ECE 477 Senior Design Group 14 Spring 2006 Jason, Nathanael, David, David
Outline Project overview Design challenges faced ECE 362 knowledge used Project demo
Project Overview Driver interface for Solar Racing Team Communication with onboard power trackers and telemetry board via CAN bus Allow driver to navigate through a text-based interface to issue commands to the solar battery chargers (power trackers) Display speed, battery power, and other information on the LCD
Design Challenges Faced Low Power Requirements Used high efficiency switching regulator OrCAD bug with overlapping nets on different layers I2C bus needs pull up resistors PLDs are small had to move functionality to microcontroller
Design Challenges Faced Component Datasheets (configuration/usage information buried deep) Such as LCD requires few seconds to boot up Controlled Area Network (CAN) communication protocol Send/Receive CAN messages Useable Menu System
ECE 362 Knowledge Used Assembly Language (and embedded C) Software/Hardware Debug skills On-Chip Peripherals I2C serial interface (LCD communications) A/D Module (Temperature and Diagnostics) Timers (Timeouts, CAN interrupts) SCI (RS232) Software Debouncing
Project Demo Link
Questions / Discussion