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ECE5725 Cornell University

Design of microcontroller based systems using embedded Linux. Student teams design and debug example solutions on a target microcontroller (for example, Raspberry Pi) during lab sessions. Emphasis will be on application and Linux programming skills, processor and microcontroller architecture with some discussion of hardware interfaces. Students create a final, end-ofsemester project using the microcontroller platform and development techniques discussed during the semester.

Selected Recent Student Projects

Pi-Ano Project Image

PI-ANO

An Interactive Musical Platform

Pi-ano is motivated by the idea of turning simple hand gestures into a joyful and expressive musical experience. We wanted to build an interface where users can play music without touching anything, and visually watch the sound “flow” across LEDs. To achieve this, the project combines real-time gesture sensing, low-latency audio generation, and synchronized LED animation on an embedded system. This allows us to explore how affordable hardware can support natural, high-responsive interaction while transforming music into both an auditory and visual form of play.

Goose Goose Duck Image

Goose Goose Duck

A swarm robot system with mother and kid

Once upon a time, a baby duckling was following its mother around the ECE 5725 town…but the duckling had a bad sense of direction. For this project, we plan to build two robots, consisting of one leader and one follower, to mimic the behavior of a mother duck and a baby duck. Our project features two robots, a leader and a follower, acting as a robotic mother duck 🦆 and baby duck 🐤. While the mother was moving, the baby carefully followed the mom, but sometimes got “lost” and cried dramatically. The mother would then try to find the baby by colour recognition with an equipped camera, like a tiny rescue mission. After the reunion, they ended up spinning and dancing happily together.

Battleship Project Image

BATTLESHIP

With NFC Bluetooth Pairing

This project involves building a handheld gaming console based on the Raspberry Pi 4. The system software, written in Python, manages multiple concurrent tasks: detecting NFC taps, exchanging MAC addresses, and establishing Bluetooth connections automatically. The final deliverable is a competitive, two-player implementation of Battleship that demonstrates a robust state machine capable of handling network events, game logic, and real-time visual feedback.