Students on assignment at ClampOn

This spring, 10 students studying electronics and subsea engineering at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences have worked on their Bachelor assignment at ClampOn. This is part of a long-term cooperation between ClampOn and the university. Working with companies gives students valuable experience in the way business and industry works. For many newly qualified engineers, these assignments have also paved the way to a career in ClampOn, for example as service personnel travelling around the world.

Four of the students have told us a little about what they have been working on:
The aim of the assignment has been to combine power supply and communication over just one twisted pair of wires, as today's solution uses one pair of wires for power and one pair for communication. Our solution uses frequency-shift keying to transmit binary 0 and 1 signals as frequency variations. The solution requires two circuit boards; one in the sensor, and one in the control system (computer).

The assignment has been extremely varied and educational to work on. At times, we faced challenges where we had to spend a lot of time finding answers and advice, either in the company or on the Internet. When things were working and milestones were met, we really enjoyed it and felt a sense of achievement, which certainly weighed up for all the frustration and hectic testing. In the end, we achieved our goal, and even though the circuits we had designed weren't delivered in time, we were able to test the system and saw that it worked as expected.

We were given a great office, which we have used a lot. ClampOn has been very generous with its premises and products, not to mention the great lunches in the canteen. It was extremely easy to get help when we were stuck, which was probably at times a pain for Bernt and Dag Inge given everything they had to contend with. This is why we were happy to spend so much time at the company.