Workshops

Every Monday at 7:10 PM in Forsyth Building, Room 236, we run a workshop series covering carefully selected topics we believe students need for success in engineering, but that aren’t typically taught in class.

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This Semester's Schedule (Fall 2025)

Workshop Descriptions

Tape Measure Yagi Antenna (Ham Radio Introduction)

Build a working directional antenna from PVC and tape measures! Learn the basics of radio waves, antenna design, and how to use your creation to make real on-air contacts. This serves as an excellent introduction to amateur radio and antenna design.

Schematic Capture

Turn your ideas into circuits with KiCad! Learn how to draw a complete schematic, the first step in creating your own printed circuit board (PCB). This workshop begins our series on PCB development. You will leave the workshop having drawn a pre-engineered schematic for use in the PCB Design workshop.

SPICE Circuit Simulation (LTspice)

Before solder touches a board, test it in software. Using your schematic from the previous workshop, simulate and analyze your circuit in a free SPICE-based circuit simulator, LTspice, to predict performance.

PCB Design (KiCad)

This workshop will take you through the process of designing a printed circuit board. You'll learn about the different types of component footprints, layers, routing, traces and more! No previous workshop attendance is needed.

Introduction to Soldering (Through-hole)

Learn an essential electrical engineering skill: soldering! We provide all of the tools, materials, and a custom instructional circuit that you will assemble and test! Uses the much easier to solder "through hole" components.

Advanced Soldering (Surface-mount)

While through hole components may be good enough for hobby projects, most modern devices use SMD aka "surface-mount device" components. You will once again build a custom circuit, this time with SMD components!

Introduction to Git

Version control made easy. Learn what Git is and how to use it. We will also teach you how to track changes, collaborate with others, and safeguard your work using both Git and GitHub.

LaTeX

Learn LaTeX (pronounced "Lah-tech" or "Lay-tech"), the typesetting system that engineers, scientists, and academics use to create professional documents, papers, and presentations.

Embedded Development

Embedded devices are everywhere today. In this workshop you will implement some simple code on a wireless club custom embedded board using a variety of protocols.

Bare Metal Embedded Development on STM32

Arduino isn't really used in industry, so what is? Well that would be the STM32 platform. We'll first learn the super nitty gritty using assembly to interface with familiar sensors and input devices, and then learn how to generate an embedded C HAL (hardware abstraction layer) for easier development work. No experience required!

Past Workshops and Schedules

Below is a selection of workshop presentations and semester schedules from previous years.

Use the accordions below to browse past semesters and explore what we’ve covered.