Oscar Clausen - Work Experience 14-7-2023
This week we had Oscar with us for a week of work experience. Oscar is a student from KLB (Katharine Lady Berkeley) school in Wotton-under-Edge, studying mathematics and computer science for his GCSEs. He has a particular interest in programming and embedded systems and has some experience working in Python from his education.
Xor Systems believes that investing in the future of our sector means introducing youngsters to the world of embedded systems and programming for hardware, early in their learning career. This also serves as an opportunity to familiarise them with a professional working environment.
Over his week with us, we introduced Oscar to some of the concepts and principles behind embedded systems. We set him several tasks using mbed, an online IDE and compiler, with support across a wide range of boards and devices. Oscar focused on reading sensors and using the information to drive a process such as changing the colour of an RGB led based on the output of a temperature sensor. He recorded his activity in his log book which is presented below:
10/07/23: Today was my first day at work experience. I met everyone at the office and was shown all the interesting things Xor was working on. I was then given a worksheet to complete using a device called a Mbed which proved to be very challenging. I learned about methods of debouncing buttons when working with buttons, and I learned some of the programming language C++.
11/07/23: Today I continued with the Mbed, this time programming the lights to move up and down on the bottom edge. Then I worked on programming one of the LEDs to dim and brighten with a potentiometer, using the PWM method.
12/07/23: Today I finished work on the PWM light and attached the Mbed to an application board that came with multiple sensors, an LCD screen and an RGB LED. First, I made the LED cycle through all the colours, then I used the LCD screen to start work on programming a sine wave to appear. I started to work on a snake game. I started by using the joystick on the application board, but it proved to be very buggy, so I moved to another board that had a hopefully better joystick. I then fixed the errors in my program that stopped it from working on the first board and continued work on this one.
13/07/23: Today I continued work on my snake game, and by the end of the day, I had both the movement and the generation of the apples sorted out.
14/07/23: Unfortunately, my snake game was accidentally deleted, but instead I moved on to software called STM32 and a NUCLEO board which was rather more difficult than Mbed, while still using the same programming language (C++). After working with STM32 for a while, I was shown how data could be transferred by lasers, which was very interesting.
Overall, I had a great time this week, and wish it could have continued longer.
We wish Oscar luck with his GCSEs and his A levels and any future studies he embarks on and wish him success in pursuing his chosen career. We also hope that this week will have gone some way in informing him about what a career working with technology and embedded systems may be like.