MEng Mechatronic Engineering with Industrial Experience

Brief Description of the Unit:

The unit introduces the architecture and operation of modern 32-bit microcontrollers. Students will use C/C++ to program an STM32F401RE at a high level through API-based interaction with on chip peripherals. This interaction highlight the benefits and limitations of Abstraction and Encapsulation in object-oriented programming.

A detailed study of a number of the peripheral devices available on the STM32 family of devices is also provided, with the set of devices chosen to be representative of those commonly used in embedded systems. Below are some examples of such devices:

- Digital input/output facilities
- Analogue-to-digital converters
- Counter/timers
- Low-level communications protocols e.g. Asynchronous Serial. I2C and SPI
- Polled and interrupt-driven transfer

The module also covers some common design patterns in embedded systems including:

- State machines
- Time-driven

This course unit aims to: Provide an understanding of the operation, programming and application of modern microcontrollers and standard on-chip peripheral devices found within them.

On the successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

ILO1 - Explain how hardware elements are manipulated by high level language programs. [Developed] [Assessed]

ILO2 - Describe the operation of devices such as analogue-to-digital converters, timers, counters and serial peripheral devices. [Developed] [Assessed]

ILO3 - Describe how interrupts are generated and processed, and the benefits of interrupt-driven data transfer. [Developed] [Assessed]

ILO4 - Identify typical design patterns found in embedded software, and where they can be applied. [Developed] [Assessed]

ILO5 - Design and code solutions common to embedded systems programming problems involving I/O pins, analogue-to-digital converters, timers, serial interfaces etc. [Developed] [Assessed]

ILO6 - Formulate and test hypotheses through iterative software development. [Developed]

• Didactic lectures
• Blended learning
• Problem based learning
• Laboratory based learning

Written exam - standard exam feedback provided after the exam board.

Coursework tasks - in lab during assessment.

Tuition fees for home students will be £10,050 for the 2027/28 academic year. In England and Wales, tuition fees for home undergraduate students are subject to the Government fee cap, which the Government has announced will be £10,050 for the 2027/28 academic year.

Government policy is to increase the fee cap on an annual basis to reflect inflation (i.e. increasing costs), and the tuition fee home students pay in subsequent academic years will reflect any increases in the Government fee cap (which we will communicate to you as soon as we can in advance of the relevant academic year).

Tuition fees for international students will be £37,500 for the 2027/28 academic year. For subsequent academic years, the University reserves the right to increase the tuition fee by up to 7% each year, including to reflect rising costs associated with delivering our education and wider student experience.

For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

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