Selecting your Final year project is the most
crucial part of the entire engineering course. It not only reflects your
learning and studies during the entire 4 years but also test your capabilities
as a student in terms of innovation, pressure handling and proper management of
time and resources.
Now there are many approaches on how you can
select a particular project. What I am most familiar with and most of the
industrial projects are currently designed is through a” Top-down” or “Bottom-up”
approach.
What is a Top-down approach?
Top-down approach is basically thinking of an abstract
level application of a particular idea and further improvising over the
practical implementation of it.
And Bottom-up…?
Bottom-up is like having fundamental modules
already worked on previously, and utilising these modules for a more
sophisticated application.
So adoption of a particular approach is
dependent on the group. Besides there are few more factors to be taken into
consideration while selecting a BE project.
·
Choose
a Unique and Improved Project
There are many institutes which offer live
projects but most of them are offering the same projects from many years. These
projects from many institutes are not unique and have already been submitted by
many students to their universities. So, try to avoid such projects if
possible. Try to make sure that your project work is unique and is an
improvement over other projects if a similar project already exists.
·
Address
Social concerns
Society today has many such issues which are always
recognised over the sessions of various debates, but are seldom solved. You can
look for such problems faced by every commoner and may provide a technically
innovative approach to solve it to make things a little better.
·
Planning
is better
Never start a project without planning properly
about it. Gather all the information, research well and then go for your
selected project. You cannot change the project once the sheet has been sent to
University.
·
Domain
bounded projects.
Many times it happens those students in
electronics go for a GUI based or software project or the Computer students opt
a hardware-based project. I do not discourage learning new things and
implementing them in your project, but if you have proficiency over some
programming language or field of knowledge it is better to utilise that than learn
something new. Besides, at times of your project vivas, if the major part of
project is not in you course related domain you might be in trouble answering
to queries.
·
Placement
success
Do remember that your projects can be your key
to success in placements so pick them cautiously. An innovative project can
make your mark on the interviewer’s mind so selecting uniquely useful project
can give you a job too!
·
Physical
parameters
There are various physical parameters that comes
with the implement-ability of the project
Less or No Involvement of
Wireless Networks
Wireless
networks like RF modules; Blue-tooth , etc. can stop working any time. Imagine
if it crashes or stops functioning on your project presentation day. Besides,
you will encounter difficulty in dealing with interference and noise issues. I hence,
recommend avoiding wireless networks as far as possible.
Programming Language Used
It should
always be a platform with an independent language like Java, .PHP, etc. so that
the project can run on every
platform.
Available Core-gen and
libraries
Making your own library and functional modules
is always advisable. But if in case the application is too complex and deals
with a small part of the project then readily available open source libraries
can be utilised without much concerns. For e.g. Writing a RS232 driver in C is
simple but writing a USB or Ethernet driver can be tedious so it can be
implemented using CORE-gen.
·
Taking
Others Help with Your Project Work
There are thousands
of engineering colleges over and lakhs of engineering students over here. But
the bitter truth is that there is an immense scarcity of good teachers to cater
the needs of these students. Because of this, many local colleges hire unqualified
and unskilled teachers. Many colleges do not even have their laboratories fully
equipped. Even if there are laboratories, there are not many people to train
the students practically. This is the main cause why students are forced to
seek others help in their project work. According to my statistics (although
with my limited data), not more than 30 percent of the students studying in
these local engineering colleges do their project on their own. I do not know
how it is in other places, but here in Mumbai (India), there are many companies
and institutes with crores of rupees of turnover which they earn only by making
these projects. This itself is sufficient to understand the gravity of the
situation.
I guess most people
reading this article are about to select their project as soon as possible. If
that is the case, and if you fall in this category, then I recommend you to
take help from others as you do not have a better alternative. Taking others help in learning something is not at all
wrong but taking others help to skip learning is wrong. If you think
you are not yet good at electronics or programming and if you cannot implement
any circuits or programs on your own, then the first thing is to find a tutor
who can teach you all these things. There are many resources online to help you
learn and enhance your skill. However, it will be better if you can find a
personal tutor who can help you out. Better if you get any good senior or a
professor of yours to help you learn. If you are really interested in learning
something and if you need any help, you can also contact me. Learn all the
necessary skills first and then you can proceed with the project.
As a final word, if
you want any assistance for your projects and if you are looking for any unique
project ideas, you can also contact me. I can assist you in your work.
