♥ Hardware for Good

Hello! And welcome to the documentation website for EC.751 / EC.793 (G) Hardware Design for the Developing World! This class is focus on applying the concepts of upcycled electronics, electrical design, remote sensing and monitoring, and mechatronics to problems related to the UN Sustinable Development Goals ↗ with D-Lab partners around the world. This includes exploring applications to health, energy, education, and agriculture to have a positive impact on people living in low-income and under-served communities around the world. This class is offered in conjunction with the MIT D-Lab program Design for Second-Life Innovations ↗.

See the link below for a PDF of the syllabus!

Contents of this Website

Please note that if you’re an actively enrolled student you must also have access to the canvas website to recieve announcements, submit assignments, and more. We will be using canvas for managing grades, assignments, and general course logistics. This site is focused on documentation.

As you will be creating complex mechatronics systems with your community partners abroad, it’s essential you and your partners both have access to adequate technical information to build your skillsets together. This website was designed to consolidate the hardware and software documentation required for the course in a place where both you and your community partners can access it easily. This includes the following:

• Basic information on using sensors, actuators, arduino and the arduino cloud, connecting with smartphones, and data management.
• Considerations on designing electronic systems for remote environments.
• Consolidated readings on electrical design, safety, and mechatronics.
• Links to great educational resources including textbooks, youtube channels, free software, and other courses.
• Public documenations on the labs and tutorials.

Additionally, the content on this website is released open-source under creative commons ↗. So it can be shared with anyone!

Combining Design and Technical Education

This is a unique class for both MIT as well as D-Lab because of our focus on combining two, generally independent streams of though to build robust products for harsh environments while considering our users needs, and socioeconomic contexts. We call it technically rigorous product design for developing contexts.

Here’s what the product design process generally looks like. It’s a little messy, but there’s always a lot of feedback:

graph TD;
    id1["Problem Framing, User Interviews"];
    id2["Needs Assessment"];
    id3["Ideation"];
    id4["Sketch Modeling"];
    id5["Prototyping"];
    id6["Looks Like"];
    id7["Works Like"];
    id8["Tests Like"];
    id9["User Feedback"];
    id10["Field Testing"];
    id11["High-Fidelity Prototype + Scaling"];
    id1-->id2;
    id2-->id3;
    id3-->id4;
    id4-->id5;
    id5-->id6;
    id5-->id7;
    id5-->id8;
    id6-->id9;
    id7-->id9;
    id8-->id9;
    id4-->id9;
    id9-->id4;
    id9-->id5;
    id9-->id11;
    id11-->id10;
    id10-->id11;

And here’s what the engineering design process generally looks like (see FUNdaMENTALs of Design by Alex Slocum ↗). It’s also worth looking at the NASA Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) ↗:

graph TD
    id1["Functional Requirements"];
    id2["Environment Ergonomics"];
    id3["Design Parameters"];
    id4["Analysis"];
    id5["References"];
    id6["Risks"];
    id7["Countermeasures"];
    id8["Verification of Theory in Hardware Experiments"];
    id9["Small Scale Prototyping"];
    id10["Reliability, Lifetime, and Degradation Tests in the Appropriate Environment"];
    id11["Full Scale Prototype Engineered for Reliability"];
    id12["Field Testing"];
    id1-->id2;
    id2-->id3;
    id3-->id4;
    id4-->id5;
    id5-->id6;
    id6-->id7;
    id7-->id1;
    id7-->id8;
    id8-->id9;
    id9-->id10;
    id10-->id11;
    id11-->id12;
    id8-->id4;
    id9-->id1;
    id12-->id11;
    id10-->id8;
    id2-->id10;

In this class we’re going to combine these two processes into one, and also apply it to mechatronics / IoT systems in developing world contexts. We’re still developing this concept, but that process is going to look something liks this.

graph TD
    id0["Project Selection"];
    id1["Socioeconomic Problem Framing"];
    id2["Partner Needs Asessment"];
    id3["Technical System Requirements"];
    id4["Functional Block Diagram"];
    id5["Ideation/Idea selection"];
    id6["Sketch Modeling"];
    id7["System Architecture Design"];
    id8["User Feedback & Design Review 1"];
    id9["Prototyping"];
    id10["Works Like / System-on-Bench"];
    id11["Looks Like / Integration Tests"];
    id12["Peer Review / User Feedback / Design Review 2"];
    id13["High Fidelity Prototype"];
    id14["Field Testing in Appropriate Environment"];
    id15["Project Documentation"];
    id0-->id1;
    id1-->id2;
    id1-->id3;
    id3-->id4;
    id2-->id5;
    id5-->id6;
    id4-->id7;
    id7<-->id8;
    id6<-->id8;
    id8-->id9;
    id9-->id10;
    id9-->id11;
    id7-->id10;
    id6-->id11;
    id11-->id12;
    id10-->id12;
    id12-->id13;
    id13-->id14;
    id14-->id13;
    id14-->id15;

Class FAQ

Mental Health @ MIT

We care about you, and we really mean that! We know that MIT can be stressful, both because of the work-load but also because of so many other factors that make life hard. We first encourage you to visit Doing Well @ MIT which is the central hub for wellness resources. But in addition to that, please never hesistate to ask the staff if you need help, an extension, if you’re experiencing difficulty attending class, or even for matters outside class if you need help getting access to the right resources. We want this to be a safe, inviting, and inclusive learning environment for all.

Immediate Support Resources

Should you ever need it, the following phone numbers will direct you to immediate support resources for yourself, a friend, or anyone else in need.

Special Thanks To

Special thanks goes to Libby McDonald, Nancy Adams, Libby Hsu, Ana Pantelic, Dan Sweeney, and the rest of the amazing people at MIT D-Lab. An additional thank-you goes out to our community partners Twende (Tanzania), Kulika Uganda, and Youth Social Advocacy Team (Uganda, South Sudan). Finally, a special thanks goes to the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) ↗ for supporting this work.