Lectures :: ECE 445 - Senior Design Laboratory

Lectures

Fall 2025 Lecture Material:

 

Pre-Lecture #1:


(before the first lecture)

 

 

Brainstorming and Ideation

  • Brainstorming and Ideation slides (pptx)
  • Videos (watch before coming to class)

 

 

Lecture #1:


(August 26th )

 

Getting Started

  • Course Overview and Requests for Approval (slides)- Prof. Arne Fliflet
  • Conflict Management Workshop (slides)- Prof. Olga Mironenko (olgamiro@illinois.edu)
  • Pitches
    • Sound Asleep (slides) - Maggie Li
    • Double Sequential External defibrillation (slides) - Varun Gopal
    • Neuroguard (slides) - Meenakshi Singhal
    • Fadex (slides) - Shrey Patel
    • Lab Escape - spinning LED globe (website) - Paul Kwait
    • Smart Home for MS (slides) - Dr. Manuel Hernandez
    • Ant-weight, 3D Printed Battlebot Challenge (slides)- Prof. Viktor Gruev (vgruev@illinois.edu)
  • Brainstorming

 

Pre-Lecture #2:


(before the second lecture)

 

 

Beyond Ideation

 

 

Lecture #2:


(September 2nd)

 

 

Moving Forward

  • Introduction - A. Fliflet (slides)
  • IP - Dr. Michelle Chitambar (slides)
  • Pitches
    • Skin integrated pace maker (slides) - Shiyuan Duan
    • Wearable neuro-modulation (slides) - Shiyuan Duan
    • Adherascent (slides) - Brian Mehdian
    • Suction Sense (slides) - Sharon Chao
    • Underground root imaging (slides) - John Hart
  • Proposal and design doc - Jason Jung (slides)
  • Modular design - Weiman Yan (slides)
  • Lab notebook - Wesley Pang (slides)
  • Requirements & Verification Table - Jason Zhang (slides)
  • PCB Tips - Jason Jung (slides)
  • Comments on Web Board - Prof. Rakesh Kumar (notes)

 

Pre-Lecture #3:


(before the third lecture)

 

 

Design and Writing Tips

 

 

Lecture #3:

(September 9th)

 

 

Last Stop Before RFA

  • Introduction - A. Fliflet (slides)
  • Communications - Dr. Laura Stegrim (slides)
  • Lab Safety - Casey Smith (slides)
  • Machine shop - Gregg Bennet (slides)
  • Writing - Aaron Greiger (slides)
  • Ethics - A. Fliflet (slides)

Spring 2023 Video Lectures:

Brainstorming

Finding a Problem (Video)
Generating Solutions (Video)
Diving Deeper (Video)
Voting (Video)
Reverse Brainstorming (Video)
Homework for Everyone (Video)

Important Information

Using the ECE 445 Website (Video)
Lab Notebook (Video , Slides)
Modular Design (Video, Slides)
Circuit Tips and Debugging (Video , Slides)
Eagle CAD Tutorial (Video)
Spring 2018 IEEE Eagle Workshop (Slides)
Spring 2018 IEEE Soldering Workshop (Slides)

Major Assignments and Milestones

Request for Approval (Video, Slides)
Project Proposal (Video, slides)
Design Document (Video, slides)
Design Review (Video, slides)
Writing Tips (Video, slides)

Low Cost Distributed Battery Management System

Logan Rosenmayer, Daksh Saraf

Low Cost Distributed Battery Management System

Featured Project

Web Board Link: https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=27207

Block Diagram: https://imgur.com/GIzjG8R

Members: Logan Rosenmayer (Rosenma2), Anthony Chemaly(chemaly2)

The goal of this project is to design a low cost BMS (Battery Management System) system that is flexible and modular. The BMS must ensure safe operation of lithium ion batteries by protecting the batteries from: Over temperature, overcharge, overdischarge, and overcurrent all at the cell level. Additionally, the should provide cell balancing to maintain overall pack capacity. Last a BMS should be track SOC(state of charge) and SOH (state of health) of the overall pack.

To meet these goals, we plan to integrate a MCU into each module that will handle measurements and report to the module below it. This allows for reconfiguration of battery’s, module replacements. Currently major companies that offer stackable BMSs don’t offer single cell modularity, require software adjustments and require sense wires to be ran back to the centralized IC. Our proposed solution will be able to remain in the same price range as other centralized solutions by utilizing mass produced general purpose microcontrollers and opto-isolators. This project carries a mix of hardware and software challenges. The software side will consist of communication protocol design, interrupt/sleep cycles, and power management. Hardware will consist of communication level shifting, MCU selection, battery voltage and current monitoring circuits, DC/DC converter all with low power draws and cost. (uAs and ~$2.50 without mounting)