executive Director, at SUTD today! The club had a casual talk over tea at The Cake Shop.

Members of the club also got the rare opportunity to learn first-hand about the activities of other IEEE-HKN societies outside of Singapore. In particular, Ms Galuchie discussed how these chapters contributed extensively by working closely with local boy and girl scout organisations, as well as using the reach of community libraries to spread and excite others about technology. Through these exchanges, various ideas were shared on possible workshop and outreach programs that could be started in the months to come in SUTD.

Following the introductory tea session, the club brought our honored guest on a tour around SUTD, showcasing the prototyping facilities available to SUTD students, including metal-working and additive manufacturing capabilities among others. The club also showcased how our previous PCB workshop was conducted to the benefit of the SUTD community.

We concluded our tour with a visit to the Jackie Chan Pavilion and shared some backstory behind them. Our guest was impressed by the impressive wood carvings that decorated the halls.
The club sure hopes that Ms Galuchie enjoyed the tour and conversations with the IEEE-HKN student chapter members. We hope to do many more enriching events in future to develop deeper engineering capabilities within the SUTD community. Last but certainly not least, the club would like to extend our deepest appreciation for IEEE-HKN that invests heavily in its mission to encourage engineering and educational growth within the SUTD community. We wish Ms Karen Galuchie a pleasant stay in Singapore, and a safe trip back on this Saturday (5th May 2018).

Written by Chua Yue Zhi, Russ

Industry visit to Rohde & Schwarz

Date of Event: 5^th April 2018

Rohde and Schwarz is one of the key developers in some of the world’s most advanced scanning, sensing, and tomographic equipment. Located right across the street from SUTD, we wouldn’t give up the chance to visit one of world’s industry leaders in radio communications and test equipment!

Students got the chance to sit in for a career talk at the beginning of the visit, where they networked with some of Rohde and Schwarz’ senior staff and human resource personnel.

They then got the chance to walk down to the RNS exhibition room where they display state of the art testing equipment, from VNAs, UHF oscillators, to oscilloscopes which they used to test a plethora of devices from smart phone antennas, to calibrating the EMI of laptops or desktop devices. It was truly an enriching experience for all!

Written by Samuel Low

5th April 2018

Industry visit to Keysight Technologies

Date of Event: 28^th March 2018

The IEEE-HKN brought the entire student body in the Electromagnetics and Applications course to Keysight Technologies for an industry visit. It was an exciting day for everyone as we were hosted by the many engineers and scientists that shared a lot about their experiences in the RF and microwave engineering industry.

The students first began the tour with an in-house lecture and a demonstration of how common microwave engineering tools work – such as oscilloscopes and vector network analysers. The scientists and engineers of Keysight demonstrated their professionalism and work proficiency, on many real-life scenarios: from figuring out how to match a network, to the physical problem of measuring the capacitance on a tiny SMD transistor (working in the domain of the small is really challenging!).

The engineers then discussed with us some of the practical everyday problems they had to deal with, which clearly were never taught in the textbook. These problems included the inconsistencies in reading data sheets, brand preferences for electronic components, impedance matching principles in practice, and learning how to navigate around some commonly used RF software.

The students were then brought to the Keysight innovation lab where future ideas in wireless communications, IoT applications, and robotics were all discussed. They were thrilled to get an insider peek into what Keysight is delivering for the potential city of tomorrow, and so were we to get a part of this action!

Looking forward to the next industry visit!

Written by Samuel Low,

28th March 2018

 

SUTD IEEE-HKN First Radio Workshop

Event Type: Workshop / Outreach

Date of Event: 09/03/2018

Today (9th March 2018) marks the first ever SUTD IEEE-HKN workshop on FM Radio Antennas for students enrolled in the Electromagnetism and Applications course in SUTD. This was a club endeavor to teach beyond the current scope, and more crucially to entrench the importance of the subject and its growing relevance in the modern world today beyond the academic syllabus.

The session had a great turn out and was oversubscribed, much to the club’s interest in spreading an EE mindset in SUTD. Sam and myself formally started the session by giving an in-depth overview to how radio signals and various receivers work. Alongside the amplitude, frequency and phase modulation, their underlying mathematical concepts were also thoroughly covered, drawing many questions from the students who took the opportunity to learn as much as they could during the course.

After a well-deserved lunch break, the participants got the opportunity to put their new-found understanding into practice by manufacturing a radio receiver circuit. They worked hard to ensure precision in their calculations and in their inductor designs. Finally, they were challenged to solder the various lumped-elements on their strip-boards in hopes of detecting static or noise, which could be further tuned to detect signals from Singapore’s public radio stations.

At the end of the course, the club provided all teaching materials to the class and invited students to take their designs further through joining the IEEE-HKN chapter. Finally, we would like to extend our appreciation to the club to funding our event and making such deeper learning opportunities possible!

Written by Chua Yue Zhi, Russ

SUTD IEEE-HKN PCB Design and Milling Workshops I & II

Event Type: PCB Design and Milling Workshop Series!

Date of Event: 14th Feb and 21st Feb 2018

SUTD’s Eta Kappu Nu chapter is bustling with activity once again, as we are pushing for more initiatives to cultivate a strong electrical and electronics passion in our students!

Today, marks the end of our series of printed circuit board and design workshops! We held a total of two workshops, one on the 14th of February and one more on the 21st of February. We had a very welcoming response from all participants. The participating students had the experience of learning how to digitally design a simple circuit, and learn how to print. Below are some photos of the entire learning process and event!

In this workshop, students worked on circuit design using the EAGLE CAD software, the preparation of Gerber files, and the actual milling of the printed circuit board (PCB). EAGLE is a scriptable electronic design automation application with schematic capture, printed circuit board layout, auto-router and computer-aided manufacturing features.

We hope that it has helped many of our students in electronics and electromagnetics classes gain a fundamental understanding behind how the software works, and how it can be translated from a digital design to an actual prototype on the PCB mill. The students also learnt how to prepare the print files and to operate the LPKF Milling machines in the SUTD Fab Lab.

We used a simple “night light” circuit as a template for the students to practice. Essentially, the circuit works by having a 3V CR1220 battery power it up. When the light-dependent resistor (LDR) detects high ambient lighting, the voltage at the gate of the transistor falls to near zero, and shuts the current off passing through an LED, triggering it OFF. When the ambient light goes out, the gates to the transistors are “opened” as a high voltage is applied to the gate, and current flows through to light the LED. This was a simple enough example of a basic “logic” circuit for the students to follow. Although the preparation of the print files was tricky (and often ran into many errors…) we still had an enthusiastic response with the amazing turn out of curious, eager and passionate students.

We hope to organise more of such workshops to add value to their curriculum and their learning experience in EPD!

Written by, Samuel Low

21st Feb 2018

SUTD Class of 2016 Graduation

Event Type: Graduation

Date of Event: 10/09/2016

The 10th of September marked a major milestone for the pioneer batch of SUTD IEEE-HKN members. The education in SUTD has been a challenging yet fulfilling one.

Besides improving ourselves academically, the members are also grateful for the opportunities brought about through IEEE-HKN. It was through IEEE-HKN that we got to set up a workshop to share knowledge with our SUTD juniors, plan for exhibitions and outreach events, and even attend and help out in a conference. These experiences have definitely helped us develop in a holistic manner.

The graduation also ushered a change of leadership within the society, with new faces due to be introduced soon. We are confident that they would be able to help the club grow in the coming academic year. All the best, juniors!

Written by Yee Zheng Kang

CommunicAsia 2016

Event Type: Outreach/Conference

Date of Event: 02/06/2016

As the world gets increasingly connected, internet-connected devices are also set to proliferate. The potential and challenges resulting from the  Internet-of-Things is thus of great interest to many. This made CommunicAsia 2016, the 27th International Communications and Information Technology Exhibtion and Conference, a hugely exciting event to attend. Spanning a period of 4 days, the event provided a platform for ICT professionals to address the future directions and critical issues in the sector, as well as to develop strategic partnerships.

As an active player in the field of information technology and computer engineering, IEEE was naturally part of the event. As such, members of SUTD IEEE-HKN was also invited to help out at the IEEE both, as well as to learn more about the developments in the sector.

The job of the members was mainly to promote the advantages of an IEEE membership. We also introduced the IEEE Xplore Digital Library, which contains a huge database of publications of different forms, for different fields.

A few of us who helped out in the conference area as photographers also had the chance to listen to talks by distinguished guests from both the industry and academia. The topics included the trends of cyber attacks and methods to prevent information thefts by insiders.

Although the time spent at the event was short, the talks were enjoyable and enriching. By interacting with the IEEE staff on duty, we were also able to walk away with a better knowledge of IEEE as an organzation.

Written by Yee Zheng Kang

Eletromagnetism (EM) Matters Project Exhibition 2016

Event Type: Exhibition

Date of Event: 14/04/2016

It was a proud day for the students in the Electromagnetism & Applications module, as they showcased their final projects at the EM Matters Exhibition today. The event was graced by representatives from the Land Transport Authority (LTA), Accenture, IEEE Singapore Section and well as the Institution of Engineers Singapore (IES).

The exhibition, jointly organized by SUTD IEEE-HKN and SUTD IES, provided a platform for the students to present their projects to the public after more than a month of hard work. At the same time, it also served to allow SUTD students and invited guests to appreciate some of the innovative possibilities within the domain of EM.

The theme of this year’s project, Sustainable Future Mobility, challenged the students to come up with creative solutions to solve the transport problems of tomorrow. Besides having to research and predict for potential transport issues, students were also expected to show a level of competency in applying the EM knowledge taught in class.

Some of the projects on display at the exhibition

Presenting of project to an interested fellow student

The course instructors going through all the exhibitions as part of the grading process

The event was concluded with a celebratory buffet to reward the students for their effort. The members of SUTD IEEE-HKN have also thoroughly enjoyed the experience of organizing this event. It has provided us with an invaluable experience, which we are sure would benefit us when it comes in organizing future events.

SUTD IEEE-HKN would also like to thank all the invited guests for supporting the event. We would extend our heartfelt gratitude towards the following people/organization for contributing towards the success of the event:

• IEEE Singapore
• Intitution of Engineers Singapore
• Ms. Ginny Gan, Engineering Product Development (EPD) Admin Associate
• Ms. Sharolyn Tay, Senior Manager of Office of Marketing & Communication
• Ms. Chu Wenjing, Lab Technologist
• Mr. Nyan Lin Htat, Lab Technologist

Written by Yee Zheng Kang

Temasek Junior College Sharing on Electromagnetism

Event Type: Outreach

Date of Event: 11/03/2016

SUTD IEEE-HKN enjoyed an outing to Temasek Junior College, which is coindentally Sherwin’s (our Technical Director) alma mater. We were there to promote the topic of Electromagnetism, via a talk by our Faculty Advisor Prof. Shaoying.

Prof. Shaoying first started off by explaining how the interesting concept of invisibility is related to electromagnetism, before illustrating the different applications found throughout a wide range of electromagnetic spectrum. Common eletromagnetism-related applications such as the LCD monitor, RFID and MRI were also explained in detail. The talk was rounded off by a little introduction about SUTD (our university!).

Here are some of the pictures from the event:

We sure hope that the students enjoyed the talk, and mananged to learn more about electromagnetism and its wide range of applications. Perhaps we would even see some future EM engineers among them!

Written by Yee Zheng Kang