Description

“LaunchPad” organized by the WIE Affinity group of IEEE Student Branch of SLIIT was an impressive event on Arduino which was held for 3 consecutive days (26 th – 28 th January 2021) in order to provide a full course experience to the participants. “LaunchPad” won the best idea at the pitching competition organized by WIE Sri Lanka section at the IEEE SLSYWC 2019 which was the inspiration for this webinar series. As the Arduino is a basic building block which can be used to easily build hardware and software, it is the perfect electronic platform for beginners. The event was held on a virtual platform along with lab based practical sessions using “Tinkercad” classroom activities for each and every participant. As from outset, the series piqued students' curiosity because those who participated in the whole series continuously by doing all the classroom activities accurately were awarded with an Arduino completion certificate at the end. It built the students’ confidence and motivated them to engage in many more such projects in the future. Some of the goals of LaunchPad were, To guide the beginners into Arduino programming. To help the participants to learn and overcome the fear in coding. To Spark the interests into embedded programming. To support the participants to achieve academic excellence in projects. Launchpad was an Island wide Webinar series followed by a competition. Therefore, the webinar announcing process was quite a challenge for the Publicity team. As a result, LaunchPad was brought to the concern of the targeted crowd with some attractive as well as interesting series of introducing posts which contained various facts about Arduino. We shared the posts via social media, and we could gather about 170+ registrants by the first day of the series. As we always tried to share a little curiosity among the audience, we got a lot of requests as well. The three days of the Webinar series were conducted by three guest speakers who had a vast knowledge on Arduino. Day 1 was conducted by Mr. Anjana De Silva, an instructor for the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology. He completed his BSc. (Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 2020 from SLIIT and is currently following his MSc. In Electronic Automation from the University of Moratuwa. With the experience and the knowledge of Mr. De Silva, the audience got a clear introduction to the digital computer world together with a better understanding and also the first step to Arduino was also given to the participants. At the end of the session many curious participants got the opportunity to clarify their doubts with Mr. De Silva. The participants were glad about this opportunity they got the very first day. The Day 2 was conducted by Mr. Rajitha De Silva, an assistant lecturer at the Department of Computer Systems Engineering at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology. He completed his BSc. (Hons) in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from the University of SLIIT in 2018 with First Class Honors. He specializes in teaching subjects related to the Electronic Engineering and Robotics Domains. Therefore, Mr. Rajitha nourished the audience of Day 2 with the importance of simulations, “TinkerCad”, How to use sensors and also the difference between sensors and actuators. At the end of the day 2 a Kahoot session was held which is an interactive, fun filled online platform that can be used to answer a question series more likely an interesting quiz. This also took considerable attention of the audience who actively participated in the quiz. The winners of the quiz were rewarded with monetary prizes. LaunchPad Day 3 was conducted by Mr. Praveen Kehelella, a Research Assistant at the Computer Systems Engineering Department of Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology. He has completed BSc. (Hons) in Electronics and Electrical Engineering and is currently pursuing his MPhil in Robotics and Intelligent Systems. Logic levels in Arduino, Arduino programming, ADC and PWM applications and Arduino libraries were the content covered by Mr. Praveen at the final day of the webinar series. Finally, during the Q and A session all the participants could clear their doubts about Arduino before concluding the webinar series. The feedback obtained from the audience was really favorable and according to the participants the webinar series was so interesting and useful. Furthermore, there were nearly equal numbers of participants for all the 3 days including 4 th year researchers of several universities as well. The workshop consisted of learning materials, explaining sessions, practical sessions with lab class activities, and Q&A sessions so that the foundation for the competition was also given during the webinar. At the end of the workshop series, participants were able to apply for the competition as teams of 3 members or individually and come up with an Arduino project of their own. The projects at the competition were evaluated by a qualified panel of judges. Prizes worth 10,000 LKR were awarded to the winners. The teams were advised to submit a simulation as well as a technical report about their project on a given deadline. Finally, upon 18 teams which contained both individual and team-wise only 3 teams were selected. According to a marking criteria, the best 3 projects were selected. LaunchPad 2021 competition was concluded by announcing the results as follows, Winner of the competition Ravinath Gunawardhana, Runner up team Randeepa lakshan, Gihan Jayamanna, Ashan Maduwantha and the 2 nd Runner up was Thiwanka Cholitha all the three teams were from Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology. With the announcement of the winners of the competition LaunchPad 2021 was concluded successfully, with many requests to continue the workshop annually.