ECE 110 Announcements

The first exam is Monday Feb. 15, 7-8:15 pm. Rooms are as follows (rooms are tight; you MUST go to your assigned room):
Last Names A-G: Everitt Lab 151
Last Names H-O:  Gregory Hall 100
Last Names P-Z: Digital Computer Lab 1320

The topics covered are from Lectures 1 to 8, homework 0 to 6 (includes IV characteristics, NOT Diodes). You will be asked to SHOW YOUR WORK (i.e. all steps you are taking to provide your answer). Answers without work will be graded zero. Check website with past exams solutions to see what it means (examples). This will allow us to give you partial credit if applicable, and allow you to recheck your work before giving your test back.

You are allowed to bring one standard size sheet of personal notes (writing on both sides ok), a palm-size calculator (graphic ok). You must use pencils on your exam.

if you have a conflict, we will accommodate you (we can give a make-up at 8:30pm, right after the exam, or at 9pm); You must inform your instructor asap - we need to reserve a room.  if you are registered in DRES and need accommodation, let us know asap. Notify instructor by Wed. Feb. 10 at 5 pm.

There are practice exams (actual past exams) on the ECE 110 website (under "Exams"). HKN (243 EL) will sell past exams packages later.

Monday Feb. 15 lecture will be replaced by a (non-mandatory) Q&A session.

I will not be available Thursday Feb. 4 (no office hours, no emails). For help, check out Staff Office Hours at http://courses.ece.illinois.edu/ece110/brunet/pageinfo/StaffOHSpring10v2.pdf

We will not count HW4P8 in the gradebook; thank you for alerting me of a problem. I added a non-buggy version (hopefully!), for your practice.

The sign up deadline for Supervised Study Sessions (SSS) has been
extended to Thursday, Feb 4 at 11:59pm. There are some spots available
at the 7:00 and 8:30 time slots, but very few at 3:30.

If you are interested in participating, please sign up at:
https://illinois.edu/fb/auth/1580357

IEEE offers special soldering workshops! from a student: "I personally believe soldering is a vital skill to have for ECE majors", "I built one of the logic probes when I was in ECE 110, and I cannot stress how valuable it was for debugging, because it let me see what was going on with my car's circuit in real-time, without having to deal with the delays pocket multimeters often have, and without having to drag a scope over to the test track to see what is going on." See http://ieee.ec.uiuc.edu/2010/01/soldering-workshop-and-workshops-committee-meeting/

As specified in the ECE 110 packet, the RA lectures are mandatory, and you MUST go to your registered section. The first one is Wednesday Feb. 3. If your registered LECTURE conflicts with your schedule, and you received a special  lecture section override, you must email prof. Brunet ASAP to indicate the section you are registered for (conflicting with your schedule), and the section you must go to avoid conflict. This is needed to form teams. When you will use the RA software RAMSES, this will be reminded to you. This does NOT apply to students who attend other sections by choice. This does not apply to lab sections or general overrides for non ece students...Also note that HW3 is mandatory (penalty on RA score will be applied if not done).

You will find that some of the problems in HW4 do not have as many parts as you wish (just one global submit answer for the entire problem). These are the old versions. We have had trouble with uploading the newest versions (this is also why we kept some of the buggy problems, P3, P5..NO, do not do them; the newer P3, P5 work fine and have partial credit, small parts). We have not found a way around that, but decided to give just a few more tries on these, to compensate...You will have 15 tries for HW4!

All homework problems from HW8 to HW13 have also been checked, and fixed. Email Prof. Brunet if issues.

ECE 110 Students can sign up for study groups, if they choose, in the RED book in the Advising Office, Rm 156, Everitt Lab. This is for classes 110, 190, 210 and 290. They can sign their names in and copy names out of the book to create their study groups.  The groups are created by and maintained only by the students.

Little by little, all bugs are been fixed. All homework problems from HW0 to HW7 have been checked, and fixed. Email Prof. Brunet if issues.

Check the numerous Office hours (newly updated)! We are waiting to help you.

Bugs are been looked at, and fixed, but to help you relax about this situation, Profs. Brunet, Frizzell, and Haken have agreed that HW0P2, HW0P4, HW1P3, HW1P6 will not count in the gradebook, and that the number of tries should be changed to 10 (for ALL problems). We will update the list of homework problems that will not count as necessary. Still look at these homework problems, and do them (some may get fixed in the meantime). Also do not waste your tries;

We ask for your cooperation; If you think there is a bug (marked incorrect or else, and you know you are right), please 1) post in Lon-Capa "seems to be a bug";  2) post a short explanation why you believe there is a bug; 3) send an email to Prof. Brunet to report the possible bug along with the HW number and problem number (e.g. HW1P6 part (b)). When things have been checked, Prof. Brunet will add "fixed" or "not counting in gradebook". We hope this will be helpful. She may email some of you to "try again" the problem (at no risk). Please watch your email. Your help is very appreciated.

ECE110 will be holding supervised study sessions (SSS) on Sundays this
semester. SSS offer students the opportunity to better understand the
course material by learning from fellow students, under the guidance of
a team leader. More information can be found at
http://courses.ece.illinois.edu/ece110/SSS/

The first deadline to sign up is Thursday, January 28 at 11:59pm. To
sign up, visit: https://illinois.edu/fb/auth/1580357

Freshmen Women in ECE holds the kickoff event of the semester Monday 1/25 (today) 7-9pm at the ARC multipurpose room 7. Games (including Guitar Hero), and free food from Strawberry Fields will be provided.

Do not worry, you will not get penalized for problems in Lon-Capa that have bugs. This is the first semester we are using this system, and we will decide to NOT count any homework problem that has many annoying bugs. Email Prof. Brunet if you suspect a bug in one problem; please do specify which HW which PB (e.g. HW2P4 part (b)) or it makes it difficult. One of the issues we are seeing is the format of numerical answers combined with the tolerance (precision). We will make posts by the hw pbm when there may be a bug. We appreciate your patience, and will work to find solutions asap. Do not waste your tries (we are also looking into increasing the number of tries too). We will keep you posted.

I changed the number of tries for one set in hw1. I do not know yet if that gives more to students (I do not see what a student sees, so it hard to tell...);  I asked one student to check and get back to me. If that works, we will change for all homework, this semester!