Power Bass!
Five final year Power Electronics (ECEN405) students ended their trimester with a project loud enough to potentially cause auditory damage. The students, supervised by Robin Dykstra, designed, developed and produced fully working sub-woofer Class D amplifiers.
From left: Dr Robin Dykstra, Matthew Bourne, Abigail Arulandu, Arya Reais-Parsi, Brendan Vercoelen, Dayna Kivell
Each design was different; some allowing input directly from an MP3 player and others included multiple audio outputs. The project not only put the skills learned from the Power Electronic course into practice, but also allowed them to have full creative and design control, while still keeping to a tight budget. Given this was a difficult project, each of the students did well to achieve a working solution (even after dozens of blown components). So if you are walking through the Alan MacDairmid building on level 2, and hear a not-so-subtle doof-doof noise, it is likely to be originating from the Engineering Honours Lab, who can now claim to have the loudest lab on campus.
