A Project What?!

It all started on November 2007, the talk about projects. Everyone had their own thoughts and dreams. Four years of studies and this is the time they could prove their skills. 90% of the ECE students decided to do their project outside college. I was among the 10%. But I needed few partners so that I can form a team. I found 3 guys who were ready to do project with me.
Mr. Buddha: Very calm, dedicated, ever smiling, quiet person, hard working, very trustworthy.
Mr. Pongal: Super active (only when girls around and hence the name), talkative, fun loving, puts up a great talk show with professors, very dependable person.
Mr. Aruva star: click on the name to see the meaning of it. He is not a terror but lethargic (but the name just stuck). Serious only when someone provokes him. Has a talent of writing beautiful poems, Movie freak, and very reliable person.
And Me: I am a mixture of the above three.

We were good friends and knew each other very well. We knew we could pull off the most difficult and toughest jobs in the world. But we were self content. Team was ready but we needed a guide/professor who would give us a project to work on. We came to know that Mr. GP was working in a project to get his Master of Philosophy degree. He was known to be an easy going professor who doesn’t trouble the students much. We asked him if we could give us a project. He was very glad we asked him and agreed to provide us a project. That is when for the first time in our lives we heard the word “Soliton”. A single thought rang in our brains “cooooool”. He told us this is one of the hottest topics in electronics, if you can implement this project then your names will be published in IEEE. Our eyes were gleaming with happiness and smiled at each other “awesome”.

For final year students last semester began late so that they can work on their projects longer. Four of us met Mr. GP before our holidays and decided that we would be back to college after two weeks time. Only few final year students were doing project in college and very few were staying in hostel. This meant that wifi in hostel would be super fast and you can download as many movies as you wanted ;). We met Mr. GP and we discussed a few things and he said we start doing the project next week since he was busy now with paper correction work. He gave us a material to read so that we get an idea about the project. We happily roamed the college, enjoyed the high speed internet and slept well. We were final years no one bothered ask us what we were doing in college as well as in hostel. We were the four uncrowned kings. A week flew by junior classes started, college became little crowded.

One fine day we started reading the material we got from Mr. GP because we had to meet him the next day. Our eyes were glued to the writings; no one spoke to each other. We started having our dinner in silence.
Me: “Did you guys understand anything in that material?”
Buddha: “Vikram, I didn’t understand anything!!”
Aruva: “Actually I read only a page, since you guys were reading so serious I thought I’ll learn from you”
Pongal: “I understood.”
Three of us were staring at him.
Me: “Pongal, there is no girl around”
Pongal: “dei… dei… enna da… (what da…) It is just a wave…”
Buddha: “yes we know that and…”
Pongal: “oh… after that definition I didn’t understand anything.”
We looked at each other, what we have gotten ourselves into! The entire material had so many equations and scientific terms that made us so so so so sleepy!!!! Monday morning we met Mr. GP, we confessed to him that we didn’t understand much. He said that is fine he will explain the theory part but he cannot do it now since he had so many classes to attend. We were pretty much happy by now since he agreed to explain to us the theory, world became beautiful again. He asked us to meet on Friday afternoon. Mr. Aruva came out and said “Machi! I am going to Chennai”. Rest of us just looked at him. He continued “I am getting bored here so let’s go and have a good time in Chennai and be back by Friday.” We had to get permission to from warden and our professor to leave home during project time. That part was easy. We went to Mr.GP and asked him to just sign the letter and he did it. Buddha, Pongal and I were from Chennai but Mr. Aruva was not. So he had to tell a lie at home to come along with us.
Me: “What are you going to tell at home?”
Aruva: “Nothing elaborated, just going to buy a transistor”
Me: “what????”
Aruva: “You know we are doing an Electronics project, we need a transistor!”
Buddha: “So you are going to Chennai to get a transistor??”
Pongal: “Sounds great to me! Make sure you get a resistor also”
Buddha: “dei anniyayam pannathigada!( don’t be atrocious!) We don’t even know what the project is about and you are going to buy a transistor and a resistor? Aruva, your sister is an Electronic engineer, won’t she ask you about this?”
Aruva: “In the material I saw a transistor in circuit diagram; I’ll manage my sister with that diagram”
Pongal: “super da mappi!!”
So we all went for a week to Chennai and had a great time.

Two weeks passed, i.e. half a month, plus another two weeks taken as holidays which made up a month. By now people who did their project outside had their models or codes ready. We spoke with them they seemed to be more or less in same situation like us. But for sure they will get an output because they have paid for it!! We had to give four reviews about the project in college – 3 internal reviews and one external review. Our first review was on January, one more week left. We had a million dollar question in our hand; we didn’t know what we were supposed to do in the project. All the time we were thinking about the material and its content. We actually forgot the “to do” part! In the first review we were supposed to give an over view of what we have planned to do on the project and what steps are to be taken to achieve it. The students doing outside college even got presentation prepared from the company!! Next day we met Mr. GP and asked him what we were supposed “to do” as first review was coming soon, he asked us to prepare few slides with theory and some equations and said we will show the mathematical equations as a project. We were dumbstruck, that’s all!! We were going to show mathematical equations?! When people are going to produce models and implement stuffs we are going to show this?! When we came out Buddha said to me “It is not too late to go to one of those companies and get ourselves a project.” I did not agree. “We have spent two weeks on this project we will continue with this. We will prepare a presentation and bring it to him tomorrow.” So we set out to a hard day’s work of cutting copying and pasting. We prepared a six page presentation and met Mr. GP next day. He said the presentation was very good and explained only the equations which we put on the presentation.

On the day of first review we were nerves, we entered the room and there was a professor sitting there. He was a known to be sarcastic and show off. We started explaining the presentation and he just kept nodding his head. The reviewer asked what does the term “C” means in equation. As an electronic engineer “C” refers to only one thing capacitor or capacitance. Mr. Buddha promptly replied it is the capacitance.
Professor: “so when you are implementing the circuit are you going to calculate the capacitance value?”
We looked at each other. You know sometimes in exam you face a two mark question for which you don’t know the answer but you write an answer so amazing and full of technical words which makes reader stupefied… what happened was nothing short of it.
Mr. Pongal: “Yes sir when we implement the Non Linear Transmission Line circuit we will make use of the capacitance value so that we can modulate the Soliton amplitude”
Rest of us knew for sure this is one of the biggest blunders Mr. Pongal has ever said! Implement the circuit! Amplitude! Modulation! The professor just said “oh! Fine!” That is when we realized that no one knew about this topic!! Whatever we said became the BIBLE for that topic! We had the ultimate power now! We cruised through our presentation and review was done. We walked out happy and started singing “happy days… happy days” (it was a famous song from telugu movie). Life was beginning to look normal. Second review was a month away. We spoke to Mr.GP and decided that we will implement an oscillator circuit for producing the Soliton waves. Mr. GP was delighted by the idea and said he will provided us trail version simulator software. College also started for final years. Second review was on February and we had to present whatever we have done so far. As we all know time flies quickly than you think, second review was around the corner. Mr.GP has not given us the simulation software. We read the material about a million times now so we were sure managing the theory part. Mr. Pongal got serious this time he went to Mr. GP and demanded the software. He somehow got the software and we started working on the simulation. Soliton waves can be produced from Non linear transmission lines (forgive me for brining electronics into the blog) so we have to produce two circuits. We had slightest clues of what non linear transmission lines were, but we are engineers!! We do things even if we have no clue about it and succeed in it! And we started with input circuit which produces NLTL. We only had a formula and we converted formula into a circuit. (Sounds cool… looks horrible) Designing part was easily said in a sentence as converting a formula into circuit but it took us two weeks to complete it.

There was a chaos during the second review with juniors mid semester exam colliding with our review dates. It was decided that everyone will give reviews to their respective internal professors! We were in cloud nine!! Guys who did project outside college had an internal professor as guide but for us it was Mr. GP! Mr. Pongal has awesome talking abilities as I told you. We went to Mr. GP and told him that our second review was is to be conducted by him. Pongal spoke “Sir, what is your expectation from us for second review, we have been giving you the daily update about the progress we are doing and you have appreciated our work as well.” Mr.GP was confused on what to say. He nodded his head and said “Yes correct. Just give me a presentation on work till date rest I’ll deal with it.” We walked out doing “happy days” dance again!

We started working seriously on the simulation; Mr. GP had no idea on how to simulate the circuit. So it was up to us to design, we spent weeks together on it. On a fine evening, I was working on the simulation watching “Billa” movie in my room, it did a few changes in the circuit and it happened. An output which looked so horrible and yet beautiful to our eyes appeared! I was stunned. I called everyone and showed them the output! Next day we met Mr. GP and showed him the output, he was thrilled he started telling stories about how is going to apply it to IEEE and stuff. By now we knew his and our standards so we just smiled along. Before the 3rd review we went to Mr. GP’s home to learn the equations parts and what explanation to give in case if anyone asks. Mr. GP gave us a not so satisfactory explanation about things; even we raised so many questions that had no answers. But the good part was we got juice and biscuits. ;) We were confident on one thing, this stuff was totally new to many and we also had a simulation to support what we were going to say! We also decided on who would present what part of the presentation.

We were well all set for the 3rd review. The reviewer was the head of the department and this was this area of interest! We walked in and started our explanation and showed him our presentation, he said “I don’t have time to go through all your equations and presentations, just give me the key points of your work.” When you have prepared so much to present and when you are asked summarize all that in few words it is very difficult! We had to cut down so many of our work. We were shattered! We started blabbering! Just when we thought everything was going wrong, Mr. Aruva said a sentence that stunned everyone in the room (including us) “Generally in all circuits we filter the noise out but in our circuit we use this noise to generate Soliton waves.” The professor was clean bowled. He didn’t know what he could say! We just looked at Mr. Aruva, where in the world did he come up with that!! Since the professor didn’t entirely go through our presentation I quickly showed him the output of our input circuit (NLTL circuit), which looked like crap! And then showed him our original output i.e. the Soliton waves! (Bigger crappy waves) Professor looked at us and said “Good”, it came from head of departments! We nailed it! We told Mr. GP about the review he was very happy about it and he asked us to explain to him on how we created the simulation and give him a copy of the work.

The final review was done by an external. We were very confident about our work compared to others who did outside; they were still studying and preparing presentation while we were doing well. Our review was scheduled after lunch at 2PM but it only happened at 5 PM!! We were waiting outside; I got so bored that I started watching a movie in the laptop :) we were called in for the review and external heard us out completely. He was not totally convinced by our explanation. But when he saw the output he went speechless! He said he had no more questions. It was time for one more “happy days” dance!! We worked hard and party harder or just party harder!! ;)

A year after our college approved a fund of 2.5 Lakh to proceed with Soliton project!

One thing I learned from the project phase is that put an engineer in any kind of situation they will find a way to succeed in it!

This blog is dedicated to my project mates! :)

Note: Names have been changed to project the identity of the people. Read more!