I am a B-Tech student in University of Calicut, Kerala, India. The lab syllabus of final year electronics engineering contains “Experiments Using Matlab” which are a set of three experiments to be done using Matlab. In our college we are using Matlab. Since proprietary softwares like Matlab are not recommended in universities (see this Why schools should exclusively use free software), it is goodto use free software Octave. As I am a free software enthusiast, I love using octave instead of Matlab.
If I ask the lab staff to use Octave in the college lab, they will ask me “Will all programs work in Octave?”. Actually they are not happy to accept Octave because it is not mentioned in syllabus. Is it compulsory that students should learn only what is in the syllabus? The other true fact is that, at the end of semester there will be a lab exam. The teachers coming from other college won’t be familiar with Octave. So when they see Octave, they will surely ask to install Matlab.
One of the method to bring free software in B-Tech course (not only in B-Tech, but also in other courses) is to have a syllabus review. Thereby all will start using free software. If the syllabus changes there should be reference materials for these free software tools. The first thing everyone does if he/she doesn’t know about something is that he/she will Google it. So I thought of contributing once again to free software by writing some tutorials for Octave that can be helpful for implementing free software like Octave in universities.
These all led me to write this tutorial. This tutorial is about installing Octave and also contains some examples using Octave. I have tried to write the tutorial in a simple and lucid way. Hope this tutorial can guide university to use octave in their labs instead of Matlab.
The tutorial here explains the simple example code that can be used for teaching Octave. This tutorial is specifically designed for University of Calicut in India. But I hope the syllabus will be almost same in other universities also.
The tutorial is in my Wiki page. You can visit the tutorial from the link below
Experiments using Octave for B-Tech course
Octave is a kind of FREE SOFTWARE replacement to matlab. But still these days matlab is being used by colleges for their lab purposes.
Even my B-Tech syllabus of calicut university has matlab to be learned. So I thought of moving towards octave. These are some cool links to start with OCTAVE. You must have installed octave in your PC for using this.
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/docs.html
http://www.aims.ac.za/resources/tutorials/octave/
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~kpl2/dsts6/octaveTutorial.html
http://www-mdp.eng.cam.ac.uk/web/CD/engapps/octave/octavetut.pdf
These tutorials are not written by me. But I am planning to write one. It will contain some basic commands and also the experiments solved for the B-Tech Electronics and Communication Engineering.
Octave Introduction
Experiments using Octave for B-Tech course
Soon this page will be running up. Now I am going for my final year tour to Hyderabad (INDIA) .After that the tutorials will be setup…
You can just see a small experiment implemented by my friend using octave.
http://kishoreathrasseri.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/dsp-lab-week-1/
Brief report on the talk conducted at Government Polytechnique college, Chelakara
Yesterday (19-02-2009) Krishnan Unni and I went to conduct a talk on Free Software, Python Programming and Open Hardware. These talk’s were conducted as the request from students of poly technique.
I and unni reached the college almost at 10.00 AM. There was a small inaugural session. After that we were asked to start the talk . The morning session was on Free Software Philosophy, GNU/Linux installation steps and general GNU/Linux doubts. this was handled by Unni.
All the students were eagerly hearing the talk. There was a very good response from the students. And the important thing is that all the students were very interactive. Questions were coming from all sides on general GNU/Linux tools, virus removal methods, installing games, accessing internet….. This session had an end at 12.30 PM.
The afternoon session was split into two, the python programming and the other was Open hardware. Python Programming was handled by unni. There was a small programming contest on python. He also showed how to develop software’s using python.
My topic was Open Hardware. Actually what I had in mind was introducing what is open hardware, common electronic designing tools and programming the AVR microcontrollers using GNU/Linux. But everything changed after seeing their syllabus.These guys had to study about ATmega128 and also about ARM processors. I was shocked seeing it. Even the calicut university Electronics Engineering syllabus didn’t have these latest topics. I introduced about open hardware. But programming the AVR microcontrollers was not that much nice. There was a parallel port failure and the other fact was that the students knew how to program all these . What I showed was LED blinking. But they had studied blinking LED’s in their 6th semester itself. Anyway I could have made it more fun if I knew about the syllabus by adding some superb videos like Big Buck Bunny 
Now I am in a shame to say that I am learning Electronics engineering because a lower course like the diploma had a lot more to study than engineering course…. these students were more practical.
Anyway the response form the students were fantastic. Thanks to Yamini Madam and all the computer science students of chelakara.
