EC-19.1 What Electronic Systems Do, and the Five Blocks
You can take an ordinary electronic product apart on paper into sensing, computing, actuating, communicating and powering, and say what each part contributes.
Before:nothing requiredUnlocks:PE1-4. Embedded C ProgrammingEC-13. Laboratory Practice, in Sequence
This is the map the rest of the area fills in. The measurements course is the sensing block, the embedded course is the computing block, the networks course is the communicating block and the electrical energy course is the powering block. Meeting the whole shape first means every later course arrives with somewhere to go, instead of being five unrelated subjects a reader is asked to trust will connect later.
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What this subject is responsible for, and the products that come out of it
Electronics and communication covers everything from a hearing aid to a base station, and the range is what makes the subject hard to describe in one sentence. Seeing a few finished products first gives the abstractions something to attach to.
NPTEL: Basic Electronics (IIT Bombay) · CourseSensing: turning something physical into a voltage
Every system starts by converting temperature, light, pressure, sound or motion into an electrical quantity. What the conversion costs in accuracy and speed is the whole content of the measurements course later on.
NPTEL: Design Thinking — A Primer (IIT Madras) · CourseComputing: the part that decides what to do
Between the sensor and the output sits something that applies a rule, and it can be a single component or a processor running code. Which of those is appropriate is a design decision, not a matter of taste.
Actuating: turning a decision back into something physical
A motor, a heater, a speaker or a screen is how the system acts on the world again. Actuators almost always need more power than the computing part can supply directly, which is why the two are rarely wired together.
NPTEL: Basic Electronics (IIT Bombay) · CourseCommunicating and powering, the two blocks every product needs
Something has to carry information to the outside and something has to supply energy to all of it. These two are invisible in a product description and are where a surprising share of the design effort goes.
NPTEL: Design Thinking — A Primer (IIT Madras) · CourseTaking one familiar product apart into the five blocks
Choosing a device you own and naming its five blocks turns the model from a diagram into a habit. The exercise is worth repeating on two or three products before moving on.
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