Announcements

Week 4 announcements

• Slack invites went out last week. Please join and participate.

• In EX03, we'll be doing MCU or power board layout and preparing for Thursday's presentations.

• Speaking of, this Thursday are our first set of presentations, on your two concepts. Details are in EX03.

• A final reminder that the sensor boards will be sent for manufacturing Wed morning. At that time we'll assemble all files together and send out. There is not possibility to delay this. About a week later you'll be able to hold your own boards in your hands!

Week 3 announcements

• Please join our piazza. Most communications will go thru Piazza.

• We'll work to get the Slack invites out this week.

• EX02 is now live. This will have more Altium work, and teamwork. Don't wait till Wed evening to get started!

Week 1 announcements

• Please join our piazza. Most communications will go thru Piazza.

• Look out for an invite to our Slack workspace.

• EX00 aka our team survey is live. Please complete by due date (Sat night)

• First lab is this Fri 11-2 in 38-501.

• If you are unable to log into our CATSOOP page, it could be that you don't have an account. Just post to Piazza or send us an email and we'll set you up.

• PDF lecture notes are available on the schedule page.

Prior to term start BELOW

Welcome to the course website for the first offering of 6.900 Engineering for Impact.

Although the course is denoted as 6.9000 in the course catalog, eventually we'll drop the trailing zero, so will refer to the class informally as 6.900.

What is this class about?

In this class we'll integrate our EECS knowledge from core subjects to design complete systems that incorporate hardware and software. So we'll learn, in the EECS context, how to develop requirements and specifications for a system, then use those specifications to partitions systems into subsystems, how to assign functionality to hardware or software, how to manage data and energy, and so on.

To guide our learning, we'll undertake a large-scale group project to develop a complete system to meet the needs of a partner institution (we'll reveal the partner once the class starts). We expect to design and build real systems that really encompass the full stack: from sensors and electronics, to microcontrollers with embedded firmware, to a server system that integrates data across multiple sensor systems, to a data dashboard to visualize the data.

We'll also use a guided project -- where we'll design/build a HW/SW system -- in the first half of the term to learn about many of the fundamentals and skills that we'll apply to the group project.

In the course of doing all this, you'll learn some practical skills, like how to do PCB design; how to design/draw/3Dprint enclosures, how to set up a server machine, web server, and db from scratch. You'll also learn how to evaluate different technologies to attain a functional goal, and how to work in teams (we're partnering with faculty in Sloan on this bit). You'll have an authentic experience to talk about with potential employers, and confidence that comes from designing & building a real system.

That's alot of stuff. Why learn everything, I just want to focus on [SWE, electronics, data science, etc.]?

In industry you'll be part of a team, and you're right that you'll initially focus on part of a system (unless you're the co-founder and technical lead for a startup!). But it's incredibly useful to get a sense of how all the parts fits together. This will help you and your team work better with the rest of the organization. In fact, this class was inspired in part from conversations with alumni and industry execs who emphasized the importance of understanding how subsystem tradeoffs affect overall system design.

What requirements does this class fulfill?

This is a core class in the new 6-2 degree. It is also an AUS2, II, DLAB in 6-1, 6-3, 6-4, and old 6-2.

What does impact mean?

There are many many cool HW/SW systems out in the wild, from Apple Watches to EVs. Here we're specifically focused on helping a partner institution, which might be a non-profit or governmental entity that could really benefit from our expertise. We'll provide more details the first week of class.

What background do I need?

In steady state this class will have strict pre-reqs of all three 6-2 core classes: 6.200[6.002], 6.310[6.302], and 6.191[6.004]. For this first offering, we are relaxing pre-requesites: 6.200 and 6.191, or permission of instructors. If you're interested in taking the class but unsure of pre-reqs, you can reach out to Joel (voldman@mit.edu).