Computer Engineering
Senior Project
CE 4710 - Fall 2022
| General Information: |
| Title: | CE 4710 - Computer Engineering Senior Project - Fall 2022 |
| Instructor: | Ken Stevens, kstevens@ece.utah.edu, MEB 2254, 801-585-9176 |
| Location: | MEB 3143 |
| Class Time: | Tuesday and Thursdays 12:25 -- 1:45 pm |
| Lab Space: | Senior Hardware Lab |
| Office Hours: | Team meetings as scheduled with Instructor |
| Web Page: | www.eng.utah.edu/~kstevens/4710/ |
| Prerequisites: | CE 3992 |
| Course Description: |
This course is for students with major status who are seniors within one year of graduation. In this course the student completes the design of an engineering project that is selected with approval of the instructor according to the specifications defined in the proposal document from 3992. The fully functional project is demonstrated at the end of the semester.
There are several major goals for this project, which will prepare the students for industry or graduate work:
Course Information
Each team will complete the development of the project proposed in 3992. The team is responsible for project management, product development, parts procurement, documentation, and reporting. All projects will involve student designed software, hardware, and system level design and integration as part of the project. Various resources are supplied to help the students in their project. Students have space and equipment in the Senior Hardware Lab. This will generally be the location for hardware and software development and team meetings with the instructor.
| Grading Policy: |
Refer to the College of Engineering Guidelines for more detail on appeals, disabilities, adding, and withdrawing from courses.
| Disability: | If you have a condition that merits consideration, you must contact the instructor at the beginning of the course. |
| Add/Drop Policy: | The standard University Policy is applied. |
| Incomplete Policy: | You cannot get an incomplete unless you have a documented medical or legal emergency or military call. |
The College of Engineering also provides counseling services that includes virtual drop-in and individual appointments as well as after hours crisis support.
| Implemented design conforms to specification | 50% | Team Grade |
| Contribution, Teamwork and Effort | 25% | Individual Grade |
| Documentation | 15% | Team and Individual Grade |
| Reporting | 10% | Team Grade |
Detailed Grading information and Rubric
The bulk of your grade is based on the completion of your product as
specified in your proposal. This accounts for 50% of your grade in
the class. The grade is directly assigned based on a percentage of
completeness of your baseline functionality. Robustness is taken into
account. If a feature only works for a very specifically designed test
case, it will not receive full credit as being functional. A feature
is not working if it can not be demonstrated, regardless of the
source: partial implementation, bugs, incompatible interfaces between
modules, unimplemented features due to parts that did not arrive,
or other reasons. If the project is deemed 80% functional, you will
get 80% of the points for this part of the assignment. The due date
for demonstrating functionality of your project is the Demo day.
However, some leeway will be allowed for fixing bugs and completing
the product after that date, so this part is graded as follows:
Success in this course is highly correlated to the ability of the students to work effectively in teams. Each team will provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives. The team structure, communication plan, and weekly reporting and interaction with the instructor will be driven by the team. Students must demonstrate individual contributions, communication skills, a constructive team climate, and team role fulfillment. This course is a culminating engineering design and team work experience based on what students have learned throughout their studies in the computer engineering program.
Teamwork is a skill that can be learned through practice and experience as discussed in 3992. You may want to review those slides. Your team will be responsible for the management and operation of your project. Therefore, the instructor will not be assigning and attending every team meeting, enforcing deadlines, and performing project management. You will be graded individually on your contributions to the success of the team. Poor team management will reflect on all members, and often is manifest as an incomplete project. Your team will need to assign roles to help you develop teamwork and project management skills to make the project successful! Changing team roles during the course of the semester is acceptable and recommended in certain circumstances.
Each team member will be graded individually by a self evaluation and by their team mates for their personal contribution to the team and team skills. An honest, impersonal evaluation of each team member is critical to this process! If a team member does not turn in their team evaluation at the end of the semester, they will get a zero grade for their self evaluation component, and each member of their team will get 50% marks as an assumed evaluation.
Following is how the teamwork grade is allocated.
The instructor will perform a design review with the team where each individual will provide a detailed review of their personal implementation work on the project showing hardware design, software design, design documentation, and discuss implementation challenges and effort. You will be credited up to 10% of your grade for high quality engineering work that is clearly demonstrated in the design review. This work is based on the quality, creativity, difficulty, and effort for each individual's tasks for the team. Note that if you play a management role on your team (such as collecting and submitting the weekly report, acting as the project lead and tracking progress) then you should report what you did and your effort as part of the design review. You definitely get credit for team building work as well!
The remaining 15% of the grade is allocated as follows, and this part
of your grade will come from your self evaluation and other team
member's evaluation of your contribution.
The remaining 10% team contribution is based on attendance to team meetings, if you finished your engineering and management roles on time, and if you were a good team member. Note that you are not required to have a management role to get full team credit. Excellent engineers are at least as critical, if not more so, than managers. After all, as engineers the bottom line is that we build things, and they must work.
Your documentation grade will be allocated as follows:
Make sure you take time for your technical documentation! The final technical report can be completed the week following your project demonstration. Don't forget to plan for that! The final technical document will be written in LaTeX and will require formatting as the two column IEEE conference or journal paper as was done in 3991.
This aspect of the project is critical to ensure that you are communicating well with the instructor as to the status of your project. This portion of the grade will be based on the weekly logs and team meetings that you have with the instructor. It is critical that you understand the progress of your project and that you are able to communicate that to your team members and the instructor. This serves as an early warning system in such instances as when risks can not be reduced or worst case scenarios play out, when the required engineering effort was under estimated, or when parts don't arrive or a team member is not delivering or needs help to keep from becoming a roadblock to progress of the project. It takes discipline to manage a team, and this grade is part of that. You will be recorded 0.67% of your grade for each week's team log. If you don't turn one in, you will not get any points for that week. If the log is insufficient, you will get half credit for that week. A log is insufficient if it is not clear what progress has been made during the week, whether the project is on schedule, and what the current perceived risks are that could prevent delivering on the project specifications by demo day.
Part of the reporting is meeting with the instructor. These meetings can be as often as every week, depending on the need of the team. Some of these meetings will be mini design reviews, others will be status and risk updates. Use the instructor and outside resources to help your project be a smashing success! Make sure you acknowledge the help of others in your technical report.
| Deadline Details: |
Dec. 8 Demo Day, demo of project, and selection of Best CE Senior Project.
Dec. 15 All documents and design reviews must be completed.
| Downloads: |
The Peer Evaluation
form that is required to be turned in at the end of the semester.
Instructions
and a checklist
for using the laser cutter in the Senior Lab.
Soldering Guide
with instructions for how to solder your printed circuit boards.
| Helpful Information: |
Local Sources for Parts, Electronics, and Tools
On-Line Sources for New Equipment
On-Line Surplus Stores
Industrial / Mechanical
| Project Links: |
This is a list of previous projects design reports and documentation from years Al Davis taught the course.
These are the projects from the 2022 course.
These are the projects from the 2020 course.
These are the projects from the 2019 course.
These are the projects from the 2017 course.
These are the projects from the 2015 course.
These are the projects from the last time I taught this course in 2007.