INE5346 - Software/Hardware Integration - 2004/2

Program

Schedule

Mailing list

Students

Practical Work

Nickelodeon's Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius animation depicts children dealing with every-day situations such as popularity problems, family restrictions and rescuing your parents from evil aliens. These interesting scenarios bring about several opportunities for academic discussion, our particular interest being software/hardware integration.

After sending a message to outer-space through his toaster-based satellite, Jimmy sneaks out to the new amusement park in town. Meanwhile, some frog-like evil aliens capture Jimmy's message and abduct every adult in town. It's all very fun for a while, but then the children realize they need their parents after all. Now Jimmy and his friends set out on a mission to rescue their parents and ensure mankind will be safe.

Throughout all the movie, Jimmy faces several challenging software/hardware integration duties. In the end, Jimmy and his friends succeed in saving their parents (and possibly mankind), and also learn a valuable lesson about the importance of family. No doubt Jimmy attended a very good software/hardware integration seminar while he was in kindergarten.

And what about you? Would you be able to save mankind and cope with Jimmy's height complex?

Well, in order to help you answering this question, this edition of software/hardware integration seminar will feature a realistic simulation of the previously described scenario.

The Simulation

Since we have already learned our lessons from Jimmy, we won't go as far as letting the evil aliens abduct every adult in town. Once we send a message to outer space, we will start monitoring the satellite for aproaching spacecrafts (remember evil aliens always travel with the headlights on). The aliens, in their turn, will start heading towards Earth the moment they receive the message. In the event of an alien detection in the satellite, Jimmy's computer must be warned and send out a message that jams the spaceship's navigation system, thus deflecting it's course and saving Earth!.

What is what?

• Jimmy's Base
  The seminar's lab will be the Jimmy's base. You can tackle on anything you find here, including the Internet. A Xilinx Multimedia FPGA Platform will play the role of Jimmy's computer. Conventional computers are way too simple for a genius, so you will have to build your own system (full with processor, VGA, keyboard and serial communication) from IP components.
• Base Antenna
  The antenna that connects Jimmy's Base to the satellite will be played by a Berkeley Mica2 Mote eqquiped with a CC1000 RF Transceiver plus a MIB510 Programming and Serial Interface Board. You won't have any software on the Mica but a program loader. Your best choice here would be TinyOS, but EPOS should also do the work with the advantage of local help. Serial and Radio Communication systems are up to you.
• Jimmy's Satellite
  Although a toaster-based satellite is perfectly feasible, in our simulation we will use a Mica2 mote as our outer-space communication link. Apart from forwarding radio messages, our satellite will be equipped with a MTS300 light and temperature sensor board, so it can detect when an alien spacecraft aproaches Earth. Of course evil aliens only travel by night and with the spaceship headlights on! As with the Base Antenna, you will have no software installed on the satellite, and will have to build the radio communication and sensing subsystems from scratch.
• Alien Spaceship
  Considering our department budget restrictions, building a real spacecraft for the software/hardware integration seminar could be a bit exaggerated. Therefore we will take on an off-the-shelf LEGO Mindstorms kit to build a rocket that runs instead of flying. In order to be able to communicate with Jimmy back in Earth, the alien Spaceship will be connected via a seria link to a third CC1000-equipped mote. However, there is not a DB9 connector in either platform, so you will have to provide the wiring and electrical connections (your best choice will probably be a photocoupler) in addition to the serial communication system. You won't have any software on the RCX but a boot loader. Once again, your best choice here would be PURE but EPOS should also do the work with the advantage of local help. The headlights in the spacecraft will be performed by an ordinary lamp.
• Evil Alien King
  That's me!

Useful Tools

• RCX
  
  • IA32->H8 cross compiler
• Mica Motes (AVR)
  
  • TinyOS
  • GNU binutils
  • GCC 3.3.2
  • libc
  • AVR In-System Programmer
  • simulator
  • building instructions
• Xilinx Multimedia Board
  
  • Xilinx ISE
  • Embedded Development Kit
  • Multimedia Reference Designs
  • Microblaze Soft Processor
  • miniMIPS Soft Processor
  • OpenRisc Soft Processor

Useful Docs

• RCX
  
  • Overview
  • H8/300
  • CHAOS project
• Motes
  
  • Mica2 Schematic
  • TinyOS Documentation
  • CC1000 Smart RF Datasheet
• AVR
  
  • Overview
  • AVR Instruction Set
  • ATmega128 Datasheet (Summary)
  • ATmega128 Datasheet (Complete)
  • AVR libc User's Manual
• Multimedia Board
  
  • User Manual
  • Schematics
  • Virtex II Datasheet
  • Microblaze Documentation

Exercises

• Introduction to AVR Programming
• Further AVR Programming
• Introduction to Programable Logic
• Introduction to EPOS

Students' Work

1. Spaceship (1): A set of EPOS abstractions to handle the RCX navigation system, by Diego Rodrigues Machado and Fernando Yuji Miyakawa.
2. Spaceship (2): A set of EPOS abstractions to allow RCX to Mote Serial communication, by Achilles Colombo Prudencio and Denis Schneider Strassmann.
3. Spaceship (3): A set of EPOS abstractions to allow Mote to RCX Serial communication, by Alessandro Barreiros Maurici and Saulo Castilho.
4. Satellite: A set of EPOS hardware meditors for the Mica Sensor Board and corresponding EPOS sensor abstractions, by Joao Bosco Andrade Pereira, Jonas Mendes Constante and Tiago Silva Pereira.
5. Antenna: An EPOS hardware mediator for the CC1000 radio system and a set of EPOS abstractions to build an EmNet communication link for the Mica2 platform, by Bruno Selva, Eduardo Koerich Davila and Luciana Graever de Medeiros.
6. Base (1): A set of EPOS abstractions to allow Mote to FPGA Serial communication and a set of IP components to allow FPGA to Mote Serial Communication, by Carlos Rodrigo T Fernandes and Gabriel Renaldo Laureano.
7. Base (2): Instatiation of an IP-based embedded system and the respective control application for the Xilinx platform, by Fabio Davanzo Franco de Oliveira and Leonardo Pereira Demilis.
8. Suporte para Aplicações JAVA no Sistema EPOS, by Paulo Martins.