ECE-NTUA Lab of Electronics and Telecommunications: The achievements of the young engineers
A little bit of knowledge, determination, spirit and imagination plus the awareness of the real-world needs will surely spark and generate creativity. The pleasure of creation will turn the gear-train of experience, knowledge, science. The requirements for providing solutions to practical problems, combined with fresh imagination, past knowledge and experience, plus a strong feeling of creativity, have all triggered a new progress cycle and an advancement towards new inventions.
This time, this never-ending cycle was kick started in the 3rd semester by a group of ECE-NTUA students that decided to create a new device that exceeded the requirements of the educational standard. After some long-lasting conversations and brainstorming, the students Dimitrios Kakouris, Vassiliki Missiri, Ioannis Rekkas, Georgios Anastasiou, Stefanos Anagnostou and Spiros Papadopoulos, accompanied by their Professor Konstantinos Politopoulos, came up with a draft electronic design within the practical and theoretical framework of the 3rd-semester coursework. The project starts with the modulation of a sound signal (pulse width modulation) near a frequency band centred on 70 kHz followed by optical transmission via an infrared led. The modulation was implemented in such a manner that would make the recovery of the sound signal as simple as possible, deeming it independent from the volume-level of the received signal. Based on this draft design, the students split into groups of two and designed, calculated and developed the transmitter and the receiver. The final result was an amazing quality of signal transmission and music reception.
You can read about the thoughts and emotions of the creators in the following text below, which is part of a conversation between them and their Professor:
“The circuits we made are just the spark that will light-up a bigger fire in education, namely the further engagement and appreciation for the world of electronics. Who could have guessed from the beginning of the 3rd semester that we would reach a point of realizing sound transmission through light? Surely there is room for improvement and future upgrades. If only there was more time and resources provided by the University to support the participation of students in this kind of projects.
We wish that next-year students will also engage in similar extracurricular projects, because, no matter how many courses cover the theoretical part of a subject, nothing is more important than this vast stream of knowledge and experience that one gain when really digging into the electronic, ideas, technology and projects.”