Member (FL23)
I joined IEEE at Washington University to continue my involvement in clubs that are usually very welcoming and good group of folks, and I was not wrong. Immediately when I joined in the Fall, I was welcomed with two large events that happen every fall, the Black Box Competition and the Vertigo Academic Rave where IEEE builds and manges the dance floor.
As a member I was able to compete in the 2023 Analog Black Box competition, hosted at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, where it was my first time trying to piece together a circuit that I couldn’t see. For the analog part, you were given a box with 4-5 connections to different nodes in a simple circuit with 4-6 components, which consisted of 2 non-linear components (diode or transistor) and the rest linear (resistor, capacitor, inductor). This was extremely difficult and fun, and I was able to win 3rd place in the competition.
President (YR24)
Once I was elected president, my goal was to create a set of approximately 30 times (5x6 grid), that were robust and easily created. The previous tiles were almost all completely destroyed, with the connectors failing and the physical construction and structure also failing.
The mechanical portions of the tiles were completed in the Spring of 2024, simplifying the design to only require 20 screws while the old tiles required over 40 screws, each with a nut, and a dozen or so angle brackets. The new design was able to withstand multiple members jumping on it simultaneously without the structure flexing or failing.
The Fall semester was much busier with the electrical and control system needing to be diagnosed and fixed for over 30 tiles. Since the LEDs for the system are not as widely available, we salvaged all the old LED arrays and I diagnosed which LEDs were faulty due to failures in previous years. This required a lot of circuits, instruments, and system knowledge to complete. After a lot of de-soldering and re-soldering of very small LED modules, we were able to fix and construdct 33 working tiles.
The control system was changed to use an ESP32 to control all 30 tiles and using WiFi was able to communicate to a tablet or other WiFi device to control the dance floor with any patterns and colors the heart desires. The system worked flawlessly and this was the first time in 4 years the dance floor had worked the entire night without a single failure. A picture with the members present for the final moments before the event, I’m in the center, is seen below. The dance floor did not just display stuff for the image, it had some really cool effect, don’t take my word for it, see for yourself below.
But that was not all, WashU was hosting the STL IEEE chapter BlackBox competition, which also fell on me to design. I worked with others, not competing, to help design and make the circuits required for both sections of the competition. I worked with Ethan Morton to design the system for the digital part and then made the HDL and circuits used for the competition itself. For the Analog competition I worked with Keeler Tardiff to solder the analog circuit together and other to construct the black boxes that housed the circuitry. I had still put in about 70% of the work to make this happen.
I worked with Razi Khan to organize the forms for participation and the boxed lunches each person ordered. The competition was extremely successful but do wish I had some more time to organize the logistics and be more in touch with the other schools, but we had a really good turnout with 16 participants competing and a couple professors to judge the work done by students. It was an amazing event and a great end to my leadership of IEEE at WashU.
The solution for the Analog section can be found here. A picture of an analog group which competed is shown below.
The solution and handout for the Digital section can be found here. A picture of a digital group that competed is shown below.
