X student electronics contest in Tomsk

In Tomsk ended anniversary, the tenth student's Olympiad in electronics. I will try to tell you what it is on behalf of one of the participants who first visited both Tomsk and the electronics Olympiad.

The Olympiad was held from 14 to 18 November at the National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU). It is held at the Department of Industrial and Medical Electronics (PME) of the Institute of Non-Destructive Testing at Tomsk Polytechnic University , and, as I understand it, almost the entire Olympiad is organized by the forces of this department.

The Olympiad is held in two directions:

• 210100 - "Electronics and Nanoelectronics", specialty 210106 - "Industrial Electronics";
• 201000 - "Biotechnical Systems and Technologies", specialty 200401 - "Biotechnical and medical devices and systems"

Three teams from Tomsk (one from TPU, two from TUSUR), 2 from Novosibirsk (NSTU, SibSUTI), Moscow (MEI), and even Ust-Kamennogorsk (EKSTU, Kazakhstan) took part. In general, over the 10 years of the Olympiad, teams from more than 20 cities visited Tomsk.
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How it went, read below.

1 day, arrival

Placed us in the TPU sanatorium. We must pay tribute, they have an excellent preventorium - rooms for 3 beds, a wardrobe, a table, a refrigerator and a microwave.
The TPU itself consists of many buildings (I did not count them, but I saw building number 21), including the library and the palace of culture. The buildings are quite separated in the district - from the dispensary to the department, where part of the Olympiad was held, we had to walk for about 15 minutes, and the transport goes almost exclusively along the most central streets.
Closer to the dinner at the department was familiarized with the stand on microprocessor technology, which hosts the second, practical round of the Olympiad. About the tour below, but for now about the stand.


The stand is a closed box (picture on the right) containing 2 microcontrollers - AVR and 51 families from Silicon Laboratories (C8051F410) and an analog matrix, which allows using a specially developed PC program to connect the controller ports to the DIP-integrated pads on the box cover, ports, buttons and LEDs.

The possibility of a completely analog connection of digital circuits is impressive (especially considering its quite working software), but the stand left quite contradictory impressions - it is not clear how important it is to use DIP chips with controllers, there is only one button, LEDs are 2. Programmers for MK are quite possible it would be to build in, all the same, the controllers are inside and not visible to the user, and indeed, in my opinion, it is much more interesting to use an open board for learning than a black box.
Programming connections is made, as has been said, with the help of a special program. In the main window of the program are located UGO (conditionally graphic symbols) of the elements soldered to the board from above, as well as inside the box (microcontrollers). After adding the chip to the block, you need to select its name from the menu, specify the number of the pad and its designation will be displayed in the workspace. The connection of the UGO occurs as in any editor of the schemes - with lines from pin to pin, however, the lines can only be drawn straight, without kinks, which fundamentally kills the ability to create at least some beautiful schemes. But, I think, software flaws are temporary.

More than anything remarkable on the first day did not happen, met the city, solved problems.

2 day discovery and theoretical tour

Opening

The discovery was very solemn and was held in the main building of the TPU. Photos of architecture, unfortunately, no, since there was no wide-angle lens, but in words - the body is old, still pre-revolutionary construction, very impressive. Located on the main street of Tomsk - Lenin Avenue. On the same avenue in the direction of the city center are the main universities - TUSUR, TSU, medical - because of the abundance of universities, the city is quite young, there are many students on the streets.
The opening itself consisted of issuing pretty cute badges and solemn speeches of the first persons of the TPU and the department organizing the event.

Theoretical tour

The theoretical tour includes 6 problems, different for different directions, which must be solved in 3 hours. Tasks are given on several topics: the fundamentals of electrical circuits, circuitry on discrete elements, digital circuitry, etc. For example, a microprocessor engineering task is an assembler code fragment for MCS-51, which needs to be analyzed and the execution time is determined (the duration of one command is given) or the contents of any of the registers. Usually, tasks with cunning - changing banks of registers or rewriting areas of the stack, but this year the task was absolutely clumsy, just a lot of logical operations in cycles, it is easy to get confused and time is running out of order, and the pleasure you get from tasks with a twist is not.


Surprised by the task of digital circuitry. The children's task is a counter and a shift register, and a complete failure. Digging in shift register datasheets (SN74LS194A) clarified the situation: as we thought, the DR input indicates data shift right, but as it turned out, “shift right” for shift registers means “shift towards high-order digits” and not younger ones, as in microprocessors and simply by logic.

In general, the tasks are quite solvable, but there is one BUT: the tasks are provided by the teams themselves, and the best ones are selected from them. As a result, according to participants of previous years, it is often the case that the team that provided the task solves it by all 10 points, without solving the others. For the sake of fairness, I note that this year there was no such noticeable correlation, it was specially observed from the results.

After three hours of a theoretical tour, the jury took up the work, and the participants were taken on a tour of the TPU Museum. I did not go there, so the item is skipped.

By late evening, the jury completed the test, but the results were announced only in the morning on the third day.

Day 3, announcement of results and practical tour

In the morning, the results were announced, after which a practical tour was conducted in 2 approaches (due to the lack of laboratory spaces). The essence of the practical tour is to assemble a certain device using the stand I described above. At the disposal - any of the controllers of the stand, the program for which is written in assembler, and the scattering of Soviet chips - counters, registers, etc.
Our task was to make a frequency meter from 1 to 8 MHz with an accuracy of 1 MHz (use one seven-segment indicator). Generator meander TTL levels up to 20 MHz and an oscilloscope included.


Most of the problems arose with frequency - the task itself is simple - even at our non-programmer department we did this for laboratory work when we met MCS-51. Frequency problems are quite expected at 8 MHz. As I have already said, the circuit is based on an analog switching matrix, which clearly does not pull more than 7 MHz (although it was pleasantly surprised), and it is proposed to connect the generator to the microcircuit pads, no strong connectors to you.
Nevertheless, for 1 hour and 46 minutes of the allotted three hours, it was possible to present a fully working (up to 7 MHz) scheme. By the way, it should be said that out of 5 teams in our subgroup no one managed to cope with this task any more, including the owners of the stand. In the second subgroup, one team managed (2 hours and 20 minutes), but there was another task, I don’t know what it was.

Behind the building in which the department is located is the Kruger brewery, and, I think, its restaurant is a favorite place for students.

Day 4, marathon, awarding and closing of the Olympiad

Marathon

In the morning a marathon took place - a sort of relaxing creative competition, but again not without electronics: the first task was to assemble a scheme that functions accordingly to any of the tasks - the more difficult, the more points.
We chose a task that sounds like: “after the key is closed, the green LED lights up, when the button is pressed, it goes out and the red light comes on” . The task of the average level of complexity is 10 points.


But it is necessary to collect the scheme on the children's designer. Since time was limited, due to the haste, the scheme was not quite right.

But this team has collected the most elegant scheme for 5 points - “when a button is pressed for a short time, a red LED flashes, when released - a green one”


Also at the marathon it was necessary to submit fictional projects and debate about them with opponents. After all, we were taken to the Tomsk special economic zone, but we will not talk about it, there is politics, not electronics.

Award

At the closing ceremony of the Olympiad in the evening the winners were awarded diplomas. It should be noted that in previous years a prize from the ministry in the amount of about 60 tr. Was given for prizes. for first place. This year, about the cash prize is not clear, but the winners received diplomas from the ministry.
It is interesting that the practical tour is out of the test, a separate diploma is given for it, but why it does not affect the general one. It is not clear why the TPU has not yet entered this round into a test with a recount in points.

And at the end of the evening - a buffet. A good table, champagne, music in the palace of culture of the university, which also turned out to be a neighboring building with our dispensary. In the morning after the holiday, the sanatorium staff patiently gave us a good night's sleep, even though the rooms were not paid for that day, and after saying goodbye, we left in the direction of the station.

Summing up, I will say that such an Olympiad, organized by the forces of one department with the financial support of one university, is very commendable. Hopefully, it will continue to be held, as well as the number of participants will increase.

By the way

Information about the competition is on the site TPU
They also started a VKontakte group , and asked to ask them questions, give advice and liven up the group in various ways. They are generally happy to make contact and always listen to comments about the organization.

And tell me, please, how to remove the flow for the text, like clear: both in CSS. On the penultimate photo, the subtitle ugly got into the flow, and I would like to start it after the drawing.