Assessment Overview (Reminder)

There will be three assessments for this course. These assessments are intended to check your current mastery of the topics covered in the course so far. They will be completed in class and graded pass/fail. You may retake Assessment 1 and Assessment 2 up to two times. You may retake Assessment 3 once (it is scheduled closer to the end of the semester). Scheduling for reattempts for individual assessments will be determined during the semester based on demand.

Assessment 1 Topics

Assessment 1 will be closed book with 10 questions that are either short answer or multiple choice. Important equations needed for the questions (e.g. the cut-off frequency of a low-pass filter) will be provided. I anticipate allocating about 30 minutes in class to work on it. 7/10 correct will be considered passing and will receive full points. The following tasks will be considered in scope for the Assessment (this is a subset of the work you’ve completed in class so far):

• Lecture 1 (Intro. to Embedded Systems)
  • Identify whether a given system is an embedded system, a general purpose system, or neither
  • Describe the similarities and differences between embedded systems used in E15/E21/E17 and the NUCLEO board we will be using in E29
• Lectures 2 - 4 (Lab 1)
  • Write basic functions in C++
  • Use if statements, switch case statements, printf, basic data types, etc.
  • Manipulate ASCII characters (convert ASCII characters to numbers, check if an ASCII character is a number, etc.)
  • Perform basic bitwise manipulation (e.g. for keypad scanning)
• Lectures 5 - 8 (Lab 2)
  • Explain the difference between a blocking operation and a non-blocking operation, and when to use them
  • Explain when to use pc.write instead of printf and why
  • Convert numbers to ASCII characters
  • Select resistor and capacitor values for low-pass and high-pass filters
  • Determine whether a design specification (e.g. gain) has been met based on the tolerance of components
  • Identify how to use an oscilloscope, multimeter, and/or function generator to analyze and/or debug a circuit

Assessment 1 Retake

The retake for assessment 1 will cover the same topics as for the original exam. Some questions may be more difficult than the original assessment given that the topics will be the same.