Teaching embedded programming to electrical engineers, BioEngineers, and mechanical engineers via the escape platform

We report the development and initial deployment of the Escape Platform, a printed circuit board (PCB) and software base for instructional use in two engineering courses at Rice University: the capstone Senior Design course and the Introduction to Computer Engineering course. The capstone course includes interdisciplinary teams of seniors in Electrical, Mechanical and BioEngineering while the Computer Engineering course is targeted at freshman and sophomore Electrical Engineers and Computer Scientists. In this paper we describe hardware and software features of the Escape Platform and the related content in courses in which it will be used. The first deployment of the Escape Platform in these courses is currently underway; we provide some initial observations of the Escape Platform's utility.