[Bruce Land] is no stranger to Hackaday as you can see from his Hackaday.io profile, if you aren’t familiar with his work [Bruce Land] is a Senior Lecturer at Cornell University. One of the courses he teaches: Digital Systems Design Using Microcontrollers (ECE4760) was recorded in 2012 and again in 2015 and the videos are available on YouTube.
AVR to PIC32
[Bruce Land]s previous set of ECE4760 lectures (2012) used an Atmel ATmega1284 AVR Microcontroller for the laboratory portion of the course. This means the lectures are also based on the AVR and if you haven’t watched them through a few times you should do. The recently updated set of lectures is based on the Microchip PIC32, more specifically the Microstick II.
Open Curriculum
You can follow the ECE4760 rabbit hole as far as you want with all the available content provided by [Bruce Land] on his ECE4760 course webpage. You can watch the ECE4760 lectures on YouTube, try your hand at the homework assignments, and work through the labs at your own pace.
New Lectures = New Shirts
One area that [Bruce Land] is unmatched and arguably uncontested is his shirt collection, we are continuously impressed with these original works and wish they were available for purchase (wink/hint c’mon [Bruce] throw us a bone!). If you don’t know why the rest of us aren’t able to obtain the wonderful shirts [Bruce Land] wears you clearly aren’t subscribed to [Bruce Land]s YouTube channel, you should rectify that wrong and log some ECE4760 lecture hours starting with the video after the break.
Free education what could be better.
That think in the Matrix where you learn Kung Fu in a day or how to fly a helicopter in 2 seconds. Come on people! Build that thing!
And why the PIC? (The MIPS one?)
That reminds me. Properly processed voice can be understood at about 3 times normal speaking speed. What happens if you do the sound like that for video? Maybe a slow button for equations and such. And a really slow button for harder equations and diagrams. I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of man-years are now wasted on useless intro’s in Youtube videos?
You have described reading.
Just need a transcript of the video. For example i understand way faster the written english than spoken.
thats the “embodiment” problem, people are working on it. entering the matrix is the same as entering a robot.
At my university recorded lectures are hosted on a service that lets you playback lectures at 1, 1.5 and 2x speed. It is super convenient, but things other than verbal explanation (like writing etc) can be difficult.
So… Youtube? YT does have playback speed options ranging from 0.25 to 2.0, under the gear button.
Not impressed by the camera jerking around.
them shirts tho
On another forum, I talked with a fellow who hadn’t used an MCU before. He’d found out about this, and bought a Microstick II months prior to the course commencing, to be ready to follow along online. So there’s at least one person who definitely appreciates this, and probably many many more.
I’ll probably never get a chance to look closely at it, but I recall the course outline covered an amazing number of topics. Was surprised to see protothreading, for example. That wasn’t a concept or term I officially learned of until two years ago, although I’d been using the design pattern on a small scale.
Tech women often complain that reporters talk about their appearance instead of hard science. It is nice to see that gender equality now equates to men being judged by their clothing.
If Mr. Land ever reads this:
1. Thanks for giving your recordings to the world.
2. use static GoPro for recording everything. Jerking camera is a problem if someone want to follow you. GoPro does have a fisheye effect, and some parts will be blurry, but even a slightly blurry image is OK if original PPT presentation is available.
For those who want to something like this:
Combine presentation and video with http://presentz.org/ (open source, look it up on Github) or even better use http://www.openeya.org/ (again open source) when creating materials.
Source: I work at one small Polytechnic in southeastern Europe. We use an Moodle LMS complemented with video, and have a group which comes with all the fancy gear and record classes (and in the end recording look like Mr. Lands introduction). Due to my small enrollment my classes are marked as less important, and I use a cheap 1080p action camera which looks great if the lighting is decent.
Oooh, a new series! I had watched a set of his lectures filmed a few years back and learned a lot. I especially enjoyed his segments on generating sound with microcontrollers. Great stuff!
For those complaining about video quality, get over yourselves. We’re lucky to be a fly on the wall of Bruce’s fantastic lecture series. Thanks Bruce!
Hopefully, complaining about the video quality will result in someone taking a few relatively simple measures to improve it for the next series of lectures.
You are welcome to volunteer to do the camera work during future lectures. I’m sure Bruce will appreciate the offer.
I don’t think he’ll appreciate it. I know I’m not good at it. But there are plenty of people who can advise properly.
Bruce is a great guy. I have watched his earlier lectures, and he produces a lot of open source materials. An example to follow, fellow professors.
“For example i understand way faster the written english than spoken.”
Last I READ, science says we get 90% of our input from vision & 10% from audio. Many folks can speed read. I read 600wpm easily at 12, while Kennedy reputedly could speak at 600, but v few could understand him.