551 Final Design Project

Guidelines

The final project allows you to build something of your own design while emphasizing issues of manufacturing. This could be a specific piece of hardware, an extension of one of the labs or demos, a piece of software running on an emulator, or even design software(CAD). Each group should submit a project proposal and meet with me in late October for approval and comments. Since the lectures and labs are over by mid-November, you only have about a month to complete your project before the end of the semester. Start thinking early! Or stop by during my office hours for ideas!

Projects from Fall 1995 (pilot course)

The first seven of these projects are based on the PIC microcontroller from Microchip. Students chose the PIC due to its ability to easily implement conventional controllers found in consumer products. It also let them do their design in a primarily software, rather than hardware, environment.

The next two projects are based on Altera and Texas Instruments DSP chips respectively.

Types of Projects

Altera-based designs. Build something more substantial using the Altera tools. Contact Mircea (mstan) for details. We have several larger FPGAs from Altera which provide more pins and many more gates, thus allowing some significant circuitry. You will probably want to learn VHDL to enter your design. Manuals will soon be available.
68000-Terminal designs. You can extend the system in Lab 4 to do something more significant. Since you will already have developed an interface between a terminal and the 68000, you can make a simple video game, editor, etc. just by writing code for the 68000.
Microchip PIC designs. You can extend the system in Lab 5 to do something more interesting. I have lots of literature from Microchip on how to do clever things with the PIC chips. They have a model which has a built-in A/D converter so you can make a sensor (temperature, light, anything which produces an analog voltage). Most of this just involves writing code for the PIC.
Board design using PADS. In Lab 3 you will use the PADS printed circuit board design software to place-and-route a simple board. This can be easily extended to a more complex design. If you are really ambitious, I will even consider spending some money to have a board fabricated. This would say a lot about manufacturing and would be a good candidate to win a design contest.
Texas Instruments DSP. One group has already spoken to me about using a DSP chip from Texas Instruments to build a signal processing system for a security application.

There will be a final design forum in May with the University of Rhode Island. The best projects from both schools will be evaluated by a panel and will be judged based on design innovation and attention to manufacturing issues.

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