When I went to electronics tech school several years ago we had a year end project. The project didn't need to be an original design but that was encouraged. Each student was to design or copy some type of electronic device. If the student copied the device they were expected to understand how it worked.

The plan was to draw out the layout, build it on a breadboard and test it. Next the drawing was done with some circuit board software. With this software the user indicated to the software which connections from the various devices needed to be connected to the various pins of the other devices on the board. The software ground through this and figured out the "routes" for the traces. Since our projects were relatively simple, a single side Printed Circuit board was sufficient although some of the traces often needed to take the "long" way around to avoid crossing other traces.

The software produced an image that was to be sent to a Circuit board development company. When the board was returned, the student needed to solder in the devices (often socket mounted) on the circuit board. None of our device were surface mount so we didn't need the skillet as indicated above. After completion, the device was again tested.

The student was expected to explain the workings of the device to the other members of the class. The idea was that the student would be exposed somewhat to the various portions of a product design.

I chose to utilize a project involving voice communications. My device was a security system for a Wine Cellar. My original plan was that when the user approached the cellar door they would push a button. The system would ask a series of Yes/No questions. The user would reply Yes or No after each question. The user needed to go through all 10 questions so if they answered incorrectly they did not know which question(s) were answered incorrectly. If at the end of the 10 questions, the user had answered them all correctly, the door to the wine cellar opened due to a solenoid. If they did not answer all the questions correctly a siren went off.

I was not able to make the system accurately detect my voice answers of Yes or No. I changed the user input from a voice reply to pushing either a Yes or No button by the cellar door.

My circuit tied into my old Apple IIe computer. The program was written in the BASIC programming language. The chip would attempt to speak the words in the PRINT statements. Rather than having the output go to a printer, the chip intercepted these statements and attempted to pronounce them. This often resulted in some strange accents or unrecognizable speech. Purposely misspelling the words would often make the voice more understandable. My first Yes/No question was to be "You were born in Austin Minnesota". You would have thought that the chip must have been made for the movie Fargo as its pronunciation came out Min E Soda. I tried various misspellings but finally changed the question to "You were born in Austin Texas". I think I had to misspell Texas to get it to sound right.

Due to time and money restraints, the circuit board portion was never utilized. The instructor changed the rules and allowed us to just use the breadboard version of our project. I was by far the oldest student in the class and had played the game of setting up my project on a breadboard as we were supposed to do. Many of the younger students figured on skipping that part and going right to the circuit board hoping the design was workable.

Once the instructor changed the rules, I was basically done with my project. This angered some of the younger students as they then had to scramble to set theirs up on a breadboard.

One of my classmates had a Beer Fetching Machine. The idea was the system had a cart by which the system would bring you a beer. The user had a limited amount of time to pick up the beer and drink it. If the empty can was returned back on the cart within the allotted time. The cart would return to the "fridge" and bring back another beer. If you took too long or didn't empty the can properly, the system would not fetch you another beer.

This sort of worked but wasn't all that reliable.