Bachelor and master's courses I teach at Transilvania University of Brașov, with descriptions and materials for students.
Teaching is in Romanian, so most lecture pages, laboratory guides and course books linked below are written in Romanian; titles are given here in English, with the original in brackets. Pages already translated are marked in English.
Microcontrollers and Microprocessors (Microcontrolere și Microprocesoare)
Level: Bachelor · Lecturer: Tiberiu Cociaș
Course on microcontroller-based systems: internal architecture, programming, I/O ports, the interrupt system, timer modules, analog-to-digital conversion, serial communication (UART/USART, RS-232/RS-485), and the design of complete embedded applications, illustrated through the GT Robot project.
Course book
Microcontrollers and Microprocessors - Lectures and Laboratory Work(Microcontrolere și Microprocesoare - curs și lucrări de laborator) (Cociaș, 2026) - 279 pages: the eleven lecture chapters written for this volume, with 34 diagrams drawn for it. The laboratory sessions are published separately.
Lecture Materials
Introduction to Microcontroller Systemsin English - What a microcontroller is, embedded-system design criteria, microcontroller anatomy, and the ATmega328P/Arduino platform. PDF
Architecture of a Microcontrollerin English - Bits, bytes and special function registers, memory types (SRAM/Flash/EEPROM), the ALU and instruction set, the ATmega328P architecture, oscillator and power supply. PDF
Programming a Microcontrollerin English - The toolchain from source to hex file, the Intel HEX format, bootloaders and ISP programming, ASM vs. C vs. C++, and hardware debugging. PDF
Input and Output Portsin English - Digital pin internal structure, the DDRx/PORTx/PINx registers, sampling and metastability, pull-up resistors and pin protection circuits. PDF
The Interrupt Systemin English - Polling vs. interrupts, the interrupt vector table, priorities, shared variables and race conditions, and debouncing with interrupts. PDF
Timer Modulesin English - Timer/counter modes, prescaling, PWM generation, and input capture, illustrated with an ultrasonic distance measurement. PDF
The Analog-to-Digital Converterin English - Sampling and aliasing, quantization error, reference voltage, conversion architectures, and the ATmega328P ADC module. PDF
Asynchronous Serial Communicationin English - UART framing, the baud rate error budget, interrupt-driven reception with a circular buffer, and RS-232/RS-485. PDF
Synchronous Buses: SPI and I²Cin English - I2C open-drain addressing and transactions, SPI shift-register mechanism and clock modes, and the ATmega328P SPI/TWI modules. PDF
Case Study: The GT Robotin English - A complete line-following robot: resource budgeting, motor control, encoder odometry, and the field-testing lessons learned. PDF
Computer Programming and Programming Languages (Programarea Calculatoarelor și Limbaje de Programare)
Level: Bachelor · Lecturer: Tiberiu Cociaș
Introduction to object-oriented programming, taught as a practical parallel between C++ and Python: classes and objects, inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation, abstraction, templates/generics, and common design patterns (Singleton, Factory, Builder, Adapter, Decorator, Observer, Strategy, and more), closing with good coding and debugging practices.
Local area networks, from physical transmission to network security. The course is delivered as twelve interactive lecture pages written for this site, each with its own diagrams, worked examples and self-check questions, plus seven laboratory sessions that run either in the browser, on a network emulator built for this site, or in Cisco Packet Tracer.
Course book
Local Area Networks - Lecture Notes and Laboratory Work(Rețele Locale - note de curs și lucrări de laborator) (Cociaș, 2026) - 252 pages, B5, typeset from the online material: twelve lecture chapters, seven laboratory sessions, a 165-entry glossary and an appendix with worked answers.
Lecture Pages
Analogue and Digital Transmissionin English - Networks and protocols, the OSI and TCP/IP stacks, the physical layer, line coding and modulation. PDF
Transmission Mediain English - Copper, fibre and wireless media, structured cabling, multiplexing and link performance. PDF
The Data Link Layerin English - The Ethernet frame, MAC addressing, CSMA/CD, collision and broadcast domains, switching. PDF
The IP Protocolin English - The IPv4 header, subnetting, VLSM, private addressing, ARP and DHCP. PDF
Routingin English - The routing table, longest prefix match, administrative distance, static routes and summarisation. PDF
Access Control Listsin English - Standard and extended ACLs, wildcard masks, placement rules, named and reflexive lists. PDF
Securing the Networkin English - The transport layer, firewalls, packet filtering with iptables, and the cryptography behind SSH. PDF
NAT and Tunnellingin English - Static NAT, dynamic NAT and PAT, GRE and SSH tunnels, IPv6 addressing and 6to4. PDF
Dynamic Routingin English - Link-state protocols, Dijkstra in practice, OSPF single-area and multi-area. PDF
Wireless Networksin English - The 802.11 family, spreading and modulation, medium access with CSMA/CA, WPA2 and WPA3. PDF
LAN Security and Network Attacksin English - CAM overflow, ARP poisoning, VLAN hopping, STP attacks - and the configurations that stop them. PDF
Laboratory Sessions
Seven two-hour sessions, each building on the previous one. Every page includes the equipment list, the topology, the full IOS configuration with the expected output of each command, assignments, a challenge and self-check questions - plus an embedded workbench with simulated routers and switches, so the whole lab can be done in the browser with nothing to install.
The lecture and laboratory pages embed calculators and simulators built for this course: a line coding waveform generator, an IPv4 subnet and VLSM calculator, a switch MAC-table simulator, a routing-table lookup, an access-list evaluator, a wildcard mask tester, a PAT table, an IPv6 address converter, Dijkstra on an editable topology and a Spanning Tree calculator.
Software needed. All laboratory work runs in Cisco Packet Tracer 8.2 or newer, available free with a Cisco Networking Academy account. No hardware is required.
Embedded Systems (Sisteme Încorporate)
Level: Bachelor · Lecturer: Tiberiu Cociaș
A complete course on embedded systems: from computer architecture and ARM processors to energy consumption, energy optimization techniques, real-time execution and RTOS, reconfigurable hardware, energy harvesting, and the Internet of Things.
Introduction to Embedded Systemsin English - What an embedded system is, its defining characteristics, application domains, design constraints, classification and IoT trends. PDF
Computer Architecturein English - Instruction set architecture, addressing modes, CISC vs. RISC, and the processor performance equation. PDF
Five hands-on sessions, each built around a project that actually works at the end. Every page includes the theory, the wiring, complete code, interactive simulators, assignments and self-check questions.