1. ECE 477 Senior Design Group 14  Spring 2006
Jason, Nathanael, David, David

2. Outline Project overview Design challenges faced
ECE 362 knowledge used
Project demo

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Project Demo
Link

8. Questions / Discussion