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 I have greatly enjoyed my engineering schooling at Colorado State. Included below are several elements relating to that. First is a brief overview of some of the more important classes that I took in the Engineering Department. Second are some samples of VLSI design work that I have done. Finally, I have a description of my Senior Design Project, which involved interfacing with the United States Geologic Survey (USGS) to refurbish devices for logging amphibian calls, and to create a program to collect the data from the devices automatically. Most of my classroom experience has revolved around digital design in some way. I have learned a significant amount about Karnaugh Maps, State Machines, Sequential Networks, VLSI Design, Basic Computer Organization, and basic digital concepts and structures. In addition, I have also obtained a strong working knowledge of programming skills and techniques, primarily in Java and Visual Basic, but I maintain a knowledge of C/C++, JavaScript, HDL, and assembly code. For a complete list of my classroom engineering experience, click here. I have had significant classroom experience with VLSI design. Included in this section are links to descriptions and pictures of some of the VLSI layouts I have done. Most of my experience has been within the Mentor Graphics Suite, using LSim, Spice modelling, and the IC Design Layout tool. I have worked with two distinct sets of rules- the TSMC model, which is the industry standard for Taiwan Semiconductor, and is based on minimum size and optical correction assumptions, and the ami05 rules pattern- a wavelength based pattern. All included pictures are from the ami05 rules file unless stated otherwise. All of the following circuits are part of a 9x10 SRAM chip constructed as a lab assignment for my EE472 class this last semester.
Write Circuit and Column Select One of the major elements of my engineering experience was a project done with the United States Geologic Survey (USGS) aiding a team of wildlife biologists there, headed up by Dr. Erin Muths to record frog populations in the Poudre Canyon.
The project had two major areas of emphasis. First was a physical device, called a
froglogger that was being used to record the calls of the Western Chorus Frog
Pseudracris Triseriata and the
Wood Frog Rana Sylvatica.
The device records a sample of sounds at a given site for 15 seconds every hour to a
standard
cassette tape. The tape is then taken back to the lab, where a technician listens to the
tape and writes down the number of times they heard each species of frog croak. This is
then used along with a USGS call cataloging scale to determine the population of the area.
However, the previous generation of devices had reached the end of their lifespan, and
were becoming unreliable. After some analysis, significant redundancies and a few design
flaws were found in the previous devices
(click here for old schematic) and had to be corrected. The second major focus in our project was to produce an aid program for the transcription of the call tapes. As the process was originally so labor-intensive, requiring about 4 man-hours per site, it seemed that providing an automation method would be of great value to Dr. Muths and her team. It was decided that a small Visual Basic program with embedded Short Time Fourier Processing (STFT) capability would be the best choice for the project. The program was designed to accept user-configurable signature files defining the attributes of the samples sought, the tape characteristics, and time-stamp characteristics, and to listen to tapes on a standard audio input port, processing call density. For further program details and screenshots, click here. This program is also provided free of charge to anyone who wants to use it and may be modified as they see fit. To download this program, please visit the Downloads section of this site. |
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