Invent, model, create — with Raspberry Pi. Master the multidisciplinary theory and practice to create custom projects and hardware based on Raspberry Pi. No prior experience necessary.
Suggested by: Coursera (What is Coursera?)
No prior knowledge required
No unnecessary risks
This internship is designed to take beginners in this field and guide them from scratch to building functional prototypes, home projects, and new creations with custom hardware and Raspberry Pi. If you’ve never touched a Raspberry Pi, that’s okay. The first course will get you started, and in the fourth course you’ll design and create printed circuit boards for your custom hardware to make your projects tangible and unique.
Learners can work together on all projects in the specialization (or on their own project). All software tools in this specialization are free and open source and are available for anyone to download and use. You can also run them on your Raspberry Pi.
All of this is customized and designed to implement your projects perfectly.
In this course, you’ll use a Raspberry Pi 4 to build a complete project that connects to the network with sensors and motors, and you can access it from your smartphone. We’ll explore all the parts that make this possible, so you can use this experience as a foundation for your own projects. We’ll use the Raspberry Pi as a “so-called embedded system” (as opposed to a desktop computer), so you’ll be ready to build the Raspberry Pi into your projects as the “brain” that drives it all. Want to build your own IoT (Internet of Things) device? Home automation? Robotics? This is the course to learn how it all works, so you can start building on your own. No prior experience in embedded systems, programming, or electronics is necessary, and there are additional sections for those who want to get started quickly with Python programming, Linux basics, and basic electronics.
The course is divided into four modules that explore each area with demonstrations and completions along the way:
After these four modules you can start building your own projects right away, and the three subsequent courses in this specialization delve deeper into each area to improve your skills and the complexity of your projects. I hope you enjoy all of the courses and I hope to take your building to the next level.
The second course in this specialization covers hardware interfacing and communication between your project components, how to troubleshoot when high-speed signals don’t work, and how to design your projects so they do work. We’ll start with a review of common signaling protocols available. Next, to build a deep and intuitive understanding of how circuits send and receive these signals, Module 2 covers the physics of high-frequency signals in an easy-to-understand manner.
Module 3 shifts your thinking from the time world to the frequency world to examine the frequency components of signals and understand how unintentional filtering in your circuits distorts digital waveforms. These are concepts of “signal integrity,” condensed to the bare minimum needed for your Raspberry Pi projects.
Now, with our knowledge of signals, Module 4 develops five “rules of thumb” for designing your circuits so that fast signals work the first time. These five rules of thumb, along with the experience from previous modules, help you estimate the frequency width of signals, rise time, and gain insights whether you are troubleshooting a failed design or designing something new.
This course on integrating sensors with Raspberry Pi is the 3rd course in the Coursera specialization and can be taken separately or as part of the specialization. Although some of the material and explanations from previous courses are used, this course generally assumes no prior experience with sensors or data processing other than ideas for your projects and an interest in building projects with sensors.
The course focuses on key concepts and techniques in the design and integration of each sensor, rather than on overly specific examples to copy. This approach allows you to use these concepts in your own projects to build highly customized sensors for your applications.
Some of the topics covered include sensor calibration and the trade-offs between different mathematical methods of storing and applying calibration curves to your sensors. Additionally, we will discuss precision, accuracy, and how to understand the uncertainty in your measurements. We will learn methods for interfacing analog sensors using the Raspberry Pi (or other platform) with amplifiers and the principle and technique involved in noise reduction with spectral filters. Finally, we will turn to the fields of data science, statistics, and digital signal processing to reprocess our data in Python.
This is the 4th course in this specialization (although it can be taken in a different order) and focuses on applying the experience and knowledge you have gained in the first three courses to building physical electronics hardware. Specifically, this course focuses on four areas: Circuit Simulations, Schematic Entry, PCB Design, and 3D CAD Modeling. There are excellent commercial applications available in these areas, but to allow everyone access, we will use free and open source software.
At the end of this course, you will be comfortable using free and open source software to design your own printed circuit board and any bracket or case that will hold it, tailored to your application.
Module 1 covers circuit simulation using several open projects and simulation methods to simulate the transient response of circuits as well as the frequency response of filters. In addition, we will use filter synthesis tools to help you quickly design and symbolize filters.
Module 2 is about creating professional electrical diagrams. It is both an art and a skill, and we will cover the technical elements of using diagram entry software as well as broad concepts that can be transferred to any commercial application.
Module 3 takes our schematic and turns it into a physical PCB design. Understanding this process of how the schematic and PCB design work together is critical. We will demonstrate this in open source software, but again, the concepts apply to any commercial software you may have access to.
Module 4 demonstrates the powerful idea of integrated design of your electrical and mechanical systems together. We will create a 3D model of our electrical PCB and bring it into a 3D CAD software to design mechanical parts around it. Connecting these applications opens up another dimension in customizing your projects.
