MCT Project - Digital Kitchen Timer

We made this group project for our 'Micro-Controller Programming' course in Temasek Polytechnic. The teacher took a video of me demonstrating our digital kitchen timer. It was programmed in a microcontroller-compatible version of language C and it uses the quartz crystal on-board to accurately measure time.

Wow I'm still proud of this project as I went beyond the bare minimum needed to complete it! My tutor was very impressed that he kept the project for demonstration to other batches of students (I wonder if they still have it in the lab - usually they recycle all project materials after grading and don't keep it around).

Although this was a group project, I happily did all of the programming myself while my group mates helped with brainstorming and other works. While other students took the easy route of using CPU cycles to track time (unsustainable if you upgrade to a faster CPU), I studied a big textbook to figure out how I can use the quartz crystal to track time. It was hard but when I figured it out, it felt really good. This was to make sure even if the CPU is clocked lower or higher, the duration of a "second" won't change.

The other thing I made sure is that the device is asynchronous, which means it will ALWAYS respond to button presses or toggles. I could pause the timer, stop it or even run multiple timers and switch between them. This was something many students couldn't understand at all, and they made synchronous devices - it would become non-responsive during countdown and you'll have to wait for the timer to finish or reboot the device.

And I also figured out how to use the 7-segment display to show the countdown. Then there were extra features like "saved presets that you can edit" (saved even if switched off), "multiple timers", LED pattern indicators, music, etc. I think I effectively used most of the available hardware on the device :) Most of these were not necessary to pass the project. :)

PS: My voice is terrible, I know.

#project #college #university

Видео MCT Project - Digital Kitchen Timer канала The YouTube Experiment by ADTC