Using CTI for Training - Case Study

[swatts]

Top of the Morning to you Trainers,

Last month I did a 2-day on-site training course, using CTI hardware and Grove Peripherals. I have to say I felt it went well and was fun to give.

I'll give some details of the course and the hardware used here. Our general rate at DSH is $2000 a day for a class, plus hardware costs.

The hardware costs were about $75.

Day 1

We started with installing community edition on the students PCs. With mixed success!

Session 1 followed the CTI hands-on pretty closely, but re-written for the Grove system.

The hardware was the Grove LED module and the task was to switch it on and off using various loops.

Session 2 concentrated on data types and structures.

The practicals used a Grove Sound Sensor, a buzzer and a USB microscope to play with data.

Session 3 Looked at handling data in files and databases.

Here the practical stored loudness sensed using the sound sensor to file, then we create a database and store the acquired loudness away, always showing the loudest sound recorded.

Day 2

Session 4 talked about modular design. 

The practical was taking the non-abstracted drivers and creating an abstraction layer above it. Hopefully demonstrating why you would want to put in the effort to do this.

Session 5 talked about basic patterns and focused on QMH and State Machines.

We created a user interface that can be changed using the Grove gesture sensor module.

What went well

I wanted a wow-factor moment for each of the practicals and I think I succeeded, the students didn't get bored and that was a one of my main goals!

What I would change

We finished about 3ish on the 2nd day, I think an extra session where we build an deploy something useful would pull it all together. So I will work on section 6 in the coming weeks.

We added some details based on questions asked as we went through the sessions, so they have been tested in the field.

Conclusions

The fantastic CTI firmware gave us I2C communication and this has opened up a world of engaging and inexpensive hardware to play with. The Grove system allowed reliable and easy swapping out of hardware, the different boards allowed me to discuss systems with ad-hoc demonstrations. The USB microscope is a useful tool to have and being able to manipulate images in LabVIEW is a real flex, for the price of a couple of coffees from a coffee shop. 

I'm still working on making the structure of the course open-source friendly (it's a bit big at the mo), when I have I will share on the CTI github page.