Team Health Monitor Design Constraints

Overview We intend to design and build a Health Monitoring Device. Our motivation is the growing obesity epidemic in America. The device will provide a way to track progress in weight loss, blood pressure, and perhaps other health aspects. Our device will keep track of all users who log into the device. The device will communicate bi-directionally using ethernet to the website to allow members to track progress remotely.

Design Constraints - Monitors We needed a reliable interface to the measurement devices so we chose monitors with USB or RS232 ports on them.

Design Constraints - Micro’s With the need for both USB and ethernet capabilities, a µC that had integrated controllers would be ideal. With this in mind we are investigating both the ATMEL AT32UC3A1512 which has both USB and ethernet controllers and the FREESCALE MC9S12NE64 which has ethernet but no USB capabilities. The final decision will come down to cost and availability of samples. With the 9S12 an external USB converter would need to be used.