Most of this is common sense.  However, it does include some important points to remember as you progress from class work to simulation to hardware.

Normal calendar for room 50

Lab bench assignments for 330C and 50N

Our system administrator formerly maintained a web page at http://energy.ece.uiuc.edu/sysadmin/.  This includes information of general interest to computer users, though it is now out of date.

It is important that we all work together to make sure the computers in 327 EL have everything they need.  If you find any deficiency, or have any problem, go to http://www.ece.uiuc.edu/help and fill out a trouble ticket.  If the item does not get resolved, contact Jonathan Kimball or Mark Rosedale to follow up.

As power students, faculty, or staff, you should have access in general to \\ece-powernts2, though not necessarily all of the sub-folders.  You should also have a home directory on ece-powernts2, which should show up as H:\ when you log in to a computer in 327 EL.  We use \\ece-powernts2\exchange as a place to share files for team projects, and \\ece-powernts2\zdrive\ as a place to put large files that would exceed your quota on H:\.  Both of these are cleaned out regularly: exchange at the beginning of each new term, zdrive weekly.  If you have a continuing project that requires space, fill out a help ticket and explain what you want.  There is a dedicated share for continuing projects with folders defined as needed.  If you just want to keep the files or data, CD-R media and drives are available.

In addition, it is important that the Power & Energy Systems Area, as a group, learns and evolves.  Again and again, new students re-create work that was previously performed but poorly documented.  This wastes time, and minimizes the previous student's impact.  Often, at the end of a hardware project, we have circuit boards or other devices that are clearly useful, but cannot be made to work without knowing how to hook things up.  Almost as important, none of the thoughts about filter design, etc., are available, only the resulting component values.  Software may only be available in executable form, which cannot be used as the basis for a new project.

To help us grow as an organization, we have created a documentation system.  It is still in its infancy and needs everyone's input to make it a better system.  It can be found at \\ece-powernts2\ECE Power Design Archives.  There are several different types of documents categorized, including mechanical drawings, circuit boards, software, simulation, and generic design and specification documents.  Each main folder includes a readme that describes the process for filing a document.  Contact Jonathan Kimball at or in person (349 EL, or often in 50N) with comments and suggestions.

What should be documented?  Anything that you want to survive past your time here at UIUC.  Anything potentially useful to the next student or other researcher.  Definitely, any fabricated PCBs.  Any mechanical design that you do, although probably not designs that the machine shop does.  If in doubt, go ahead and document it.  This shouldn't be an onerous task.  We are asking for something like an hour at the end of a project that will save the next person weeks or months of re-creating your work.

This is also an important step in learning as an engineer.  The system was in part adopted from Jonathan's experience in industry at Motorola and Baldor.  Ultimately, the work product of every designer is the document that tells someone how to implement the design, or what it can be used for.  In an industrial setting, there are many more controls and approvals.  For our purposes, it is enough that a document exists and is accessible.