As a junior majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at USC, I have just begun taking upper-division EE classes, such as Signal Processing (EE483) and Electromagnetism (EE370). Before I really start diving into these classes, I want to reflect on one of my favorite lower-division classes at USC.
EE 202 (Linear Circuits) is a class most electrical engineering and biomedical engineering majors take in their sophomore year. This class covers the basics of circuit theory, starting from Ohm’s Law to analyze simple resistors through Laplace and phasor analysis of complex circuits, which include resistors, capacitors, inductors, amplifiers, etc. If you do not know how these components work, EE 202 will give you a foundational knowledge of all of these.
Most EE classes involve a final project that combines knowledge from the class with practical, hands-on experience. However, EE 202’s final project is by far my favorite, which is why this class was one of my favorite classes at USC. All students build, from scratch, an electric guitar with a filter to impact the sound of the guitar in some way. I built a filter to fully suppress the note ‘G’ without impacting any nearby notes.
This project was done in stages. The first stage involved theoretical calculations for how the filter should be built and with what components. Then, the second stage involved building the circuit on a breadboard to test the theoretical calculations. Finally, the last stage of design involved using KiCAD to convert the circuit into a multi-layer PCB board. Designing a PCB (printed circuit board) is incredibly important and opens the door to many more advanced projects! If you look at the title photo of this blog, you can see part of the PCB schematic on KiCAD.
Once the circuit design was complete, we learned basic woodworking techniques and got to use USC’s Baum Family Maker Space to construct the body of the guitar. While not directly related to EE, building the guitar was a valuable and enjoyable experience, and I learned so much about woodworking and soldering in the process.
Most of my EE classes at USC have had similarly exciting final projects; however, EE 202 sticks out in my memory because of how unique the project is and how, at the end of the year, I had a fully functional guitar (I still do not know how to play it, but I try from time to time).
