We decided to finish our November strong with perhaps our most popularly demanded workshop, Computer Vision workshop. Led by IEEE Penn State President, Fernando Leira, our members were given a look into various neural network facial recognition libraries, and their use in practice.

In this workshop, we taught our members the basics of soldering, what to do, what not to do, and everything in between. Our goal was to create a circuit board with an LED ring that would eventually be controlled by a programmed Arduino ATtiny13 microcontroller. Upon connecting to a power source, the ring of LED lights would count upward in binary with each light representing a power of 2.

As the semester ramped up, so did we! In our Internet of Things workshop, we programmed an Arduino ESP8266 core which created a small web server that could be accessed via a mobile connection. From there, we used the webserver to turn on and off two LEDs remotely.

As the semester ramped up, so did we! In our Internet of Things workshop, we programmed an Arduino ESP8266 core which created a small web server that could be accessed via a mobile connection. From there, we used the webserver to turn on and off two LEDs remotely.

To kick off our October, we at IEEE decided to introduce our members to Arduino’s open-source electronics platform as most of our planned workshops are centered around Arduino projects. In this workshop, we walked our members through downloading the Arduino IDE, and then taught them the ins and outs of the Arduino programming language. This would suit them well for our later projects, and even our upcoming projects.

The IEEE PCB Design and Fabrication workshop, led by Projects Committee member Ethan Tabler, introduced our members to PCB Design using Autodesk EAGLE. Using predesigned and previously ordered boards, members then completed their flashing LED circuit.