Intelligent Product Design: My Next Course on Backpack

Introduction

I'm extremely excited to be able to tell you about my next upcoming course, which is called Intelligent Product Design, currently in development. You can go to my website right now and pre-register for it. With any luck, it will be released around the beginning of August.

Expected Topics

So what's the scope of the course? I will meet you where you are. In terms of specific content, I expect we will cover topics such as:

• Basic circuits passive elements such as resistors, capacitors, and inductors, and basic equations that you need to size elements and pick parts.
• Active circuit elements such as transistors and diodes, their essential behavior, and basic selection guidance.
• Power and voltage regulation.
• Communication, both between chips and across distances.
• Programming: Including C, Python, Micropython, and hopefully embedded Rust.
• Motors and other actuators: sizing, powering, and controlling them.
• Sensing and Interaction: selecting the right chips and circuits given a specific goal.
• Basic mechanical design and manufacturing approaches to help turn your messy prototype into a visually-appealing product.

Key Parts to the Course

There are two parts to the course: First, pre-recorded mini lectures where I produce small pieces of content that relate to the topic of the week. The second part is the weekly office hours, where we meet to discuss the projects that we're working on, where we're at, and any technological technological hurdles that we'd like to solve.

For your part, you bring any questions or issues you're having with your project, along with your current status. These short stand-ups help keep us all accountable. You talk to the cohort about what you were able to do in the past week, what your goals are, and what you need to be successful in the coming week.

For my part, I take the issues and questions that I'm hearing, and either help you solve them right away, or if it reflects a deeper need, I cover that topic in the next week's mini-lecture.

You also get the power of working alongside a cohort. The other students in your class can also provide support, advice, and guidance, because they are all on the same path as you are.

Bring your own Project

There are some key points about this course that make it a little bit different from some of the other courses you might find online. First of all, this course is intended to be interactive -- you bring your own project. If there's a key technology that you would like to integrate into your next project, a programming skill that you'd like to learn better, or simply someone to chat with, to make sure you're heading in the right direction, then this course is perfect. Intelligent Product Design will help you go from where you are to that first prototype, and from there, how to make it better.

If you don't have own project concept fully laid out yet, this course also has you covered. You'll also be able to follow along with me as I progress along my own embedded projects from a concept to working prototype. For example, my first design project is going to be a smart garage door opener that I created this Spring. This is a project that came out of a need from my own house, where we had a working garage door opener, but the radio functionality was dead.

I put together my own solution using an ESP32 and other discrete components on a breadboard that allows me to connect it over wifi to my home automation system, and also integrates with a keypad so my kids can open the door from the outside. So if you're still trying to figure out what kind of prototype or product you'd like to make you could follow along with me until you get that brilliant idea.