News

Welcome to ELEX 2117. Our first lecture will be on Wednesday, January 8.

Labs will begin the week of January 13. Parts kits for the labs will be available for purchase from the BCIT bookstore for $6.95. These are only available to students registered in the course -- you will need to ask for the "ELEX 2117 Parts Kit" at the front counter and show ID. You will also need some components from your Level 1 parts kit (the EPM240 CPLD board, USB-Blaster, Dupont/Berg jumper wires, and some space on your breadboard).

Course Schedule

Quiz date changes.

Midterm 1 time change

Due to a conflict with the option selection presentations at 2:30 PM, midterm 1 on February 5 will start at 10:30 AM in SW1-1021. You may continue writing during your lunch break (11:30 to 12:20) if you wish.

Contact Info

Instructor (& lab instructor for Set 2F): Ed Casas, ecasas@bcit.ca
Office hours in SW1-3061: Thursdays from 12:30 PM to 1:20 PM; Wednesdays & Fridays by appointment

Assistant Instructor (& lab instructor for Sets 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E): Abhirami Senthilkumaran, abhirami_s@bcit.ca
Office hours in SW03-2925 (via SW03-2955): Fridays from 1 PM to 2 PM until 02/21.
From 02/27, on Thursdays from 12:45 PM to 2 PM either in-person or online via Teams.

Lab Proctor Hours

Quiz 1

Quiz 1 will be held on Thursday, January 23 during the regular lecture time and in the regular lecture room (from 9:30 to 10:20 AM in SW9-110). There will be two questions covering Lecture 1 (evaluating expressions and writing a Verilog module with combinational logic).

The quiz will be open-book but all electronic devices other than calculators must be left at side, back, or front of the room. Please leave the room immediately after your ELEX 2120 lecture and wait outside the classroom until I ask you to come in. This will allow me to put out the papers in alphabetical order. Each quiz will have different versions of each question. You must write your quiz at the location where it is placed.

Note that you may not leave for the first 30 minutes and you may not start if you arrive after the first student has left.

VPN and Z Drive

I noticed in the labs that many of you do not know how to access your BCIT Dev drive (mounted as Z:\ when using a BCIT lab computer and labelled with your BCIT ID) from your personal laptop. Here are two resources you may find useful:

Once you do these two steps, voilà, you will never again have to carry a USB flash drive or use your personal Drive storage to save your Quartus project files.

Midterm 1

Midterm 1 will be held on Wednesday, February 5 during the regular lecture time and in the regular lecture room (from 10:30 to 11:20 AM in SW1-1021) but you may continue writing into your lunch break (until 12:20). There will be three questions covering Lectures 1 and 2.

The exam will be open-book but all electronic devices other than calculators must be left at side, back, or front of the room. Please wait outside the room (SW1-1021) until I ask you to come in. This will allow me to put out the papers in alphabetical order. Each quiz will have different versions of each question. You must write your quiz at the location where it is placed.

Note that you may not leave for the first 30 minutes and you may not start if you arrive after the first student has left.

Lab 3 Postponed

Lab 3, and subsequent labs, have been postponed to the next scheduled lab date due to BCIT's closure on February 3. The course schedule and lab report due dates have been updated.

Optional survey

I've added a digital techniques lab survey under Activities->Surveys. Please take a moment to respond to it in the next couple of weeks.

Midterm 1 Marks

The fist midterm has been marked and returned. The median was 10 out of 12 (83%). The distribution of marks is shown below:

Quiz 2

Quiz 2 will be held on Thursday, February 20 during the regular lecture time and in the regular lecture room (from 9:30 to 10:20 AM in SW9-110). There will be two questions covering Lectures 3 and 4 (State machines and Hierarchical Design). The questions will test the learning objective given in the second paragraph at the beginning of each set of lecture notes.

Note that you may not leave for the first 30 minutes and you may not start if you arrive after the first student has left.

Lab Office Hours

I'm holding virtual office hours today from 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM. You can join online here or book a slot here if you have any questions about marking, block diagrams, coding guidelines, report formatting guidelines or past/upcoming labs.

Final Exam

The final exam for ELEX2117 will be on Thursday, April 17 from 1430 to 1730 in SW01 1205.

The exam will be open-book but all electronic devices other than calculators must be left at side, back, or front of the room. Please wait outside the classroom (SW01-1205) until I ask you to come in. This will allow me to put out the exam papers in alphabetical order. You must write your own exam at the location where it is placed.

You may not leave for the first hour and you may not start the exam if you are more than one hour late.

Quiz 2 Results

Quiz 2 has been marked and returned. The average was quite low: 4.8 out of 8. The distribution of the marks is shown below.

Midterm Exam 2

The second midterm exam will be held as scheduled. It will be on Wednesday, March 5 from 2:30 to 5:20 PM in SW1-1205. Note that this is not at the regular lecture time or the regular lecture room. There will also be a lecture at the usual time and room (10:30 AM in SW01-1021).

The exam will cover lectures 3 and 4 (State Machines), 5 (Simulation) and the first two pages of Lecture 6 (up to "Power Consumption").

The exam will be open-book but all electronic devices other than calculators must be left at side, back, or front of the room. Please wait outside the room (SW01-1205) until I ask you to come in. This will allow me to put out the exam papers in alphabetical order. Each exam will have a different version of each question. You must write your own exam at the location where it is placed.

Although the exam is scheduled for 170 minutes, it should be possible to complete the exam in about an hour.

Note that you may not leave for the first 30 minutes and you may not start the exam if you arrive after the first student has left.

No lab today (ECET 2A only)

I'm not well today and I won't be able to come in to your lab session at 1:30 PM. Please respond to the makeup lab survey under Activities->Surveys by 5 PM today to pick a time later this week to have your prelab for Lab 5 marked.

Quiz 3

Quiz 3 will be held on Friday, March 28 during the regular lecture time and in the regular lecture room (from 13:30 to 14:20 AM in SW03-1710). The quiz will cover the second half of Lecture 6 (Bidirectional Buses, Logic Level conversion), Lecture 7 (Digital Interfaces), and the first topics in Lecture 8 (Sampling, Quantization, and PWM).

The quiz will be open-book but all electronic devices other than calculators must be left at side, back, or front of the room. Please wait outside the lecture room until I ask you to come in. This will allow me to put out the papers in alphabetical order. Each quiz will have different versions of each question. You must write your quiz at the location where it is placed.

Note that you may not leave for the first 30 minutes and you may not start if you arrive after the first student has left.

Guest Lecture

I've uploaded the PowerPoint Show and Datasheet under Content->Guest Lecture. You can view them as PDFs on Learning Hub. You can also download the .ppsx file and click on the black square on each slide to play the recorded audio. Unfortunately, there is no audio recording after the first 4 slides.
I've also included the timing diagram question we closed with so you can think about which behavior(s) violate the specification.

If you have questions, let me know in your lab next week or via email: abhirami_s@bcit.ca.

Did you lose your calculator?

Please check your marks

The final exam has been marked and returned. The solutions and the marking scheme are available. All of your marks should now be available in the marks document. Excused absences should be accounted for. Please check all of your marks and let me know if you have any questions.

The distribution of the final exam and unofficial final marks are shown below.

ELEX 2117			Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
Lectures:					10:30	9:30	13:30
Labs:			15:30 (2D)	13:30 (2A)	12:30 (2B)	10:30 (2C) 15:30 (2F)	10:30 (2E)
week	starts	lab
1	Jan 06
2	Jan 13	0
3	Jan 20	1				Q1
4	Jan 27	2
5	Feb 03		(closed)		MT1
6	Feb 10	3
7	Feb 17		holiday			Q2
8	Feb 24	4
9	Mar 03	5			MT2
10	Mar 10		break				WD
11	Mar 17	6
12	Mar 24	7			GL		Q3
13	Mar 31	8
14	Apr 07
15	Apr 14					exam	holiday
16	Apr 21		holiday
Qn = Quiz n, MTn = Midterm n, GL=Guest Lec., WD = Withdrawal Deadline.
MT1 starts at 10:30 AM in SW1-1021 and you may continue until 12:20.
MT2 start at 2:30 PM in SW1-1205.

	Date of Monday	Tuesday	Thursday	Saturday	Sunday
Week 1	06-Jan
Week 2	13-Jan			Ryan
Week 3	20-Jan	Faniel	Sasha		Ryan
Week 4	27-Jan	Sasha	Sasha	Faniel
Week 5	03-Feb	Ryan	Faniel		Sasha
Week 6	10-Feb	Faniel	Sasha	Ryan
Week 7	17-Feb	Sasha	Ryan		Faniel
Week 8	24-Feb	Ryan	Faniel	Sasha
Week 9	03-Mar	Faniel	Sasha		Ryan
Week 10	10-Mar	Sasha	Ryan	Faniel
Week 11	17-Mar	Ryan	Faniel		Sasha
Week 12	24-Mar	Faniel	Sasha	Ryan
Week 13	31-Mar	Ryan	Faniel		Sasha
Week 14	07-Apr	Faniel	Sasha	Ryan
Week 15	14-Apr		Exam Week