|
|
|
Welcome to the home page for EE459Lx (Embedded System Design Laboratory), a Capstone Design course in which teams of engineering students build a moderately complex digital system incorporating a programmable microcontroller. This class gives the students an opportunity to use the skills and knowledge they have learned in several other classes in the EE curriculum.
From 2008 to 2022, EE459Lx has offered a unique learning experience to the students by having them collaborate with undergraduate students from other schools at USC to develop the prototype of a commercially viable product. Teams of EE459Lx students are combined with teams of students from a class in the Marketing Department in the USC Marshall School of Business, and with students from a design class in the Roski School of Fine Arts to form a interdisciplinary product development team. Throughout the semester the teams meet to discuss the product and to resolve issues that come up. The EE 459Lx students provide the engineering expertise to design and build a working prototype of the product. The marketing students conduct market research to determine the features and prices that will make the product a success and determine how the product will be launched and marketed to the consumers. The art students build "looks-like" prototypes of the product, select color schemes, and design the logos and packaging material.
Starting in Spring 2020, while continuing our collaboration with the Marketing class from the USC Marshall School of Business, we switched our design collaborator to a class from the Otis College of Art and Design.
Both the 2020 an 2021 classes were done mostly online due to Covid. The teams did a full design of the product by meeting weekly with their collaborators online. However in most cases they were not able to build a physical prototype of the product.
In 2023, the collabortion with Marketing ended due to the Marketing department not teaching the class we collaborated with. Our collaboration with Otis also did not take place due to a change of personel at Otis. For 2023 the EE459Lx students worked on their own to design and build the project. In 2024 we were able to re-establish our collaboration with a class at Otis and we continued this in 2025. We hope to continue this in the future.
Note: Due to the size of the classes we collaboate with we can only have about 20 students in the EE459 class that collaborates with them. If the demand for seats in EE459 exceeds this numbers we normally open a second section of the class at a different time. The second section works on the same types of projects as the collaborative section but does not do any collaborating.
| 
| |
| Team 13, Spring 2025 | Team 6, Spring 2024 | |
| Smart tea brewer | Smart lock | |
| 
| |
| Team 3, Spring 2023 | Team 15, Spring 2022 | |
| Automated trash sorter | Smart gardening pot | |
| 
| |
| Team 4 (GoPro), Spring 2019 | Team 5 (Philips), Spring 2018 | |
| Smart ski helmet | Aromatherapy, light and music |
The goal is to expose students to the process of developing a new product in an interdisciplinary environment and to provide an experience very similar to what an engineer would have at any company where they work to produce a product that not only functions but is also something customers will want to buy.
The products selected for development by the combined teams are intended to be typical consumer electronic devices:
For each product, the teams are encourage to innovate and add features to the product as they see fit based on the available technology and the results of their market research. The teams are for the most part free to set their own schedule during the semester. The EE459Lx lab is open 24/7 for use by the students. In addtion to meeting with their Design teammates, each EE team meets with the instructor every week to review their progress. During the semester the teams will be required to:
Some links of interest:
Questions, corrections and comments about the content of this page should be
sent to Allan Weber
(
).