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CSSE3010 – Embedded Systems Design & Interfacing

Lecturer Dr Adam Postula
Course Link UQ Site
Faculty EAIT
Prerequisites (COMP2303 or CSSE2310) + ELEC2004
Contact Hours 2 Lecture hours, 3 Practical or Laboratory hours
Semester(s) Taught Semester 1
Course Units 2
Submit reviewView reviews (9)

Rating

Total average

61/100

Learning Materials ( 49 )
Learning Activities ( 61.6 )
Blackboard Management ( 58.2 )
Course Content ( 57.8 )
Course Structure ( 61.4 )
Contact Availability ( 55.9 )
Course Difficulty ( 90 )

Reviews (9)

Anonymous
   
CSSE3010 – Embedded Systems Design & Interfacing 69.4

Fun course if you like or are passionate about embedded systems and C programming. If you don't, you will definitely regret taking this course. Its extremely difficult, but rewarding. I found it a lot more difficult than 2310, 4010 etc. It teaches bare metal STM32 programming with FreeRTOS.

I took this course in 2022 with Matt D’souza. Compared to other subjects, it’s a massive time sink, so if you can try to take it with less courses or easier courses to avoid burning out. I invested most of my time in this course than any other throughout my degree (3rd year software eng).

This also isn't a course where you will receive a lot of help on the assessments (there is pretty much no useful information available online, you mostly have to refer to datasheets or example code given in the environment), so you must self-learn and be motivated to learn everything yourself. The best way to get help for stages/project is to go to pracs, the ED discussion board wasn’t really maintained, and some questions weren’t answered at all. I found ED was only a good place to ask questions about the final and other general stuff.

The stages I found difficult in the beginning, but after getting set up and comfortable with the environment and example code I found it easier (the first 2 stages easiest) and got close to full marks, but the final project was difficult. Because the stages develop the peripherals you need for the final project, aim to do well or when the final project comes out you will be stuck implementing them. The example code given in the development environment is really useful, and most of it can be reused in the stages.

The learning curve in the start of the semester is steep, but if you can implement the first stage and do well you will be fine. If you can’t, honestly consider dropping this course as everything else is far more difficult than the first stage.

One more thing, they offer a virtual machine that you can install on your device and has the environment already set up. Its nice, but it’s a lot better to install everything yourself natively as everything runs quicker. I used a macbook, installed everything with brew and it all worked fine.

Final exam is easy compared to stages and final project, but it requires a lot of memorisation. Do past exams and pretty much memorise the lecture slides, especially the diagrams for the types of ADC and similar. It doesnt change much from year to year from my experience.

Overall, my experience was good and the course content was challenging but doable, but I went into the course with relevant experience (I had already programmed with STM32 before), so I had an advantage. Talking about this course (especially the freeRTOS parts) also helped me land an internship in robotics/embedded systems so id say its pretty relevant to industry.

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2022

Your program/major

BE(Hons) Software

Is lecture attendance necessary?

no, but slides are useful to read when revising for final

Is the textbook necessary?

no

Positives
  • Freertos experience
  • relevant to industry
  • build cool stuff, long pracs so everyone can get help
Negatives
  • time consuming, difficult, little guidance
Posted on September 23, 2022 7:56 pm
Anonymous
   
CSSE3010 – Embedded Systems Design & Interfacing 27.3

This course has a ridiculous workload that includes weekly assessment stages (ranging from 50-200 lines of code), 2 x projects (around 1k-2k lines of code) and a final exam.

You will learn quite a bit, however if embedded systems isn't really what you're interested in, then too bad lol because you are going to have to spend more time on this course than any of your others if you want to pass.

Also have fun dealing with Matt D'Souza who is probably one of the most useless and arrogant lecturers/course co-ordinators in ITEE.

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2017

Your program/major

Electrical Engineering

Is lecture attendance necessary?

No

Is the textbook necessary?

No

Positives
  • Learn a lot
Negatives
  • Ridiculously large workload
  • Matt D'Souza
Posted on July 10, 2018 3:04 pm
Anonymous
   
CSSE3010 – Embedded Systems Design & Interfacing 79.1

This course was hard! However, after completing this course you will come out a more well rounded programmer. I did this course with Dr Matthew D'Souza as course coordinater. His lectures were not particularly interesting, however understandable given the theory is a bit bland in this course for large parts. Advice for the students entering the course: start early with pracs and projects. You get a week to do each prac and for me it took me about 8-12 hours of design and programming to complete each prac. I did this course with only one other in the semester and if you are like me and have not done significantly well in the previous programming courses (CSSE2010, CSSE2310) I would suggest taking easier courses or less courses while doing this course (summer semesters are great!).

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2017

Your program/major

BE Electrical Engineering

Is lecture attendance necessary?

No

Is the textbook necessary?

No

Positives
  • FreeRTOS experience
  • Teaches good programming design
Negatives
  • weekly pass/fails
Posted on November 11, 2017 9:44 am
Anonymous
   
CSSE3010 – Embedded Systems Design & Interfacing 23.4

For first weeks of the semester i enjoyed the course but after that the material becomes more challenging and impossible to do.. You have to do a practical homework every week which makes you feel extremely exhausted by the middle of the semester... I hate the tutorials because the tutors are not helping and the lecturer wasn't as well.. The way he teach need to cw changed honestly

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2016

Your program/major

Electrical engineering

Is lecture attendance necessary?

No

Is the textbook necessary?

Yes

Positives No positive points
Negatives
  • Tutors are useless
  • Projects are Impossible to do
  • Too many things to do
Posted on May 7, 2017 2:30 pm
Daniel
   
CSSE3010 – Embedded Systems Design & Interfacing 85.3

This is an intense course- But one of the best you will ever do (definately world class)!
This course does not treat you as a student, rather as a embedded system engineering.
You must have an intermediate-advance level of programming C. If you do not have the skill level required, spend your holidays working on it.You cannot wing this course
This course is a design course. coursework consists of 3 programming assignments. These are not trivial, and require lots of time to complete. These projects are really interesting, you will have lots of fun developing it.
These projects are aided by weekly programming exercises , and coursework. These ensure you will have the necessary skills to complete the projects. Falling behind on these is not an option, you will fail. .

Overall: This course expects a lot, and if you can do it, you will prove to yourself you have what it takes to be an embedded engineering in the real world!

You do not need to have completed ELEC2004 for this course. However, if you want to understand how a digital system (i.e an embedded computer) truely works (i.e. how is PWM actually performed) you will need to have completed the electrical requirement.

A UQ ITEE premier course, thank you Adam, Matt and Nathan (teaching staff), for making this course so great.

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2015

Your program/major

BE(electrical and computer)

Is lecture attendance necessary?

no

Is the textbook necessary?

no

Positives
  • Amazing projects
  • Lots (!) of c coding
  • enjoyed how
Negatives
  • forget about your girlfriend, this semester.
Posted on July 24, 2015 1:10 pm
Anonymous
   
CSSE3010 – Embedded Systems Design & Interfacing 78.9

I enjoyed the course overall but it was allot of work. This is a progressive project where you develop small parts at first and at the end of the semester you are joining the early parts together to make a larger project. This can be a problem if you don't understand a concept because you cannot just forget about it, you will probably end up using 3 times before the end of the semester. This can lead to huge workloads outside of class, coupled with the radio which can only be developed either at uni or with a partner, the time constraints can be crazy.

The pracs are fairly good aslong as your not in the one everyone wants to go to. I was and it meant i got to talk to a tutor 3 times in a 3 hour prac for just a few minutes each. They do their best but there was just too many people.

The lectures where ok, you should have a decent understanding of everything not related to FreeRTOS before you start the subject. The recordings barley worked, I had to constantly max my volume to hear them and follow along the downloaded slides.

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2015

Your program/major

BEng Electrical

Is lecture attendance necessary?

No, but recordings are poor

Is the textbook necessary?

No

Positives
  • Kit
  • Filthy Civil freinds will be jeoulous
  • Interesting content
Negatives
  • Workload
  • Radio
Posted on July 1, 2015 7:59 pm
Laurence McLean
   
CSSE3010 – Embedded Systems Design & Interfacing 67.9

Having started it the year before and dropping it to redo this year, the course is not easy. The course is challenging but rewarding. You learn a bit from lectures but more from hands on project work.
You'll need to be prepared to put a lot of effort in early in the semester, and you'll need to be good with C.

The tutors are very helpful, and resources are mostly. Downside is when getting to radio there's not something you can have at home to test against, so you'll need to do more work at uni and work with people to test against each other.

All content is posted on blackboard but not organised well. Piazza (discussion board) is very useful in getting support and giving each other support. Contact hours with tutors isn't amazing mostly because of class sizes with too many students crammed into one room.

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2015

Your program/major

Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Systems) / Bachelor of IT

Is lecture attendance necessary?

No but advised. Lectures recorded but recording doesn\'t work always with some of the lecturers

Is the textbook necessary?

No

Positives
  • Stimulating and a lot of fun
  • Tutors give good help and good resources available
Negatives
  • Steep learning curve at beginning
  • Prac sessions are crammed
Posted on June 17, 2015 12:34 am
Timothy Hadwen
   
CSSE3010 – Embedded Systems Design & Interfacing 91.7

Pretty fun course but a hell of a lot of work. Weekly pracs worth no marks but are pass/fail take upwards of 8 hours work each week and tend to be about 1000 lines each. You get given a kit full of everything you need which does make this a little easier. The lectures are reasonable and the pracs are very good. Do not take this as an easy subject for you will be very very surprised

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2014

Your program/major

Beng/IT

Positives
  • Shows real world use for learning
  • Get to make lasers track people around
Negatives
  • 1000 Lines code per week
  • Complex C code
Posted on May 20, 2014 10:07 pm
Anonymous
   
CSSE3010 – Embedded Systems Design & Interfacing 26.0

A lot of work. If you decide to do this course, be aware it is heavy C programming. The pracs every week are a lot of work and the assignments require a lot of work. the course co-ordinator isn't really involved in the course, so credit to the tutors running the pracs who do ALL the work.

Your program/major

Bachelor of engineering

Positives
  • You get a nifty kit
Negatives
  • Secretly update assignments without letting you know
  • Huge compulsory (pass/fail) weekly pracs
  • Unreliable contact
Posted on May 19, 2014 12:07 pm

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