ECE 5 - Introduction to
Electrical and Computer Engineering

Main Content

What's ECE5 all about?

This freshman class aims at exposing freshmen students to the different sub-fields within Electric and Computer Engineering through a weekly laboratory based on projects that are executed using the Arduino environment. The class culminates in an end-of-quarter poster session and project demonstration.

The course is organized as follows: In the initial 4-5 weeks, students are introduced to key concepts, devices, and techniques through the prototyping and testing of basic electronic circuits. In the following 4-5 weeks, students design, build, and test an electronic circuit of their choosing. This independent project is intended to be a creative outlet for students to experiment with core areas of Electrical Engineering. The student’s projects are presented to the instructors and their peers in the last week of classes in a “science fair” event.

This website shows several projects executed by UCSB freshman students enrolled in ECE 5. The video to the right shows the 2017 "LED Cube" project by Boning Dong, Ran Mo and Emma Gau. You can read more about it in the poster section below.

2017 "Hovercraft" project by Christopher Lianides, Lidi Yafei, Weiyun Jiang

2017 "Cloudy Color" project by Shannon Lee, Yilong Zeng, Ming Dai

2017 "Sketchy Arm" project by Steven Landis, Nathan Bornfreund, Steven She

2017 - "Pong" project by Silas Collins, Bikram Nandy, Michelle Nguyen

2017 "Sensory Chess" project by Alexis Yang, Ning Du

2016 "Maze" project by David Halman, Shinya Miyano, Huasheng Ye

2016 "Laser Harp" project by Dhamenjot Hothi, Leo Martinez, Jethro Shen

2016 "Walking Dog" project by Kyle Douglas, Aditya Wadaskar, Sean Wang

2017 "Color Tracker Car" project by Jiajun Wan, Xiyuan Zhang, and Oliver He

2017 "Dance Machine" project by Salvador Jimenez, Owen Ou, and YimingPan

2016 "LED Light Show" project by Zachary Kimble, Yossi Hertzberg, Dillon Acker-James

2016 "Loud Lights" project by Brandon Tran, Danielle Robinson, Victoria Sneddon

2018 "Whac-a-LED" project by Sansar Yogi, Marc Gepigon, Michael McGivney

2018 "Multi-functional robot car" project by Hank Hao, Owen Huang

2018 "Smart Bike" project by Mason Corey, Eddie Abarca, Adam Snegg

2018 "Unmoving Flasing Orbiter" by Norman Chung, Eric Lau, Matthew Suzuki

2018 "LED Tetris" project by Navid Mir, Karthik Sivanadiyan

2018 "Ultrasonic Turret" project by Jason Ngo, Kailin Kozacko, Andrew Lu

2018 "Plant Welfare" project by Rohan Aren, Sandeep Gade, Kevin Zeng

2018 "Connect 4" projects by Ade Wei, Angel Chu, Yutian Chen

2019 "The Ultimate Driving Experience" project by Matt Hahn, Geffen Cooper, Austin Lynch

2019 " IoT-based Intelligent Door Unlocker" by Ziheng Yan, Samuel Fei, Alina Liu

2019 "Arduino Vending Machine" project by Anthony Guzman, Brian Montoya, Ernesto Torreblanca

2019 "Portable Oscilloscope" by Brian Le, Ruixuan Shen, Jared O’Brine

2020 "Piano Machine" project by Daniel Van Dalsem, Sanjot Bains, Timothy Zhuang

2020 "Super Cool Air Cannon" by Tyler Hattori, Braeden Tolman, Ethan Kim

2020 "iGlove" project by Eimon Erfanfar, Camille Wardlaw, and Craig Weiner

2020 "TwitterBot" project by Owen Convery, Skylar Winig, Cade Matherly

2016 - Spectrum Analyzer

Portable audio spectrum analyzer

2016 - Beat Box

Record and playback beat sounds

2016 - CNC Pen Plotter

Arduino-based Computer Numerical Control (CNC) 2D pen plotter

2016 - Emotion Detector

Galvanic skin response (GSR) and temperature sensor to measure emotional response

2016 - Hip Boy 1.0-P

Handheld clock, stopwatch, GPS, and temperature logger

2016 - Laser Communication

Communication between 2 Arduino boards using laser

2016 - Laser Harp

Harp with laser detectors instead of strings

2016 - Laser Light Show

Laser projector

2016 - LED Light Show

Audio-responsive light strip

2016 - Loud Lights

Audio spectrum analyzer with an LED display

2016 - Magical Musician

Pen to "write" music

2016 - Maze

Maze game with an LCD display

2016 - Metro Boomin

Remote control robot with obstacle avoidance

2016 - Monome Sound Board

Sound board to play .wav files from an SD card

2016 - Morse Code Trainer

Teaches Morse code through a sequence of training drills

2016 - Motion Sensor LED Cube

3x3x3 LED cube that responds to hand motions

2016 - Persistence of Vision Clock

Illusion of an analogue clock through persistence of vision

2016 - Photolock

Light-activated door lock

2016 - Piano Teacher

Electronic instrument that teaches you to play piano songs

2016 - RC Car with Tracks

Car with tracks controlled by a smart phone

2016 - Room-Mapping Car

Robot car that uses ultrasound to navigate in a room and map it

2016 - Self-Balancing Robot

Robot that balances itself in two wheels

2016 - Smart Clock

Alarm clock that goes off at a set time and the only way to turn it off is to answer a math problem correctly

2016 - StalkerBot

Robot that follows an object and stops once it reaches a minimum distance away from it

2016 - VAWWC

The VAWWC (Voice-Activated-Wireless-Weather-Car) is a wirelessly controller robot that measures the ambient temperature and responds to voice commands

2016 - Time Tracing RC Track

Race track equipped with ultrasonic sensors to time RC cars

2016 - Tornado Lamp

Water tornado in a bottle controlled by a gyroscope on a glove

2016 - Walking Dog

Robotic car that follows a sound-emitting transmitter held by the user

2017 - 3D Printed Robotic Arm

3D printed robotic arm powered by an Arduino Micro Controller and servo motors

2017 - 3D Scanner

Scanner that creates representations of objects in 3-D

2017 - Android Ball

The motion of the Android Ball emulates a swipe pattern in the Android device

2017 - Clap Lamps

The device turns on/off one of two lamps based on the hand clap pattern

2017 - Cloudy Color

Two cloud lanterns change color controlled by an Adafruit Feather board

2017 - Track and Collect Car

Robot car detects and chases colored objects

2017 - DJ Duino

Autonomous robot equipped with a LED light box that responds to the sound of music

2017 - Dance Machine

Dancer must follow the Dance Machine directions

2017 - Drum Machine

Plays pre-recorded sounds when buttons are pressed

2017 - Hovercraft

Reomote controller hovercraft

2017 - LED Cube

Programmable 3D LED cube

2017 - Heart Beat Sensor

LED matrix that pulses in sync with one's heartbeat

2017 - Motion and Temperature Tracker

LED matrix display that responds to the direction of motion and temperature

2017 - Music Visualizaer

LED display that visualizes the intensity of the sound picked up through a microphone

2017 - Music Visualizer Cube

2017 - Nunchuck-Controlled Laser pointer

LED cube that responds to the tones of a music

2017 - Obstacle Avoidance Car

Robot car that dodges any obstacle that appears in front of it

2017 - Ping Pong Ball Launcher

Arduino controlled ping pong ball launcher

2017 - Pong Game

Classic video game PONG on an LCD display

2017 - RAdar

A device to help students steering clear of an angry RA

2017 - RC Car with Sensor

Robot car that moves forward, backwards, rotates, and avoids obstacles.

2017 - Remote Temperature Sensor

Remotely estimates the temperature of an objects based on measurements taken from different distances

2017 - Riddle's Puzzle Box

Electronic box that presents a puzzle

2017 - Sensory Chess Clock

Chess clock that can sense the movement of chess pieces on the board and automatically switch the clock for the players when a move is made

2017 - Master/Slave Servo Arm

Twin robotic arm system in which the slave arm that replicates the motion of the master arm

2017 - Simon Says Memory Challenge

Game where the player is shown a random light pattern that needs to be replicated

2017 - Sketchy Arm

Robot arm that draws images

2017 - Smart Alarm Clock

Alarm clock with a motion detector that wakes the user when they are in the light stage of sleep

2017 - Ultrasonic Transverse

3D scanner based on a ultrasonic sensor

2017 - Wire Controller Car Monitoring

Wire-controlled car with an integrated Efficiency Monitoring System (EMS) to log the power output and battery voltage

2018 - Your project here

2018 - Your project here