Josh Gillam - Work Experience Student 4-7-2022
In the month of July, Xor Systems takes on several work experience students as we believe that educating and inspiring the next generation of outstanding engineers is of the upmost importance. Through giving young people an experience of the workplace we help kindle a passion for software and technology as well as develop the critical thinking skills that they will need in their future careers.
This week we have taken on Josh, a year 10 GCSE student who is taking Computer Science and Engineering as 2 of his module options. Josh has a passion for learning and problem solving, and over this week at Xor Systems, we will help him develop his knowledge of programming and hardware.
We started him on a tiny mbed board, programming it through the online compiler. Josh was tasked with programming the microcontroller in C++ to control a series of LEDs using PWM (pulse width modulation). This was explained to him on the whiteboard, and once he had it working, we could show him on the oscilloscope that the reality matched the planned approach.
He then moved on to the brand new Raspeberry Pi Pico, with built in wifi. This uses Micro Python and matched better Josh's previous experience. He managed to get the Pico to drive a stepper motor using a UART port and a set of commands, writing data to registers to control the behaviour of the motor.