Students from several schools from the IEEE Saint Louis Section participated in the annual “Black Box” competition which was held this year on Saturday November 3, 2018 at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.  Students from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), St. Louis University (SLU), and Missouri University of Science and Technology (MS&T) participated in two separate categories: analog and digital.  Six team participated in the analog competition while three teams competed in the digital contest.

The analog black box completion is a contest where student teams (1 or 2 persons) are given an analog circuit enclosed in a “black box“.  Students are then asked to draw the electrical schematic of the circuit inside.  The box contains only four terminals which the teams use to make electrical measurements that help them unravel the mystery of what is inside.  This year Aparna Shekar and Esther Chinwuko from SLU finished in Third Place.  Luke Taylor and Mathew Chan from SLU took Second Place.  Winning the analog contest was Jerome Ukah and Joel Rahlfs from SIUE.

In the digital contest, students are given a programmable logic device with a pre-programmed circuit.  As in the analog contest, students observe the behavior of the circuit.  They then are asked to describe what circuit was programmed into the FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based on their observations.  Shawn Gilles (SIUE) finished in Third Place.  Hayden Long and Richard Kell from MS&T tied for First Place along with Amy Guo and Charles Coleman from SLU.

Cash prizes for the First ($500), Second ($300), and Third ($200) place teams in were awarded in both the “analog” and “digital” categories. Other students participating in the annual event were Evan Fitzgerald (MS&T), Aaron Colvin (MS&T), Brycen Dhom (SIUE), Usman Khan (SIUE), and Sam Stoner (MS&T).  By long-standing tradition, the school which wins the analog contest hosts the event the following year.

 

Student Contestants in 2018 IEEE St. Louis Section Black Box Competition