Saket Vora

I’m happy to say that the FM radio my group and I have been spending so much time on this quarter works!

Look how clear this song comes through:

It was great. I went into the lab Monday afternoon, fully expecting to be working hard getting all those different components we’ve built the past many weeks to work together. Andrew and Kamal were already in working on their radio, and suddenly the sweet sound of music started coming out of the spectrum analyzer (which we’re using to demod the FM after we’ve received the signal, filtered it, and amplified it). It was great!

After they cheered, we tested out their range and Andrew could go all the way to the door and still have successful radio transmission. Better than any other group I saw. Afterward, Andrew immediately turned to me and said “now let’s get yours working!” So he and Kamal stayed in the lab and helped me get my group’s radio modified and connected together for operation. Our monopole antenna wasn’t quite working (a connector got loose) so we used theirs. After twisting a few knobs, we achieved success too! I was shocked how little we had to really do to get ours to work in the end, considering all the blocks having non-ideal termination points and losses. We were pretty happy, and trying all kinds of music over the airwaves.

By this point, Jonathan was in the lab and Andrew and I turned to him and said “now let’s get yours working too!” and we stayed there and helped debug Jonathan and George’s radio. We isolated the problem down to his VCO/PLL board, but all of his other components worked great. He and George would continue to work on that.

Feeling good, I met up with my entrepreneurial finance group and we finished our VC pitch for Tuesday and recorded it. We had long and pointed discussions on the business, its viability, etc. Good thought-provoking discussions, and revealing on how difficult some decisions are. We felt good about our pitch, and the following day all the groups delivered their VC pitches (these are new ideas for companies, existing ones, etc.) Greentech/cleantech was in vogue, as well as some Web 2.0-ish startups. What was amusing though was that another group was pitching an idea that was extremely similar to ours, even they were acknowledging it (they went after us). They were even using the same language as us. Frankly, I think ours was better. :) So now the next step is to act like a VC and write an investment memo on a company we were assigned.

I went back to the 414 lab and tried to help Jonathan and George out with their PLL, and then Siddharth and I tried to figure out why our power amp was working the way it was. In the process, I broke the power amplifier. :( At least I have video proof our radio worked! I took it easy that night, caught up with Simon a bit.

Wednesday morning I woke up early and took the Caltrain to our cherished state government office: the DMV. I had an appointment to get my California driver’s license. NC could learn from their office’s efficiency. I barely passed the written test (harder than I thought it was going to be) and walked out with a temporary permit — in California they mail you the actual license 2 weeks later. Hooray.

Back on campus, Dr. Thomas Lee, our professor for EE 414 - RF Circuits lab, took our class out to eat at the Thai Cafe, just off the Quad (which operates like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, no joke). Good lunch, we learned that while Dr. Lee was at MIT, he didn’t participate in the ‘hacks’ but picked up rather good lockpicking skills from a friend. Even at Stanford, he’d use something like a paperclip to open his office door if he got locked out! After lunch we went over as a group to the lab for a last get together and demo. First the class had a special token of our appreciation for Dr. Lee:

He loves Diet Pepsi. Siddharth had set up a working radio and brought Dr. Lee for a demonstration. The best part: he used the sound recording of the Apollo 11 transmission from the moon. It was amazing hearing it over the radio and the class applauded the demo. We hung around for another hour so, savoring the chance to hang out with Dr. Lee. Here he describes his astonishing electronics collection:

Yeah. You heard that right. 200 oscilloscopes, 5000+ vacuum tubes.

People started to trickle out, but some of us hung around talking about courses for next year and such. As a final parting gift, we wanted to leave something for next quarter’s class:

With the pretty sweet final product:

Jonathan was feeling hungry and mentioned Tandoori, an quasi-fastfood Indian place on California Avenue. Siddharth, Jonathan, and I headed down there and I had chole batura, samosa, and Indian-style chai. For the price, the servings are huge and the food is great. Definitely coming back here! It was a really nice day to be outside too. Back at the apartment I worked on some layout for 192C (project due Friday).

Some of you might look at all these videos about EE 414 and the circuits lab stuff and just say “wow what geeks”, but I’d have to say that this was one of the most enjoyable classes I’ve ever had. And I told Dr. Lee this today — as much fun as it is to breath in solder fumes and cut copper tape, what made EE 414 special were the people in the class. This group started to gel last quarter in EE 314. No pretentious people, everyone had a good sense of humor, we’d laugh and joke all the time, give each other crap, the usual. But air of collaboration was wonderful. We shared what worked for us, what didn’t, we all would routinely drop what we were doing to go help another group out, we’d come down to the lab and strive at making our components better for the sake of learning more and of personal accomplishment. When Dr. Lee first created this course, he intentionally stated that there would be no homework, no exams, just lab reports. And everyone begins with an A (due to the self-selection…this is an upper level graduate course). So right away the way people approached the class was different and it really showed. The sincerity in wanting to see all the groups do well is something I haven’t seen to this extent. Overall, the people in this class made it possible to spend 16 hours in a day down in the basement of Packard and enjoying it. Maybe this comes across in some of the videos; I hope so.

More videos:

Oh yeah — here is a tour of the undergraduate RF lab at Stanford. Look at all the instruments…wow: