It really helps to know Arduino before going into this class, though I think it would be manageable to survive if you have no experience with it. Taking Physics 1B before this is recommended, since Briggs will expect you to know how RC circuits work right off the bat. I didn't take Physics 1B before, and it was a struggle on the quizzes. You can fail some of the quizzes and still get an A, since the quizzes aren't worth too much. The first few weeks will be fast, but once you start working on the car, the class gets a lot easier. This quarter, he screwed over a lot of the class by changing his grading distribution (for example, you needed a 92 for an A-) and not following his syllabus (he didn't drop a quiz when he said he would) because I think he didn't want to curve down.

The class is not beginner friendly at all. Professors' lectures are not good, and it feels like he explains how to plug and chug rather than actually understanding why things work the way they do.
Additionally, the project is not structured well for students without much experience. He gives a lot of instructions and you don't know why you are following them. PID control was taught and we were told to not use I, and while he explained P I and D, the intuition was not well explained. Similarly, other concepts in the class are never explained and do not make sense.

Attending 8 am lectures is hell. Now adding a quiz in the first 10 minutes is devilish.

Very very easy class, significantly less workload than any lower div math/physics/cs class. Professor is just not a good teacher, lectures are boring and don't properly introduce concepts so it's only helpful if you have a background in EE topics already, completely defeating the point of the class. Briggs is very nice though, very willing to help. 1 HW problem per week (10-30 minutes) + 2 question quiz at 8am each Monday (so get ready to wake up early Mondays!). Quiz is easy too. 70% of grade is a project where you make a feedback control system for a line-following robot. You can secure an A in 1 hour of work to follow the line, or get a full letter grade of extra credit if you put in 6-10 hours of work to follow the line in under 15 seconds.

Despite getting a decent grade, I have mixed opinions on Briggs and the class. This class comprises of no midterms, a final project, and a final. Most of your grade is based off your projects so if you do well on them, you'll do well in the class. A problem with this class is that it was given only at 8 am, and there a weekly quizzes given at 8 am sharp, so you don't really have the option to miss lecture. This became such an issue that you'd see over half the class leave ten minutes into the lecture once they turned in their quiz. Additionally, the content usually jumps around a lot and it often feels disjointed. If you are going into the class blind, with absolutely no knowledge on the material before hand, you're in for a really rough time, especially since Briggs tends to skip around what seems to be the most important stuff on his slides. An example of this was in the first lecture, he spent around 10 minutes on Ohm's law and never came back to it. Similarly, once we got to AC circuits, he completely skipped around half the lecture. If you already know the content, you will be fine since you don't delve extremely deep into it, but if you don't know it, good luck. On the other hand, Briggs is not too bad - he gives a bunch of practice problems (not graded) for you to work on if you need extra help or practice on the material, he is very approachable, and only assigns 1 homework problem a week. In the end, if you already come in knowing a lot of the content, and want an "easy" class that gives relatively low work, go for it, just don't expect to learn the material very well.

I was curious about this class coming into it after having read the reviews. The consensus seems to be that it's super easy and so on, but I don't think that speaks to the content itself being easy. The grading scheme is what's easy. The final we had in fall 2021 had around a 60% average and was extremely tough, but it only gets weighted 5% while the project (the robot car you program) gets weighted 60%, and everyone gets 100% on the portion determining whether you had success, weighted 30% of the grade, and the other 30% is due to how good your project report is - and that's not hard to score high on either.
The practice problem sets and homeworks can be difficult, and though physics 1B isn't listed as a pre-req, Dr. Briggs assumes that you're familiar with much of its content anyway.

I don't think I learned much. It was easy to get an A, and I even failed half the quizzes and the final. The content was hard to grasp and his lectures are confusing for somebody who doesn't have prior circuit/EE experience and knowledge (esp. if you hadn't taken 1B and 1C prior).

Professor Briggs is old. He is unhelpful and disrespectful in office hours. He refused to help me with the homework and did not teach me anything. The class is easy and I was able to figure things out anyway. I got an A- because he gave me a C- on the final project report. The grading for this report is completely arbitrary and the instructions were unclear. This class is required and it shouldn't be too hard, but don't bother trying to get anything out of the professor. Figure it out with classmates or TAs.

Pretty straightforward class. That being said:

If you have no programming experience, get some before the class.
If you have limited physics experience, take 1B/1C before the class.

The class is basically a sampler class of EE things, though the quizzes were mostly circuits things. Not too difficult, but not so easy you can breeze through them without practice If you practice and do all the problems, you should have no problem with them.
Most of the grade is getting a car to follow a path. You can go as slow as you want. There's also a report thats pretty chill.
Overall, not a bad class to take over summer. It feels very slightly harder material-wise than other introductory classes I've taken, but the grading is lenient and overall the course is not challenging by any means. Briggs is a someone who genuinely seems excited about history and teaching. Even if I did not participate much myself, he always seemed nice when I did interact with him.

Briggs is a solid professor. His lectures are pretty straightforward, weekly quizzes were at 8am sharp which was rough but the quizzes themselves were objectively quite easy (averages usually near 100%). The lab sections were helpful, and homework assignments were decent for the most part (later homework assignments were a bit difficult). The main focus of this class is on the car project and PID control. Getting credit isn't too hard, but quite some time is required if you want a fast completion time for extra credit. Overall, I don't have much to say; Briggs is a decent teacher and the class is overall not too difficult if you put the time in.

Should have a prerequisite of Physics 1B and possibly CS30/31 (the main project involves simple code). Briggs actually didn't believe me when I told him Physics 1B was not a prerequisite for the class. Having never taken physics before, the material was difficult, but if you've taken Physics 1B then I'm pretty sure it would all be quite easy. The main project is essentially worth 60% of the grade, 30% for completing the project and 30% for the report, neither of which is very difficult. There were quizzes at the start of every class, which were not hard. Briggs is not an engaging speaker, so lectures move extremely slowly. I would not recommend taking it with him if you can avoid it. I would recommend Xin Li as a TA, if he's there.