The toughest part of getting your self to work is the first project. Once you've over come this first project the rest seem much more easier. This post basically aims at getting one started. A few steps i think will help you get past this learning curve with a little ease.

Step 1:
Define the problem statement clearly for yourself, Write down all the requirements, dont go too technical. Just mention on the outside what you want your project to do.

Step 2: Break up step one into different parts. Go technical here. Break it into, mechanical, coding, Hardware electronics. and then further down into different components.

Step 3: Start writing down your plan for each component. If its a program write the algorithm and logic for it.
For, Electronic circuits a block diagram, mechanical part put down the designs.(Dont be too technical here again)

Step 4: List down all the components you need for your project. In case there are things your not cirtain of get a way to conduct some tests on it. that is: instead of buying all the components get one of it and see if it works the way you want it to.

Step 5: Get all the components and dependencies required by your project.

Step 6: Convert the Flowcharts and designs into actual code and the block diagrams into complete circuits.

Step 7: Test the components you've made separately.

Step 8: Put them all together. you’ll have your idea materialized.

Step 9: Test the complete product.

Step 10: Feel happy and start a new project.


This is just a birds eye view of how you should go about your project.
 
The day started off with talks, Surprisingly we had a jam packed auditorium.
Talk 1: Jaykumar and Senthil from FSMK(Free Software Movement karnataka) gave a brief talk on the on-going free software movement and the need for a parallel hardware movement.
Talk 2: Me (Ashfaq) presented the idea of Freedom hardware and its need in our world.
Talk 3: Prof. Dinesh from IISc spoke about product development, Inspiring students to start working of various projects.
Talk 4: Aravind(Junior Research Fellow @ IISc gave a demo of interfacing the arduino and Raspberry and controlling a motor over the internet.

This was then followed by an open house exhibition.Students displayed projects done by them.

The Projects on display:

Hardware based.
1. Line-follower.-Basic line follower made using a motor driver and Ir sensors
2. Manual bot- Manually controlled wireless bot.
3. Wi-Gi(wireless Gesture Input ) - A glove which controls the mouse on your computer,taking the movements on                                                     the Hand.(using wireless communication)
4.Kinect:- A bot the follows you!!
5. 7-segment Display-A basic 1ft by 1ft display made as a display for basket ball matches,done by students.
6. Speaker-A simple arduino Project which takes input from a tv remote(via IR, and plays a tone)
7. PIR.-The door was hooked with a pir sensor, which would count the number of people entering the hall.
8. Power Supply- the basic bridge power supply, used to explain basic capacitance to students.
9. Led Cube: using arduino( 4X4X4 cube)
10:EMF sensor: an arduino based project that would give display the reading of radiation present in the air.

And many more projects....

Software Projects:


1. Web programming: Basic Html website.
2. Fun with Bash:explaining the bash script.
3. Blender:animation using blender.
4. Kernel compilation
5. Rahul's Table: Rahul our web developer explained various upcoming technologies in website building.
6.Filters on octave
In parallel to the exhibition a workshop on PCB designing was conducted. The workshop taught the student s to use Kicad for designing PCB and also a brief explanation on how to fabricate them at home.

We had planned to cater to 30 students, but surprisingly we had a demand for more than 150 registrations. hence the workshop was conducted in 3 sessions of about 45-50 students each.

The audience
Audience
The Road Ahead!

This event got many of the students interested in the movement, now we plan to help them work on projects by providing technical support and also giving a common platform to learn,share and teach.