Practical Electronic Instrumentation For All Engineering Disciplines

True engineering is a multi-discipline field and commonalities exist among all types of engineers. Engineers work within their environment and control processes by using instrumentation in order to sample surrounding physical phenomenon such as light level, temperature and pressure. Electronic Instrumentation Systems are concerned with data acquisition, signal processing and computer control. In these systems, data acquisition circuits use sensors and signal conditioning electronics in order to convert physical environmental changes into electric signals that can be processed with a computer. Gaining experience with practical electronic instrumentation is an important experience for any engineering student and should be a part of a rounded engineering education. Design is a major component of the course described in this paper, therefore the course complies with the American Board for Engineering Technology (ABET) requirement that the design process should bean integral part of the engineering curriculum. The material learned in this type of course can be immediately applied to independent design projects and these skills can later be used in professional work. This paper describes the process of introducing practical electronic instrumentation to non-Electrical Engineers.