You may ask yourself, “What exactly is this club eating?” Well, simply put, EAT’s main focus is the design of devices that require a dedicated computer or microprocessor to accomplish its task. The club is open to anyone who desires to learn more about this fascinating and continually expanding technology.

A little over five years ago, EAT began as a group of interested Computer Engineering students brought together to design, build, and program a microprocessor controlled device for entry into the 2000 IEEE Computer Society’s International Design Competition (CSIDC). The purpose of the competition was to design and build a device that combined embedded processor technology with Internet accessibility. The project selected entailed designing a system that would allow a patient’s electrocardiograph to be sent over the Internet to a computer located in a physician’s office. This project was completed and submitted in May, 2000. Of the fifty teams competing, our project was one of only three U.S. teams to finish in the top 20.

Over the past five years the group has continued to grow and with the demand for embedded applications increasing, we expect interest in the club to continue. As the group membership roster continued to increase, we decided to become an official club. In May, 2005, EAT was recognized as an official CSULB club with James Cook and Clint Sylvestre elected as co-presidents. We are currently working towards a charter and hope to gain the support of other chapters from various Universities nationwide so that they may share in our goal of promoting embedded system design at the academic level.

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You may ask what the future holds for EAT. Well, EAT’s future looks bright with increasing active membership, projects such as ECARUS(development of a new educational ARM-9 based board) launching, as well as continued participation in competitions such as CSIDC and others.

Please join us in the forums as well as our meetings to keep up to date with all the news EAT has to offer. We also welcome visitors interested in EAT to join us every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:00 to 5:00pm in ECS 304 where we will have officer’s reports, project updates, guest speakers, and much more.

Along with EAT’s strong academic based projects, the club strives to have a close membership and create a fun, exciting, and friendly environment. On many occasions EAT’s members make an effort to enjoy one another’s company and possibly spend some time in the sun and ocean breeze. We recently went to Catalina and had a great time not only discussing embedded processors, but being students on a day away from studying as well.