Engineering Test Models are big help in learning

Friends,

Engineering test models are big help in learning. Here engineers have designed a small test model for water level safety system to work in a river dam reservoir. They have used a bucket full of water in their reservoir model and small water pumps, electronic water level sensors, I2C communication network to embedded system and software to control every function.

I think, such simple looking and functionally high tech test models, which can be tried in labs, can easily be built and used for larger system for real life applications. This model uses Fly-by-wire network technology for sensing and controlling on 2-wires. Engineers are from Mathura, India. They took 4- weeks to design and test this model.

I was mentor and research guide to this engineering team. About 20 such engineering teams come and build their own engineering models for the applications of their choice. I think, engineers should build models that can help them test difficult technologies and should design the model for technology that will change our future.

What is that you experienced engineers think, that fresh engineers should try to experiment with to gain greater applied knowledge using models? Exposure to real things is always better but is not possible many times.