Programming for Engineers

Background

The program International Engineering is designed to offer people with refugee background the possibility to become quickly integrated in engineering studies. In combination with German language courses the lecture "Programming for Engineers" allows people entitled to political asylum to be prepared for a follow-up study in engineering, mechatronics or likewise.

The course is heavily supported by honorary work and industrial funding of our partners.

General Information

What is programming? What makes it exciting? In this lecture you will be introduced to the world of programming and will solve challenging tasks on embedded micro controllers auch as the Arduino Mega Boards. We will mainly focus on learning basic programming concepts and gaining practical experience.

Type 8 CP (for students of mechatronics and participants of International Engineering)
TimeTuesday 16 - 18
LocationE 1.3. HS 002
Course languageenglish
Contactpfe15@lists.st.cs.uni-saarland.de
Re-ExamApril 11th, 2 p.m., CISPA Building (Registration required)

Questions regarding the lecture, exercises or likewise may asked on the mailing list.

News

  • April 8th Exam slots for oral re-exam are published. See here
  • March 30th The oral Re-Exam will take place at Monday April 11th. Each participant will be assigned a 30 minute slot for the exam starting at 2 p.m.. Please register by email (until April 7th) and in the LSF
  • Feb 16th The final grades are available now. Exam inspection will take place on Tuesday February 23th, 2 p.m. - 3 p.m. (E9.1 Room 2.21)
  • Jan 26th Admissions for the final exam can be checked HERE. You need 50% of the overall points to be allowed to participate the exam.
  • Jan 20th Proposals for the final deadline need to be handed in 'til 1st of February
  • Dec 4th The chair will be moving to the new CISPA building E1.9.. There will be no lecture on December 8th.
  • Nov 5th The tutorial assignments have been completed. Have a look here. Tutorials will take place in the CIP (E1.3. Room 1.04)
  • Oct 30th The registration deadline for this course has been extended until November 15th. Please follow the instructions

Regulatories

Prerequisites
This course is especially offered to those who are entitled to political asylum or are recognised refugees and do not possess their certificates anymore, but have previous education, acquired in their native countries, enabling them to study at a university.

People with this background need to fulfill the official regulation. The program offers the following possibilities

  • Regular application and enrolment is possible for any academic degree programme for those who can provide the relevant certificates. More
  • Undergraduate studies leading to a Bachelor's degree in a subject of the "MINT" range without submission of certificates. More...
  • Studies as a guest student in English and German lectures. Students need to have sufficient english language skills. Lecture, exam and execerises are held in english.
At the end of the lecture you will receive a graded certificate which can be used when pursuing further studies in Systems Engineering or Computer Science
The course is also open for students of system engineering, as well as micro technology and nano structures (8CP). Furhermore, all students can enroll for this lectSure and can achieve 5 CP.

Registration
You need to officially register for this course. Registration has been extended until November 15th.
A non-obligatory registration can be done by sending an email to pfe15@lists.st.cs.uni-saarland.de. Please include the following information:
  • People with refugee-background
    • Full Name
    • Do you participate the official "International Engineering" project. Did you take the entry test or do you have certificates proving your university entrance qualification
    • background information (e.g. did you take universtity lectures in your home land)
    • Do you have access to your own PC/Laptop
  • Enrolled Students of Saarland University
    • Full Name
    • Matriculation Number
    • Field of Study (e.g. Computer Science)
    • Semester
Projects
Practical experience is gathered in this lecture by solving specific programming tasks (projects) on embedded system infrastructures. Solving and explaining the project solution individually in the exercise groups is a mandatory prerequisite to pass the course. In the first step, you will develop your own solution (code + circuit setup). This solution is handed in to your tutor, who will provide you with feedback. In the exercise group, you will construct, present and explain your setup.
Final Project
In the final phase of the lecture (the last three weeks of the lecture period) you will prepare a self chosen project in groups of four students.
Office hours / Exercise Groups

Office hours are designed to help you with problems while working on the projects. The tutors will help you with advice and practical help.

All students can visit all office hours independently of their exercise groups. Office hours will be held once a week.

  • Group 1
    • Tutor: Hendrik Meerkamp
    • Time: Monday 14-16
    • Location: E1.3. Room 104 (Student CIP)
  • Group 2
    • Tutor: Patrick Bäcker
    • Time: Monday 16-18
    • Location: E1.3. Room 104 (Student CIP)
Grading
Grading regulations will be published soon.

Lecture Calendar

Lecture dates, topics and location might change. Such information will be announced in due time. You can subscribe to this official calendar to keep you updated.

Lecture Slides

Lecture slides will be published here shortly after each lecture.


0. The Lecture

1. First Steps

2. Divide and Conquer

3. Behind the Scenes

4. Inputs

5. Arrays and Loops

6. Interactive Automata

7. Algorithms
8. Dynamic Data Structures

9. Mobile Networking


Final Project

10. Testing & Debugging

Exercise Sheets

Exercise sheets will be published during the course.

Exercise 1:
Morse code & Debugging

Exercise 2:
Traffic Lights

Exercise 3:
Simon

Exercise 4:
Interactive Automata

Exercise 5:
Sorting

Exercise 6:
Wifi-Webserver

Demo Exam

Projects

Following the lecture, you will have 3-4 weeks additional time to solve your final projects. More details will be published soon.

Exams

We will offer two dates for final exams. To pass the course, at least one of the exams has to be completed with a passing grade (at least 50% of the overall points). You can either attend only one exam or both. The better grade counts. In order to attend the re-exam, you need to register by eMail to the teaching assistant.

You further need to achieve at least 50% of the overall points in the exercise sheets to qualify for the exam. Students who do not meet this requirement, are not allowed to participate in the exam and can not pass the course.

  • Exam: February 2nd
  • Re-Exam: April 11th - E9.1 (CISPA building) Ground Floor

    Timeslot Student #1 Student #2
    15:45 sharp 2561832 2546045
    16:30 sharp 2561810 2557880

The Team

ContactOfficial Mailing List for Questions and Support
LecturerProf. Dr. Andreas Zeller
Teaching assistantAndreas Rau
Tutoren:Curd Becker
Hendrick MeerkampPatrick Bäcker

Arduino IDE

Students who do not have access to their own development environment or hardware, can borrow the necessary hardware and can get access to computers with a pre-installed programming environment. The Software Engineering Chair will lend a limited number of Arduino boards and other hardware (e.g. switching circuit materials) to the students during the course period. After finishing the final projects, this hardware needs to be returned.
Furthermore, you will have part time access to the students' CIP pools. In order to get access, you
  • need an existing student account (or you will receive one upon successfull course registration)
  • acknowledge the work rules of the CIP pools (german version, english version will be published soon)
During the exercises you will work on the borrowed Funduino Mega Boards. You are allowed to buy/use your own boards as long as they follow hardware specifications mentioned below.
Hardware
  • Lernset "MEGA 1" by Funduino with MEGA2560 R3 Mikrocontroller, 20 LEDs per color, resistors, sensors, push buttons, speaker, wiring, patch panel, motion sensor, servomotor, etc.
    Vendors: Funduino-Shop (with students discount); Amazon.
  • LCD-Module I2C/TWI 1602 Serial for mounting
    Vendor: Amazon (blue), Amazon (green).
  • Ethernet-Shield W5100 for mounting with a micro sd-slot. Provides Internet Access to your Arduino Mega.
    Vendor: Amazon.
Software
In case you bring your own laptop/PC, the following programming environment should be used. For all other software, there will be no official support from the tutoring staff.
for Microsoft Windows
for Apple Mac OS X
for Linux (64bit)
for Linux (32bit)
Command Reference
All commands, language specification and likewise can be found on the official Arduino website. There is an unofficial german translation.

Partners

Special thanks go to our sponsors and supporters