Experiences from the Texas Instruments Analog Design Contest-Phase1a

The Texas Instruments Analog design Contest is divided into III Phases ,Phase -1a, Phase-1b and Phase 2.Phase-1a involved working on the the Texas Instruments Analog Systems Lab Kit or ASLK for short.The kit arrived at our college on September the 20th or so. We did not start working on it right away ( as we probably should have ), We thought at the time, and I quote Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes ) "We work better under pressure". It turned out later however that "We work only under pressure! "

2-days to D-day.

All teams started working on the kit at the same time ( caused a few clashes ! ). The first part of our problem statement ( problem statement c ) was simple and straightforward and the results from experiments matched the ones obtained from simulation on TINA-TI.The second part, however caused a few problems as it involved embedding an analog multiplier into the given circuits and obtaining plots for different values of control voltage. We had never worked on or even heard of an analog multiplier until then! It took us a while to figure it out from its datasheet and start to work with it.There also wasn't a reliable TINA model of the multiplier available to simulate. As a result, the experiment results we obtained weren't fantastic.

1-day to D-day.
The other teams from our college were already furiously working on their reports and videos ( Yes. A video was required to be made ) while we were yet to obtain the results.The clashes over which team got to use the kit did not help either.

The output of the multiplier with two sine wave inputs

5-hours to D-day.
We tried to change the scale factor pins to 1 ( from its default 10 ) and ended up burning a few pots ( potentiometers ) in the process ( They all caught fire rather brilliantly ) and then out of nowhere, one of them happened to....well not catch on fire and it worked ! the whole setup worked ! and we got all our readings beautifully !

The hard part was hardly over!
The output readings were noted down.It was 10 in the night ( 2 hours to deadline ) and we were all wondering whether to stay over at college. There was still loads of work to be done, graphs had to be plotted, results were to be tabulated and the video was still to be made. All within one hour. Me and Jithin started getting bits together for the report while Akshsay and Karthik plotted the graphs.

11:30 came and went and so did 12:00. I think a modified version of Murphy's law can aptly be quoted here. "When meeting a deadline, everything that can go wrong , WILL go wrong ! I was working on some of the image files when out of the BLUE, my HP laptop, running on an I7 processor displayed the infamous Blue Screen Of Death ( Commonly known to fellow windows users as BSOD ) for the first time! The timing could not have been more perfect!

12:50
We worked together and finally managed to upload the report from Jithin's laptop albeit 50 minutes late.In a word, the whole experience could be described as "Chaotic"

After this ordeal, we played 'worms' on Akshay's phone, Karthik played Call of duty and we watched a few big bang theory episodes.We also got to walk around UVCE at 3 am. Yeah, that part was pretty awesome !