The first steps...

Please note, this post do contain a few jargons. Dun worry, if you dint get them, it doesnt matter much.

It was around 1500hrs on 24th, saturday. Me, gautam, karan and aakash in the instrumentation technology lab. /* Great minds at work :P */ We were mainly trying to realise a stepper card and test our steper motor. /* If you dunno what it is, dun worry, lemme explain, briefly. Stepper motor is a kind of motor, which rotates in steps. The number of steps can be controlled, hence you can get a controlled rotatory motion. They are considered to be among the best options available for controlled motion. Now the stepper card, you can consider it as a sweet and simple electronic circuit with a few ICs, which helps you to control and drive the stepper motor. */
So, the great minds were busy in fabricating there own stepper card using the ICs in the lab. Well we did make a few alterantions, used a signal generator instead of a timer ciruit /* if u dun get it, fine, no probs, its not much important*/. Basically we wished to see the stepper motor rotating. It was our first experience with stepper motor. A few days back, we learnt the basic fund of the stepper card from a senior, but never saw it bieng implemented. Fine, I do possess some experience in electronic circuitery /* courtesy APOGGE 2006*/ and gautam had his junior college experience added to his APOGEE experience. We were pretty confident to get the first steps from our stepper motor. We prepared the requiered circuitery on the breadboard. Made a few checks for our shift register using LEDs. Corrected our circuit a bit. After that, connected our whole circuit with the stepper motor.
It must work.
Switched the signal generator on.
Adjusted its frequency and output voltage.
Switched on the power supply to our circuit.
It must work.
But obviously, it dint.
If you are a good programmmer, your program will never work as expected in the first run. If you are a good electonic enginner /* I guess, that's a better word than electricain :P */, your circuit will never work in the first run.
The behaviour of our circuit confirmed my statement.
We made a few checks, dint alterned anything in the circuit though. Switched it on, dint worked, repeated the cycle once or twice more. This time we were just analysing the circuit again, without switching it off.
I brought my face closer to the motor, heard some movement. Took the motor in hands, and hey, it was moving, though randomly. The random movement can be explained for we dint knew the sequence of the wires in the motor. So, those random movements meant our circuitery was working.
Bingo!!!
Our aim was also to find out the proper sequence of the wires of the motor, it was hit and trial /* alas, we dint get the datasheet for our motor on the net*/. Altered the wire sequence once, result, random motion. No problem, lets give another try. This time, we did succeed. The motion was unidirectional. Yeah!!!
But hey, we still dint get the result we expected. The motor was rotating in one direction, the speed was controlled by frequency we provided from the function generator. But there was this one thing...
As soon as someone comes close to it, it starts rotating and stops as soon as the person moves away. And within a minute, the motor showed its loyalty towards me. It was like... if I come close to the motor, if rotates, I move away, it stops. With the other three, its behaviour was rather random, but with me, it always did it like, rotates as I come close, stops as I move away. We did make sure that our movement donot affect the circuitery anyhow, but to our surprise, the stepper motor was workin as a sensory motor, being perfectly sensitive to me :P. We tried with other motor, it worked kinda o.k. initially, but after a minute or so, it followed the same trend. Our reaction... first of all, we were really really happy, we were actually able to rotate the motor in our first trial. And that behavoiur, well, I'll prefer saying, that loyal behaviour :P was astonishing us, more than it was worrying us.
Though, till the end of the day, we were not able to figure out the reason for its loyalty towards me, we were really happy.
Celebrated the evening in Sky /* for non-BITSian, its a really nice place to hang out, with Pappuji's Skylab close in, which is the only place were we do get some good burger and pizzas in pilani. */. One burger was not enough, but we soon realised that it was veg-grub in our mess that night /* for non-BITSian, veg-grub = some tasty food in mess*/. So the celebration lasted till night. But we had to sleep early, we had to leave for delhi the next morning.

FIND OF THE DAY : There is not much difference in Computer Science and Electronics. Neither a good program nor a good circuit works in the first run. :P

Hummfff... Presentation finally over.

So... finally I got a lil' time to blog. You beleive it or not.. I am really busy these days. But still, the presentation we had on saturday, I can't miss to post that incident. Yeah.. it was the first of its kind experience, for me atleast.
We had to give a presentation on our report titled 'Recent Trends in Mobile Communication'. We had already submitted the report. I did start the work for presentation quite early. But then without a deadline nearing... it was really difficult, gave up in the middle. What's the fun in completing work when you dont even know when is the deadline. I guess I started off was more than enough.
This saturday, we thought it would be better if we ask our instructor regarding the deadline. So, we did go to class that day. Entered the classroom, it was 1200 hrs. Somehow were able to get through it. But one good thing did happen, we got our test 2 papers, my score was not bad, I can improve. Before leaving the room, we asked our sir...
Me and gautam : Sir, when are the presentations scheduled???
Sir : Today, and tomorrow, and next weekend.
Me and gautam : ( bit surprised and bit frightened ) Sir, can we give it tomorrow???
SIr : Check out your ID no., in the notice, you'll have to present accordingly.
Me and gautam : ( where the hell was the notice put up, we checked in the morning only) Fine sir. What time???
Sir : Today 2-4... tomorrow 3-5.
Me and gautam : (Baaghoooo.....)
We ran like anything. Just an hour... lunch.. what lunch??? we had presentation in an hour. I went to mess, those parathas were really tempting, thought once to take them in paper or something to the room, but they were too hot, had to satisfy with a few packets of biscuit and namkeen.
1304 hrs. Me sitting in front of gautam's lapT. Where's the ppt file??? yeah, the incomplete one. It took us over 200 seconds to find out /* we dint even remember the name of the file, google desktop search was of not much help*/. And mind it, in such situations, two hundred seconds does matter. Finally, opened that incomplete presentation. Copy paste from the report was the only option. Somehow completed the work in 70 minutes. But hey, it was not a submission, but a delivery. We had to present something. And yeah, it needs some preparation. But we dint had the time. Just took the presentation in gautam's mp3 player. I wish we had a hardcopy of the report /* on which the whole presentation was based */. But alas our wish was not fullfiled. All we did was to note down the topics and subtopics. On the way, we distributed the topics among ourselves. But we had the least idea about what matter was there under those topics. I guess we were really brave to go in with such preparation.
Entered the room 20 minutes late, that dint affect anyone though. One guy was presenting his thing. We discussed whether we should go next or later. I suggested later. But obviously, the day was not good, we were called next.
So, we began our presentation. Gautam started off. The other instructor threw a question straight away, but thank god, we were not that dumb. Gautam answered. That can be considered as a confidence booster :P. But after that, it wasn't so simple. The biggest trouble we both faced... before opening a slide, we had the least idea about what excatly was going to be there. And that copy paste scheme, without breaking the ideas in points, it really troubled us. After opening any slide, it was like, we were searching for some keyword on the slide to start off. That was bad. Sometimes we missed a point or two. Once, I skipped a point, sir promted, hey, you missed that last point. Thanks heaven, I knew the explaination for that thing. Else I was trying to skip a few things which I dint knew well :P. Another instance, sir asked for one thing, I dint excatly knew the answer, tried to blab a bit. But I was wrong. He explained me the thing there only. Fine, I changed the slide. And crap, the answer to his question was right there, had he not told me, I couldn't had realised that. He prompted, "hey, you do know the answer, its there on you slide." I was speechless :-|. This was among a few blunders we made.
While concluding, we made another. But it wasn't excatly our fault. Sir said to the audience i.e. the other students in the course, "why dont you ask any question?? Seems you people have signed some pact, none will ask any question, for everyone;s welfare" :P. At that, gautam promted, "Sir, we are second year students, we dont even know most of the people here". I dont excalty know what was in his mind while he said this, but I am pretty sure that he dint meant the way our instructors interpreted it. They said " It doesnt matter which year you are in. To succeed, you need to put hard work and dedication" . But hey hey hey, we were not giving an excus or something. Why was it interpreted that way????
Finally, he called the next group, we said 'phew' and took out seats. After attending that session, we returned and said "PHEW". So, it was over. I am not sure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that it went this way, and was finally over... but one thing I am sure about is...

FIND OF THE DAY : You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you do or say will be exaggerated or mis-quoted and used against you.

PS : I know this one is repeated, but I really found this thing again :P

Finally some trees outta campus

Finally, found a place greener than our campus, in pilani.

Me and gautam were returning from library /* strange na... these two creatures close to that place */, but its true... we two were there indeed. It was saturday, library timing are till 1800 hrs only. It was around 1750 hrs. We were out of the library main building. But before the brain's command to proceed towards hostel could reach our feet, some other thing caught our attention. We saw a huge sturcture... distant... behind the trees. I had wondered many-a-times about what it was, and till date... I thought that it was a part of CEERI, Pilani.
Today, as we had nothing else to do, I suggested, " hey gautam, lets have a walk down there." The back entrance of CEERI was there only, quite close to library, but I had never been there.
We proceeded. That place was quite good. And as I had already mentioned, it was greener than our campus. Prime reason, no big hostels and stuff. The campus was quite big, we dint had that much time. And as it was the backgate, we landed up in the residential area. The main campus was a lil' far. Just strolled there for a lil' while. There was a lil' market kinda thing close to us. We saw a 'gen' store. Went there... asked the shopkeeper for all the varieties of candies he had. I guess, we wished to have a souvenir from the visit :P. Finally I settled for a pack of cofitos /* hey, i spelt it correctly in the first attempt*/ and gautam with a few chloromint and hajmola candies. And for your kind information, out of those ten cofitos, till now six have found a comfortable place in my stomach. Other two are gonna be there within next 15 minutes or so. The other two, they had to adjust in my friends' stomaches. Fine, let me declare officially... I love cofitos, I love coffee and though this one's going a bit far, but I must admit, I hate tea.
And by the way, the pack which I got today, seems its quite old, the taste it not like what I was lookin for, still.. as I said... I love cofitos.


FIND OF THE DAY : COFITOS still rocks!!!

PS : C.E.E.R.I. -> Central Electrical and Electronics Research Institute

Presentation work started

Its been a little while since I posted something. Have been thinking to post a few things, but never really got time at a stretch to do that. Actually, not even today. Currently working on presentation on the Recent Trends in Mobile Communication, which me and gautam have to give for our elective, Mobile Telecom Networks.
Dun beleive me?? I have proof

Its me, working on Gautam's lapT.

Read the one just below this one first

The stuff in this post do belong to that report submission day only, but wished to had a feel good end for that post. Fine, the thing is... as I said the 'phew' when we were submitted the report to the prof in his chamber, he said, "Fine, I'll see this. And you people be prepared with a presentation on the report within a fortnight, and I guess by now you must be over with the second assignment."
The deadline for second assignment is around ten days from today, enough time :P.
This is known as continous evaluation.

PS : This is just an extension of the previous post.. so no find of the day here.

Report submission : Task accomplished

I was anxiously waiting to write this post, but just dint get the time. Well, actually its not that big thing, but still, after all, that was my first report submission in BITS. Though it was not really for the first time that I prepared a report myself, I did that in senior secondary level also, but this was a bit more professional, it was 'Recent Trends in Mobile Communication'. Gathered a lot of data over the net past few weeks, consulted book, newspapers /* yeah, this part a bit exaggerated :P */. I guess we should have started some concrete work that time only. We had over two and a half months to prepare that report, but we worked just for last two and a half days.
Those two and a half days... we started the real thing saturday night. Had to submit the report by tuesday, 1200hrs. And I tell you, two and a half days are not enough to prepare a report of about 20-25 pages. But obviously, we realised it a bit late :P. But those two and a half days, we worked day and night, literally. This sweet lil' lapT of gautam, it was hit the worse. All those hours, continuosly, the work was on on the lapT, either me or gautam, all the time atleast one of us was on duty. It was only when we went for some meal, this AMD Turion 64 got lil' rest. Our sleeping shifts did get alter, we slept in small shifts of 3-4 hours. Thanks to our time table, dint attended a single class on monday /* though attended the movie show in the evening... fast and the furious 3 : tokyo drift.. it was really guuud.. nice music, sexy babes and ofcourse... super sexy machines */. Initially planned to get the report printed by monday evenings. Obviously we dint meet the deadline. Worked over the report monday night also. I declared the reported completed at 0940 hrs on tuesday /* that came after workin continously from 0430 hrs during that stretch, and yeah.. before that, gautam was on duty */. There was a slight possibility that we get it printed in the moring on tuesday, before 1200hrs, but got a bit lazy. Postponed it to evening. The stuff was ready, we just had to get it printed. But thanks heaven... we did get it printed in the evening and submited it. And as far as dealine is considered, we atleast submitted it on the same day. It was around 1640 hrs.. when I said...phew.
Time for a lil celebration... for the first time went to vyas redi... /* just in front of our bhawan, vyas bhawan, that's how it got its name */. Had my favourite sam chat... it tasted really good that time.


FIND OF THE DAY : I'm not totally useless! I can be used as a bad example.

PS : If you think that this useless stuff was a bit too much detailed leading to boredome... i'll say, i agree... but who cares :P