3rd Semester

Long time, No Say ... ?

Its another long time since I posted any thing.

First things first. A Belated Happy New Year !

And, here at college, We'd wonderful developments.

We had a technical fest called Excel which was conducted on Feb. 2,3,4. The festival was wonderful and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But, I think that such a grand fest would be incomplete without a grand (and I mean really grand) report on Excel 2005. Its a long report. So here goes...

The fest was really good. We had a jolly time together. We met lot of seniors with good faces and characters(The ones we used to meet are always the gangsters, the ragging parties !!).Now I'm truly convinced that there are brilliant students here. We were all friendly. But of course there was small amount of ragging. "Chorichil" as we would like it to call !! For some the "Chorichil" was very distracting and they began to curse the seniors. Some of the juniors even began to shout at them("Kalippu".Hope you know the term ! Sort of "Jada").



Eventhough there was kalippikkal, I enjoyed the whole new experience. I really felt what college life was to be in the coming years! It was requested by the principal to do some projects for Excel and exhibit them in stalls for classes. We (E2A - Electronis and Comm. 2nd SEM A batch)were the class with the most number of working products. Actually only 2 of our projects stopped working. One was because of a faulty transistor and the other, well we never found out why the other never worked !



The class was divided into teams of 5 and we choose "Security Systems" as a general theme for our projects. My team created a shadow alarm which detects shadows. The circuit was obtained from a popular Electronics Magazine - Electronics For You(http://www.electronicsforu.com). It mainly consists a Light sensitive transistor L14F1 which conducts when light falls on it. It was connected to the operational amplifier IC A741. The output of IC was connected to a Timer IC(555) functioning as a monostable vibrator with a time delay of 51 seconds between the states. The IC555 in unstable state activates an alarm circuit consisting of a sound generating IC for producing a police siren sound. The monostable was designed for negative triggering, so will be triggered only when a shadow falls on the L14F1, thus giving a low input to ICA741. Only the ambient light isneeded for the functioning of transistor. We also had a logarithmically varying Resistor to produce a constant output from L14F1 depending on conditions of light.



The circuit was really great. Our detailed explanation of the circuit and the way it was presented brought us well wishes from those who came to see the exhibit. Another team of our class had designed a computer program in VB for centralised control of all our projects. The computer told the user which circuits were activated, and it also wrote a log of times and duration for which it was activated(You know why I needed VS2005 badly ! I began studying VB!). It had also provision to give input for the circuit connected to the computer(In our case it was a battery). Ours was the only circuit to be connected to the computer as all other projects had either varying outputs or outputs > 2V(Nobody had the nerve to use resistors!!)



The other circuits exhibited were voltage regulator, ultrasonic wave controlled locking system, fire alarm, metal detector, electric watchdog, electronic keypad lock, laser security. The ultrasonic wave controlled locking system failed due to a bad transistor, but the model was impressive. A remote switch activated or deactivated an electromagnet attached to the sides of a door. It attracted and repelled a metal rod passing through a grrove, thus bolting and unlocking the door. The concept was simple and elegant, but unfortunately, it did not work. The electronic watchdog was almost like ours. It had an IR sender and receiver unit, and they were aligned. If some one cut the beam, the alarm would sound. It too didn't because of reasons unknown ! The electronic locking system asked the user to enter a series of correct keypresses on a keypad to lock and unlock(They had a red LED for lock and a green one for unlock). The laser security system was almost the sam as ours. The difference being the fact that they used LDR insted of the photo transistor.



In addition to this there were also lot of contests, talks and games. There was gaming contests on Counter Strike and Need for Speed : Underground. I watched it for a bit. The inagrual ceremony didn't come upto my expectations. It was poor. Then there was along and boring class on Data Mining, something I even hadn't heard about. I quickly came up with an excuse to sneak out of there. I left the college at about noon.(about 2.45). There was also a talk by the Indian Navy, but I missed it.



On Feb. 2 and 3 there were talks in Renaissance, a 5 star hotel at Cochin by CEOs of famous companies. Aptly titled "Technoprenuer", the registration fee was Rs. 200. I avoided it as Enterprenuership was not really my field. There was also a guiness world record on Feb 2. One person tried to remember the digits of PI. But it failed.



The second day was really a field day for me. My class had only 2 exhibits that day. The rest of the students were absent because of fear of ragging. So when I went to college, only another team with their electronic locking system was present. Also, only 3(including me) went to the college from our hostel. The rest of them went for cinema. We put the exhibits for some time then withdrew, seeing that no one was coming. The day had two interesting activities that was really exciting for me. The first was a talk on Avionics by a person from ISRO. The other was the product design contest. Avionics class was really interesting. They concentrated mainly on satellite communications and different kinds of wireless technologies like CDMA.



The hardware design contest was really inspiring. The contest was inter college (as were all other contests and games and talks).The participants were given two objects to design. They can choose one from them and develop into a product. They should present the product with techninical specs and marketing strategies. The questions were to :

1. Design a smart pen which would write on any surface and transfer the data to a PC

2. Design an automatic Ad-Muter for television.



It was great to see the teams using totally unconventional strategies. The judges were ruthless. They began asking questions which exposed their many follies and drawbacks. We had a great time.



We also had a workshop on hacking(ethical) the same day by Kalyan Varma Alluri. I couldn't attend it as the waiting list really sored high. I'm still learning what he taught the students who attended from them. They said that they'd a wonderful day.



There were also other contests the same day. I skipped some of them and some weren't interesting to me.



The third and final day dawned on Feb 3. It saw the game "Treasure hunt" which was the highlight of the day. As usual I went to college, but returned after a short while. The college was short of volunteers and so all firs years were turned into volunteers. I escaped ! So it was mobile phone that helped me in participating in the contest. A friend of mine from CUSAT who is staying at the same place was there. He began helping a group of seniors who know us intimately(well, u know how, c'mon guess it !). Treasure is all about solving clues and going up and up in the questions. There are 16 questions and the first five teams to complete the 16 rounds win. So this friend, began phoning me and Manu(another inmate) to solve the clues. Some were logical reasoning type questions, some were vocabulary, some were funny, and some mathematical. The questions were all fun. We had a great time.

Edusat in our College

Yeah!
It has been a loooong time!
Anyway, here goes.

India recently had launched Edusat satellite meant for educational purposes. It is used for distant education programme. ie, It can be used for teaching students without actually seeing the teacher. It is a superior form of video conferencing and has far more advantages than the usual DSL or T1 video conferencing.
Firstly, the relay is direct from satellite so its almost real time. You won't know the difference and secondly it is secure than broadband internet connections.
We had an hour of Mechanics class relayed straight from College of Engineering, Trivandrum. The experience was fun and inspiring. After the class we were encouraged to ask questions. Some of us asked.

P.S. "Does anybody know what happened to the previous post ? Why is it that way. It was my reason for this long wait"

Subjects

We’ve got 10 different subjects to study in the first year. We’re supposed to study all of them and pass the exams like a pro. Of course, considering my character, it is not a surprise that there are some subjects that are, well, bad! The subjects are Engineering Physics, Engineering Chemistry, Engineering Mathematics 1 & 2, Engineering Mechanics, Engineering Graphics and Drawing, Fundamentals of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Fundamentals of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Fundamentals of Computer Science Engineering and Humanities.

Yeah! Now you know which one I hate most!

Humanities are not the topics that we study in social science. It includes Communication.
Basically, the subject teaches us to make our communication effective and understandable.
I think all the rest of the subjects are self explanatory.

The faculty of the college is good. I don’t expect them to teach us in a level that Thomas Sir
taught us since it is college and we’re required to study a lot of things by ourselves. Many
students usually misunderstand this. So they go for tuitions. A bad thing to do.
We’re studying a professional course, so we’re expected to delve into problems using the resources provided
to us. What do they think of Computer centre and Library? Places to languish, I suppose!

We’ve not yet started Engineering Graphics and drawing. The subject is on Fridays, and we’ve
most Fridays off! So, let’s wait for the subject and see what happens.

Roses to Jovin's father who left his Earthly Abode to join the heavens above...

Exploring the Campus - Part 1

College life is real good. I began exploring the campus. The campus is not that big. But for the three branches that my college has, the campus is a pretty good one. I like the long lonely corridors and the stair cases. Best of all, I can get a good Ariel view of the city from atop the college. We’ve got a cricket ground, a football ground and a basketball court within the campus.

Considering the labs, especially, computer lab, they are state-of-the-art. As I said earlier, most of the computers run on Linux and that too the Debian flavor (not my kind of Linux. I’d have been happy with PCLinux OS or the Ubuntu Linux both of them with decent GUI).Debian looks crappy and sometimes acts crappy. My first impression of debian systems is not good. As soon as I learn Linux programming, I’m gonna change that crappy look. I’ve been also to the computers running Microsoft Windows XP and it looks like heaven for me. I’m not a Microsoft hater, but on the contrary a hard-core Windows fan. I like their innovations, visions and above all, their customer support. I can’t see why people hate Microsoft so much!

The computer that runs Windows is powered by Intel Pentium 4 processor with Hyper Threading technology. It has a clock speed of 3 GHz. Considering the net connection; it is slow for a broadband. It may be because so many people are accessing it at a time. Anyway, the speed is better than that we have at home. Hope it improves. Most of the high-ended systems there have LCD monitors and it is a sight to see.

There is also a media center in our college. Though I’m not sure what its function is, all the computers there have LCD screens and all of them are black. It is really a sight to see. There is also a seminar hall.

The library is on the ground floor. I was most curious about the library. But as soon as I saw it, all my fears and doubts were wiped away. It had more size than I expected. It is spread across two sections and has got a wide range of books, periodicals, magazines and project reports. It is a reader’s heaven. I’ve been to the library everyday since I first explored it. The library sits in a secure location away from all the ramblings and sounds of college. You will never know how much time you spend in the library if you are coming without a watch! I’ve so far completed two National Geographic magazines, one Linux for You magazine and one Electronics for You magazine. We’re not yet able to borrow books from the library as we’ve not yet received the identification cards.

By the way, on the day I joined college; I’ve also become a member of the IEEE organization and thus am eligible to get a copy of Spectrum monthly. The first issue is yet to come. I also subscribed to TechnoFIRST a college magazine primarily based on placement run by seniors of MEC who are members of the placement cell.

We’ve also been to the mechanical and electrical workshops. We do not have foundry. I also got the overcoat to be used during workshop sessions. In the mechanical workshop session, I’m in the fitting section. I don’t know what the hell they are supposed to teach me. Time will tell. The electrical workshop teacher asked us to buy important tools like wire stripper, combination pliers, pliers, screw driver and line tester. The workshop is very good. It is roomy and airy.

I’ll continue tomorrow about the classess

The Second Week

Sunju


Jeswin


Jovin


Rahul


Arun


Arjun


George


Abhay