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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Sensors and Sensor Circuit Design by University of Colorado Boulder

4.6
stars
1,101 ratings

About the Course

This course can also be taken for academic credit as ECEA 5340, part of CU Boulder’s Master of Science in Electrical Engineering degree. After taking this course, you will be able to: ● Understand how to specify the proper thermal, flow, or rotary sensor for taking real-time process data. ● Implement thermal sensors into an embedded system in both hardware and software. ● Add the sensor and sensor interface into a microprocessor based development kit. ● Create hardware and firmware to process sensor signals and feed data to a microprocessor for further evaluation. ● Study sensor signal noise and apply proper hardware techniques to reduce it to acceptable levels. You will need to buy the following components to do the two course projects based on the videos in this module. Note that if you have already purchased the PSOC 5LP PROTOTYPING KIT, you do not need to buy it again. These parts may be purchased off the Digikey web site, www. Digikey.com. Or, you may obtain the specs from the site, and purchase them elsewhere. These are the part numbers typed out, so you can copy and paste them into the Digikey web site. You will need one of each part. 428-3390-ND NHD-0216BZ-RN-YBW-ND 570-1229-ND A105970CT-ND Additional equipment needed: • Wire - various gauges and lengths • Breadboard • Oscilloscope – suggested models are: o PICOSCOPE 2204A-D2 available on www.digikey.com or o Digilent 410-324 | OpenScope MZ available on www.newark.com Depending on your budget, you can also investigate these models: o Hantek HT6022BE20MHz - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009H4AYII o SainSmart DSO212 - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074QBQNB7 o PoScope Mega50 USB - https://www.robotshop.com/en/poscope-mega50-usb-mso-oscilloscope.html o ADALM2000 - https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/analog-devices-inc./ADALM2000/7019661...

Top reviews

CM

May 28, 2020

This course is really tailormade and covers many aspect of sensor and sensor circuit design in minute details. The assignments and course project ensure the students engagement and learning.

NC

Sep 16, 2020

It was amazing experience about how the course was so professionally held .It was amazing i have learning different things right from practical to theory it absolutely brilliant.

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1 - 25 of 254 Reviews for Sensors and Sensor Circuit Design

By paradigminversion

Nov 30, 2021

I liked everything about the course except the exams. They were ambiguous and sometimes the answers were wrong. Furthermore, there's no feedback on why my answers were wrong. Whenever, only 11% of students pass an exam...trust me it's not the students.

However, the presentation and course content was great and very relevant to my work.

By Justin J K

Aug 27, 2019

It was an overall OK course. I expected more but considering the money I paid, I think it was as OK.

I understand learning hardware from online would be tough, but at least I expected to have all lecture slides available. I think overall there were 3 or 4 lectures not available.

The only quiz I found useful was from Week 4, but you may find difficult to answer those questions if you study with lecture materials only. Also, for the circuit design, generally it isn't always obvious the annotation of components. For example, R1 and R2 in the inverted op-amp are not universally the same. They assumed you to remember the op-amp design from the lecture slides. You can still solve the problem because generally, you want to have gain.. However, in the engineering field, you never assume anything. That is an inappropriate attitude.

All other quizzes were not asking important questions. I found 40% of questions were not helpful. If you don't have an industrial background or education in electrical engineering, the quiz may mislead the importance aspect of sensor design.

I found learning PSoC was very useful. However, if you don't have a background in C programming or Arduino, you will struggle. PSoC video lectures were nice, but that would be all you have. You will get no other help what so ever. You will find Google is the best help you can get.

What frustrated me the most was, I completed the PSoC project, and it turned out to be, I didn't have to submit it. You will get no feedback on your project. Also, the answer key for the code is not available for you. The project answer keys in week 5 say that you can download PSoC project zip file to compare with your answer, but you cannot. You can download everything else but that.

I found interesting, that they listed the cost of all extra parts that you need to purchase for this course except Nscope. Nscope cost was about $100, which you can purchase from Amazon.

Summary.

The course will provide you a guideline that you can study within.

If you are interested in temperature sensor design this course may helpful.

You will learn about high-level noise handling.

Some of the lecture slides were missing.

Overall, quizzes were not thoughtfully created.

This is elementary graduate-level course. You would need an EE background.

It would be difficult if you have no experiences in C programming or Arduino.

You will not get any feedback on your design project nor proper answer.

You may spend in total $130 additional to the course charge.

The only support you can get is from Google.

By Kadiri C

Jan 26, 2019

This course is an intermediate level course.In fact it the most basic course for every electronic student who want to fight with sensors and its applications. The professor teaching in a cool pretty way such that any grade student can tackle with the course effectively.This course has financial aid option .So i rated it 5 . Fellow competitors please opt this course for better sharpening of your skill set.

By Rebecca G

May 13, 2019

The videos are good enough. The final project is frustrating as the leap between what was given in unit 2 and what was expected in unit 5 is pretty huge. The big down grade is the serious lack of input by instructors / TAs/ etc. You can't just throw the material out there are hope it makes sense... it always makes sense to the instructor, right ?

By Thomas H

Feb 16, 2019

Very nice course. I enjoy the lectures very much. Unfortunately the forum is no active, very few questions, and no answer at all. I would love to take the specification if there is more support from course provider.

By Carlos N G

Jul 2, 2019

The PSoC is a great technology that I didn't know before. I'm going to use it at home in my personal projects and at work as quick prototyping and testing.

By Sylvain G

Apr 19, 2020

Great course to start with various type of sensors, and get a basic overview of the PSOC5 possibilities.

Lectures contains a lot of valuable information, videos are well explained and easy to follow as long as you have basic electronic engineering knowledges.

However, I think most of the quizz questions are too easy, and just check if you can refer to a specific time in the video. Some quizz question, especially in week 5 about the thermistor lab project are not asked correctly, and the answer is amiguous (for instance several answer can apply, but you can select only one). Usually, those questions refer to what is said exactly on the lecture video (if something is true but not said explicitly, it's assumed to be wrong).

Week 4 quizz about sensor noise was the only one I think is well designed (but there is still one question I can't solve).

Would have been great if it was possible to share the lab project, and maybe have someone to check if it's working properly, as the course is designed, it's completely optionnal to perform this project (but everyone should do it as it's a great way to learn.

Still glad I took this course as I learned a lot, but it could be improved.

By Md H

Mar 6, 2019

This course has helped me understand the basics and intermediate level of Embedding System of Sensors especially Temperature sensor. It would certainly help me in my professional career and help in advancement in day to day work. The content and methodology is great. As I live in India where all the requisite components for the course were could be availed by importing only which took 2 months in total. It would be better if you purchase the materials well in advance. The content is great but not like spoon fed. You have to go through each step the trainer asks you follow, read the suggested material carefully to build basics and then only you will gain excellent knowledge. As I am a beginner to C Programming and Embedded System, it would take me much more than 5 weeks.

By Jesper B C

Jun 10, 2020

Great course with plenty of high value videos.

One thing that I found unfortunate was that time was spent on interfacing the PSOC unit with an LCD. Industry 4.0 calls for IOT solutions, which needs the data to be transferred from the sensor/microcontroller to a PC rather than an LCD. I wish the teachers would have discussed how to establish a serial connection, either UART or I2C, between PSOC and PC.

By Bharti r k

May 17, 2020

The course is very interactive, its great chance for me to review my engineering classes study. Now I work with maintenance section where I can use my learning in my professional life.

Thanks to team courser.

By Chandrashekhar M M

May 28, 2020

This course is really tailormade and covers many aspect of sensor and sensor circuit design in minute details. The assignments and course project ensure the students engagement and learning.

By tanmay n

Mar 30, 2020

It was amzing experience about how the course was so professionally held .It was amzing i have learnt different things right from practical to theory it absolutely brilliant

By Manuel C

Feb 21, 2019

This course is a great overview of thermal and flow sensors and how to implement them as well as select them. It's also a great course in using the Cypress PSoC.

By Shane m

Apr 4, 2019

Great intro to sensors and embedded systems. Coding is simplified but that's probably good for an intro class.

By Aakriti B

Mar 19, 2019

The course was amazing. The quizzes had few issues - even though my answers were right, the prompt said it was wrong. My answers matched according to the lectures as well as the slides, but somehow every iteration turned out wrong. This way it was hard to score maximum on those quizzes. Other than that, I loved the course and I learned a lot. Thanks for the material.

By Richard J

Feb 12, 2020

Overall a really useful course that gives a grounding in a few different types of sensor or transducer that are common in industry and control applications.

Some reading around the course will greatly aid in the understanding of the concepts and equations that are used.

By J A P

Dec 7, 2019

I liked the theoretical instructional videos, but the practical application (PSoC programming) videos need work. I would also like to see an answer key for the quizzes with explanations (after receiving a passing grade).

By Enrique V

Apr 25, 2020

This course is very good. Concise, very informative, and provides a lot of useful material. I would like to include more on filtering, both software and hardware.

By RAFIH P

Jun 14, 2020

It helps me to know about various types of sensors and its working.But the problem is it includes some tough questions in quiz that cant digest.

By Ahmed M A F

Mar 9, 2020

This course is very interesting and useful in terms of sensors. It also helps the learner on how to choose sensors from different choices (temperature, rotary motion, flowmeters), and is useful in dealing with sensor signals and how to deal with signal amplifiers and helps you to learn the types of noise which have an effect on signal.

By akshat m

Nov 2, 2019

The video explanations are succinct and really lucid and fun to approach and focuses on most of the issues that we as students face at rudimentary stages. Really helpful for getting an overview of sensor configuration and application in everyday life and how to approach new ways to use them effectively with minimal attenuation.

By PALLAVI M

Sep 2, 2020

It was too interesting to learn many things about sensors and their applications ,thermistors and their working , interfaces and RTDs , thermocouples , PSoC n hardware n sofware components, amplifiers n sensor noise etc.....

i felt that lecturers are too good n they explained concepts very well....

thank you!!!!!

By HASSAN B T

Jul 14, 2020

Thank you so much for the course. I really loved the way I learned and lectures were delivered. I am an electrical engineer and this course has given me an insight about sensor types, designing, calibration and programming.

By Nofri W C

Sep 17, 2020

It was amazing experience about how the course was so professionally held .It was amazing i have learning different things right from practical to theory it absolutely brilliant.

By Ryan C

Feb 10, 2019

This is a fairly well put together course, and I recommend it for anyone looking to gain knowledge of thermal and flow sensors and signal conditioning. One of my favorite things about the course was that I learned about the PSOC5 microcontroller, which is really a configurable system on chip. It is a very cool tool that I will likely use in the future! One complaint about the course is that the quizzes can be frustrating because some of the questions are worded strangely (to the point of being confusing), and the questions sometimes don't do a good job of testing your actual knowledge of the material and seem very arbitrary (sometimes it seems like they are trying to trick you into picking the wrong answer). Also, it took me a while to figure out that, in the multiple choice questions, the square check boxes mean that you can select more than one item, and the round check boxes mean that only one box can be selected. Recommendations for improvement would be to ensure that PDFs of the slides are provided in every lecture (the links we missing on some lectures), and to gear the quiz questions more toward material comprehension and less toward 'did this person watch the video.' All in all, I recommend this course.