Tips on selecting a project

Hello everyone,
i just joined the CE forum and was browsing through when i came across this thread. First of all let me introduce my self, i am Asher Khan electrical & electronics engineer 2005 batch Anna University. Now lets get to the topic under discussion. The very first thing to consider when coming up with an idea for your final year or third year project is how original can you get. Electrical engineering is one of the oldest branches in engineering and indeed it is an uphill task to be original with project ideas, having said that it is not all that difficult. You guys are almost full-time engineers now and it is a common fact that engineers are problem solvers, there thats your fist idea "problem solving". Find a problem that has been persistent, investigate the scenario, do some research and try implementing solutions. It is highly vital, for your future careers, that your project is up to date and in line with the latest technology. But how do we find these persisting problems, well, no one is going to give them to you on a platter, you need to find them. The best way to look for a problem is by Reading: magazines, articles, technical papers presented, etc. As electrical engineers you will get a minimum of 2 years of free membership on the IEEE website, if you guys havent got that, you need to talk to you professors and HOD. This will help you with the part of finding the problems. There are hundreds of articles, research papers and other interesting documents in the IEEE archives, go through them. This investigation will not only help you with finding the idea but also provide you with ideas that might help solve the problem at hand.
Now there is another way to do your project, an easy one but none the less interesting. Take an analog project that already exists, create a digital replica of that analog project and present a comparison. Let me provide you with an example, all of us are aware of the voltage regulation of power supplied to the masses, carried out at power plants. There are a million ways to regulate the produced voltage using analog methods, which are infact still used in our country. Now the next step is to figure out a way to make this digital replica. The answer is Fuzzy-logy, if you are hearing this for the first time it is not a very good sign. Fuzzy-logy is one of the very new and advanced branch of electrical engineering. those of you who are aware of this read on to the next part others please get some basic knowledge about this topic and then come back and read ahead. Using fuzzy-logy and matlab, create a system that would regulate the produced voltage digitally without the any human involvement. Now this part is good but a short one, so the next part for your big final year project would be to compare the performance of your digital system and the analog system in place. The creation of this digital system can be your 3rd year mini project and the comparative study is the big project for your final year.
Though it is not an easy task to come-up with an all new idea for a project, i would urge you to remember that you are an engineer, you are trained to be analytical, use that training and you will find that it wasn't that hard after all.