Never heard of that subject area before but I just read up on it a little and it sounds a lot more interesting than what I'm doing! What sort of project did you do?
Yeah, straight maths degrees are quite... dry. Certainly not for everyone. I really enjoyed studying it at A-level, but now not so much! I thought my second year might strike a little more interest from me but instead of studying Lagrangian Systems and Diophantine Equations which I might've actually enjoyed, I foolishly opted for another probability module: an area I despise! So... looking forward to that!
I had to take two runs at those words to pronounce them
You couldn't speak to your lecturers about possibly swapping to the modules you'd enjoy more or is it a case that they are already full and it's just tough luck?
I was on a team of three and we had to basically set up three modular production system (MPS) stations together sort of like a mini production line and attach a HMI in the form of a touch-screen which would allow an operator to receive feedback from and interact with the program. We also had to implement an ASi bus system on one of the stations as well. While it was easy with regards to not having to build very much, though one of the other guys did make a nice stand for the touchscreen, it sometimes felt like we were whacking our heads off a brick wall as the Siemens software didn't always want to play ball.
In the end we had three different coloured items fed into a magazine on one end and have them passed over to the other end with the parts either being drilled, not drilled or rejected based upon decisions made by the operator on the touch panel. The stations also provided feedback such as "magazine empty" or "testing failed" to alert the operator to any problems and supplementing the big flashy lights on the front control panels.
Overall though it was very interesting and I'm looking forward to next years project, already in discussion with the lecturer in charge of the projects so I can do a bit of research over the summer.
Here's a wee picture of the final product:
Me, Swine Flu, never!
I'm doing a Microbiology degree so it can lead to places with nasty things, but being undergrads the farthest people in my year have got so far is working with stuff like measles. I'd love to end up working with the really nasty stuff but I've somehow ended up in an environmental biology lab mucking about to see how certain chemicals affect growth. All being well I'll be testing them for causing cancer in a PhD project, which is nasty enough I guess, but I'll always have my eyes open for Biosafety Level 3 or 4 grade stuff...!
Mechatronics sounds pretty awesome though, any particular kind of automation you're working with?
As for the degree grade, I know what you mean, I think I'm just a bit fed up. I've promised myself a SSD if I get a first in the hope it'll encourage me!
Isn't it just amazing how university has the ability to suck most of the fun out of doing nearly everything, all this learning craic when we just want to play with the toys, me the robots, you the highly virulent, potentially life threatening diseases.
So long as it's not an STD
Can't wait until mine are over, have a new GPU coming which Fatboy has very kindly helped me out with (of course that was my present to myself for all my hard study, at least I carried through with one of them)
, next year will be 15 hours..
