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COMPSYS301 – Hardware Software Systems

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Long days in the labs with all the lights off, overflowing bins, and an overheated lab filled with the entire part III compsys cohort. This was my semester in a nutshell. Sounds horrible right? True. But for some reason, I kind of miss it. It’s been a few days since my final implementation for this course and I thought that I’d write about it while it’s still fresh in my mind! I remember walking into class on the first day of the semester and the lecturers telling us that we had to submit our teams by 6pm the next day! My first bit of advice if you are taking this course soon, is to make sure you know who you want to work with well before the semester starts and contact them ASAP. With this being a design course, there is no exam (woo!) but you will end up spending up to 80% of your semester working on this project (boo!). The goal for the semester was to create a line following autonomous robot. There was a projector in the lab which projected the maze onto the ground, and by c...
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Semester 2, Part III - Update!

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I know these posts are totally out of order but I thought it would be appropriate to post an update with how my semester is going so far. Currently we’re in the first week of our mid-sem break after a very long and hectic first-half of semester 2 which involved a lot of programming in C, analogue circuit design and last minute assignments (and an absolutely incredible engineering revue – the show was a huge success!!). So I'm going to just summarise my semester so far, and hopefully give you an insight on how Part III compsys is going so far for me! COMPSYS301 is our big project paper for the semester and we’re working in groups of four to program a robot to find the shortest path out of a maze (which is projected onto the ground). So far, we’ve had to design a light sensing circuit and have been told that it’s the last time that we will get the chance to design our own PCBs! (unless you choose to do more electrical-ish stuff next year, that is). We’re using a PSoC 5LP to ...
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Job Hunting

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Finding a job. Probably the second most stressful part of an engineering degree- right after the very demanding workload. But it’s always a good excuse to procrastinate, ‘I have to find a job anyway, so why not look now?’ – me the night before an assignment is due. Getting work hours was such a confusing topic for me, because I didn’t have any friends who had previously done engineering and I was never specifically told about this requirement. So, the whole thing was a real blur- until one COMPSYS201 lecture, we had a guest speaker come in and talk about it in the middle of the first sem. So, if you’re like me and have no clue what all this commotion about getting a job is here’s a heads up: “Practical Work is a core component of your BE(Hons). You're required to complete 800 hours of Practical Work and complete a formal written report. You’ll generally undertake your Practical Work throughout the summer breaks at the end of Parts II and III.” - University of Au...
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Part II - Semester 1

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Although I’m already in my third year of studying compsys, I thought it would be useful if I made some posts to fill you in with what I’ve done so far as part of my degree. So, this one’s dedicated to the first semester of the first year of Computer Systems Engineering (at the University of Auckland). This would be the students second year in engineering but first year in the specialisation. Honestly speaking, the first semester of part II for me was very difficult and didn’t start out as exciting as I had anticipated; but eventually, it all came together and I knew I was in the right place. The four compulsory courses consisted of 2 electrical papers, 1 math paper and 1 compsys paper. As a computer systems student, during this first semester I felt confused and kind of out of place, surrounded by so many electrical students - I wondered if I was in the right place. But I knew what I wanted to do and I kept reminding myself that the best parts were still to come, and that every...
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Compsys Diaries - Entry #1

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After three semesters of studying Computer Systems Engineering, I’ve decided to start this blog. Before each semester, I’m always excited to get started and stuck in to all the exciting things that are lined up for each course coming up. But about two weeks into the semester, we already have three assignments, two labs and a test to start preparing for and I start counting the days till the end of semester. So, I decided to start this little blog for anyone studying compsys or anyone who’s planning to - with hopes that this blog will give them a heads up about what compsys has in store for them. Apart from that, it would be cool for people who aren’t too sure about what Computer Systems Engineering really is to come here and leave with even a vague idea. The Part II student editorial blogs on the university website were really helpful for me and I followed the compsys blog all throughout my second year and it got me really pumped for what was coming. It was where I got the inspir...
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