Q&A: Miguel Sanchez (Professor, Designer)

Posted on 2012/09/05 by C. J. Abate

Miguel Sánchez (PhD, Computer Science) is Valencia, Spain-based computer scientist, embedded tech enthusiast, and professor who regularly challenges himself to design innovative microcontroller-based systems. Since 2005, Circuit Cellar has published six of his articles about projects such as a digital video recorder (Circuit Cellar 174) and a creative DIY image-processing system (Circuit Cellar 263).

This is a sample depth image projected in a 3-D space. It appeared in Sanchez’s article, “Image Processing System Development.” (Source: M. Sanchez, Circuit Cellar 263)

In the September issue of Circuit Cellar, Sánchez tells us about his background, his work at the Universitat Politècnica de València, his current interests, and his innovative designs. An abridged version of the interview follows.

NAN PRICE: How long have you been designing microcontroller-based systems?

MIGUEL SANCHEZ: I started using computers in 1978. I built my first microcontroller project in 1984 during my first year at Universitat Politècnica de València. I haven’t stopped designing embedded systems since then.

NAN: Tell us about the first microcontroller you worked with. Where were you at the time?

MIGUEL: Our university’s lab had Intel SDK-85 boards you could program in Hex using the built-in keyboard. I guess it wasn’t built well. You sometimes lost all your work while typing your code. I learned that schematics were available and a terminal monitor was built in too. So, I built my first microcontroller-based board around an Intel 8085 using the same software that was on the original ROM. But, I changed the serial port delay value so I could use 9,600 bps instead of the original 110 bps on the terminal port. This way, I could do the same labs as my mates, but I could do my work in 8080 Assembler, which was available in Control Program/Monitor (CP/M) computers. At the time, I had an Atari 1040 ST that could run CP/M on top of a Z-80 emulator. Assembly code could be uploaded to my board’s RAM memory and later executed using SDK-85 serial monitor code.

I used the 8085’s Wait signal to build an additional EEPROM socket in this same board that, with the aid of a 555 timer, was my first EEPROM programmer. I used the Wait signal to delay write operations. In fact, I used this programmer to change the original baud rate to the new one, as I originally did not know that was something I’d want to change later.

My teacher, who is now one of my colleagues, was quite amused with my development and he gave me an A+. I learned a lot about microcontrollers, serial communications, Assembly language, monitor programs, and EEPROM programming algorithms. And, I learned it was not fun to design PCBs with system buses on only one copper layer. …

NAN: You designed a system to simulate strokes on a keypad to trigger modes on an alarm system (“Reverse-Engineered ECP Bus,” Circuit Cellar 201, 2007). Why did you design it and how have you used it?

MIGUEL: A local company wanted to give new life to old Ademco alarm units. These boards could only be programmed by a serial port socket once a certain service code was typed at the keyboard. I was asked whether an add-on board could be created to make these old boards Internet-enabled so they could be remotely managed and reconfigured over the ’Net.

The first thing I needed to do was to figure out how to simulate the required keystrokes. But I couldn’t find any information about the way that bus worked, so I figured that out myself. Later, I thought both the information itself and the way I figured it out might be useful to others, so I approached Circuit Cellar editors with a proposal to write an article.

That project ended up as a Rabbit-core powered board that connected the alarm board and the remote access to its serial port. Combined with a virtual serial port on the PC, it fooled the original management software into thinking the PC was directly connected to the alarm board, although it was all happening over the Internet. But the project never made it to the market for reasons unknown.

NAN: In “Three-Axis Stepper Controller” (Circuit Cellar 234, 2010), you describe how you built an Arduino-based, platform-independent driver board. Tell us about the design.

MIGUEL: When I discovered the Arduino platform, I was surprised by a few things. First, this development system was not designed by a chip vendor. Second, it was not intended for engineers but for artists! Third, I was shocked because it was multiplatform (which was possible because it was based on Java and GCC) and because none of the other development systems I was aware of were so easy to use. The price was low too, which was a plus for hobbyists and students.

The aim of that project was to show all that to the readers. The idea was also not only to show how to build a stepper controller and to explain the difference between the drive modes and the bipolar and unipolar designs, but to demonstrate how easy it was to work with Arduino.

In his 2010 article, “Three-Axis Stepper Controller,” Sanchez provided this controller circuit schematic to interface Arduino I/O headers with stepper motors. (Source: M. Sanchez, Circuit Cellar 234)

NAN: Your most recent Circuit Cellar article, “Image Processing System Development: Use an MCU to Unleash the Power of Depth Cameras” (263, 2012), describes how you used Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing device for an interactive art project. Tell us about the project and how you came to be involved.

MIGUEL: My university offers a master’s degree in fine arts. I met a professor from the drawing department who had seen a video of my vertical plotter on YouTube and was interested in contacting me, as we worked on the same campus. We became friends and he asked me to help him out with an idea for an installation.

The first approach used an RGB camera, but then Kinect was launched. From what I read on the ’Net, I was convinced it would be a better mousetrap. So, I bought one unit and started learning how to use it, thanks to the hack that had been made available.

The project required gathering visitors’ silhouettes and later drawing them on a big wall. The drawing was performed with a properly scaled-up version of my vertical plotter, which, by the way, was controlled by an Arduino board.

I have found working with artists is a lot of fun too, as they usually have a totally different vision than engineers.

The full article appears in the September issue.

CC266: Microcontroller-Based Data Management

Posted on 2012/08/27 by C. J. Abate

Regardless of your area of embedded design or programming expertise, you have one thing in common with every electronics designer, programmer, and engineering student across the globe: almost everything you do relates to data. Each workday, you busy yourself with acquiring data, transmitting it, repackaging it, compressing it, securing it, sharing it, storing it, analyzing it, converting it, deleting it, decoding it, quantifying it, graphing it, and more. I could go on, but I won’t. The idea is clear: manipulating and controlling data in its many forms is essential to everything you do.

The ubiquitous importance of data is what makes Circuit Cellar’s Data Acquisition issue one of the most popular each year. And since you’re always seeking innovative ways to obtain, secure, and transmit data, we consider it our duty to deliver you a wide variety of content on these topics. The September 2012 issue (Circuit Cellar 266) features both data acquisition system designs and tips relating to control and data management.

On page 18, Brian Beard explains how he planned and built a microcontroller-based environmental data logger. The system can sense and record relative light intensity, barometric pressure, relative humidity, and more.

a: This is the environmental data logger’s (EDL) circuit board. b: This is the back of the EDL.

Data acquisition has been an important theme for engineering instructor Miguel Sánchez, who since 2005 has published six articles in Circuit Cellar about projects such as a digital video recorder (Circuit Cellar 174), “teleporting” serial communications via the ’Net (Circuit Cellar 193), and a creative DIY image-processing system (Circuit Cellar 263). An informative interview with Miguel begins on page 28.

Turn to page 38 for an informative article about how to build a compact acceleration data acquisition system. Mark Csele covers everything you need to know from basic physics to system design to acceleration testing.

This is the complete portable accelerometer design. with the serial download adapter. The adapter is installed only when downloading data to a PC and mates with an eight pin connector on the PCB. The rear of the unit features three powerful
rare-earth magnets that enable it to be attached to a vehicle.

In “Hardware-Accelerated Encryption,” Patrick Schaumont describes a hardware accelerator for data encryption (p. 48). He details the advanced encryption standard (AES) and encourages you to consider working with an FPGA.

This is the embedded processor design flow with FPGA. a: A C program is compiled for a softcore CPU, which is configured in an FPGA. b: To accelerate this C program, it is partitioned into a part for the software CPU, and a part that will be implemented as a hardware accelerator. The softcore CPU is configured together with the hardware accelerator in the FPGA.

Are you now ready to start a new data acquisition project? If so, read George Novacek’s article “Project Configuration Control” (p. 58), George Martin’s article “Software & Design File Organization” (p. 62), and Jeff Bachiochi’s article “Flowcharting Made Simple” (p. 66) before hitting your workbench. You’ll find their tips on project organization, planning, and implementation useful and immediately applicable.

Lastly, on behalf of the entire Circuit Cellar/Elektor team, I congratulate the winners of the DesignSpark chipKIT Challenge. Turn to page 32 to learn about Dean Boman’s First Prize-winning energy-monitoring system, as well as the other exceptional projects that placed at the top. The complete projects (abstracts, photos, schematic, and code) for all the winning entries are posted on the DesignSpark chipKIT Challenge website.

Build a Microcontroller-Based Mail Client

Posted on 2012/08/15 by C. J. Abate

Does the sheer amount of junk mail that fills your Inbox make you hate everything about e-mail? If so, it’s time to have a little fun with electronic mail by building a compact microcontroller-based mail client system. Alexander Mann designed a system that uses an Atmel ATmega32 and a Microchip Technology ENC28J60 Ethernet controller to check continuously for e-mail. When a message arrives, he can immediately read it on the system’s LCD and respond with a standard keyboard.

Mann writes:

My MiniEmail system is a compact microcontroller-based mail client (see Photo 1). The silent, easy-to-use system doesn’t require a lot of power and it is immune to mail worms. Another advantage is the system’s short start-up time. If you want to write a quick e-mail but your PC is off, you can simply switch on the miniature e-mail client and start writing without having to wait for your PC to boot up and load the necessary applications. All you need is an Ethernet connection and the MiniEmail system.

Photo 1: The complete MiniEmail system includes an LCD, a keyboard, and several connections. (A. Mann, Circuit Cellar 204)

HARDWARE

The hardware for the MiniEmail system is inexpensive. It cost me about $50. The LCD is the most expensive part. To keep things simple, I left the system’s power supply, 5- to 3.3-V conversion crystals, and latch out of Figure 1.

Figure 1: This is a block diagram of MiniEmail’s hardware. The arrows indicate the directions of data flow between the devices. The rounded boxes indicate parts that do not sit on the circuit board.

The main components are an Atmel ATmega32 microcontroller and a Microchip Technology ENC28J60 Ethernet controller. Because a mail client is a piece of complex software, you need a fast microcontroller that has a considerable amount of program space. The MiniEmail system uses almost all of the ATmega32’s features, including the SPI, internal EEPROM and SRAM, counters, USART interface, sleep modes, all 32 I/O lines, and most of the 32 KB of program memory. The ENC28J60 is a stand-alone Ethernet controller that provides basic functionality for transmitting frames over an Ethernet connection. It has 8 KB of built-in SRAM, which can be divided into transmit and receive buffers as desired, and it provides several interrupt sources (e.g., when new packets have arrived). The ATmega32 also has 128 KB of external SRAM connected as well as an LCD, which is a standard module with a resolution of 128 × 64 pixels.

Take a look at the ATmega32’s pin connections in Figure 2. Ports A and C are used as 8-bit-wide general I/O ports, one of which is latched using an NXP Semiconductors 74HC573.

Figure 2: Here’s the complete schematic for the MiniEmail. The LF1S022 is the RJ-45 connector for the Ethernet connection.

The two ports provide data connections to the LCD and SRAM (U3). For the SRAM, you need three additional wires: write (*RAM_WR), read strobe (*RAM_RD), and the seventeenth bit of the address (ADDR16). The LCD connector (CON1) uses five additional wires (for the signals CS1, CS2, DI, EN, and RW). CS1 and CS2 are taken from the general I/O port A (DATA6 and DATA7) and determine which of the two halves of the LCD is selected (i.e., the two controllers on the LCD module you are talking to). RW (where you can use ADDR16 again) sets the direction of the LCD access (read or write). DI describes the type of instruction sent to the LCD. EN is the enable signal for read and write cycles. For the keyboard, you need only two pins: KEY_DATA and KEY_CLOCK. The clock signal must be connected to an external interrupt pin, INT1. One additional wire is needed to switch the latch (LE).

You are left with eight I/O pins on the ATmega32’s ports B and D. RXD and TXD are connected to a MAX232, an RS-232 level converter that also provides the negative supply voltage needed for the LCD (LCD_VOUT in Figure 2). The ATmega32’s USART functionality is used as a debugging interface. It isn’t needed for normal operation.

SOFTWARE

The firmware for this project is posted on the Circuit Cellar FTP site. I wrote the firmware in C language with a few small parts of inline assembler. I used the open-source software suite WinAVR, which includes the GNU GCC compiler with special libraries for AVR devices and avrdude, a tool for the in-system programming of AVR microcontrollers…

USER INTERFACE

The user interface consists of three control elements: menus, edit fields, and an elaborate text editor. A special screen (the Mail Menu) enables you to quickly browse through your mailbox. After power-up, the system displays a greeting message. After a short while, the Main menu appears (see Photo 2).

Photo 2: This is a screenshot of MiniEmail’s main menu. In the upper-right corner, a clock shows the current time, which is retrieved from the Internet. An arrow to the left of the menu items indicates the selected item. (A. Mann, Circuit Cellar 204)

The Compose Mail, Check Mailbox, and Configuration submenus form a hierarchical menu structure. When the other items listed beneath the respective menu titles in the diagram are activated (e.g., start the text editor), they enable you to input data, such as a username and password, or retrieve mail from the mail server. “Standby” is the only action that is accessible directly from the main menu. All other actions are grouped by function in the submenus.

WRITING MAIL

With respect to the firmware, sending mail is much easier than reading it, so let’s first focus on the Compose Mail menu. The first item in the menu starts the text editor so you can enter the body of your letter. You then enter the recipient’s mailing address and the subject of your e-mail, just like you would do when sending e-mail from your PC. Additional fields, such as CC or BCC are not included, but since this requires only one more line in the header of the mail, it is not difficult. Your e-mail also needs a reply address, so the recipient knows who sent the mail. The reply address is normally the same for all of the messages you write. The text you enter in this edit field is stored in the ATmega32’s EEPROM, so you don’t have to type it every time you write a letter. After you select the last menu item, “Send” initiates the dispatch of the mail and displays a message that indicates whether or not it was successful.

CHECKING FOR MAIL

What makes this part more sophisticated is the ability to handle not only one e-mail at a time, but also fetch mail from the server. The system can determine which messages are new and which messages have been read. It can also extract data such as the sender, subject, or sent date from the header of the mail and then display the information.

The amount of mail the firmware can handle is limited by the size of the external SRAM. The maximum number of e-mails is currently 1,024. (If you’ve got more mail, you will be so busy answering it that you won’t have time to build your own MiniEmail client—or you should delete some old mail). Note that 1,024 is the number of unique identifiers that the system can remember. The server assigns a unique identifier to each piece of mail. The system uses the identifiers to keep track of which letters are new on the server, which have already been read, and which have been marked for deletion.

All of the header data for all of the 1,024 messages cannot be held in SRAM at once; only the most recent (about 50) mail headers are held. When you want to browse through older e-mails, the firmware automatically reconnects to the server and fetches the headers of the next 50 e-mails.

When you select Check Mailbox in the main menu, you get to a submenu where you can retrieve and read mail. Before you can collect your mail, you must enter your username and password, which can be stored in EEPROM for your convenience. The firmware then retrieves the headers and displays the Mail Menu, where you can browse through your e-mail. Apart from the size and the date, the first 42 characters of the subject and the mail sender are shown. In the first row, additional icons indicate (from left to right) whether a message is new, has been marked for deletion, or has been read. You can view the content of the selected message by pressing Return. When the mail is fetched from the server, it is prepared for viewing. The header and HTML tags, as well as long runs of the same character, are stripped from the mail and base64 decoding (used to encode 8-bit characters) is performed, so the content of the message is as readable as plain text. Binary attachments (e.g., images) can’t be handled. Following this, the mail is viewed in the text editor (with editing disabled).

A similar action is performed when you press “r” in the Mail Menu. In that case, you can edit the text so you can add your reply. Leaving the text editor will bring you back to the Send Mail menu, where the reply address and subject will be filled in so your mail will be clear for take-off. To delete a message, simply press D to mark it for deletion….

OUTLOOK

I hadn’t imagined how many details would need to be considered when I started this project more than a year ago. It has been a very interesting and challenging project. It has also been a lot of fun.

The MiniEmail system provides all of the basics for communicating via email, but such a project is never really finished. There are still dozens of items on my to-do list. Fortunately, the ATmega32 can be replaced with a new member of the AVR family, the Atmel ATmega644, which is pin-compatible to the ATmega32 and has twice the flash memory (and internal SRAM). That will provide enough space for many of my new ideas. I want to get rid of the static IP address, add CC and BCC fields, use a bigger display or a smaller (variable-width) font, improve the filtering and display of mail content and attachments, and add an address book (it would be best in combination with an additional external EEPROM with an SPI, such as the AT25256).

This project proves, rather impressively, that the ATmega32 and the ENC28J60 are a powerful combination. They can be used for many useful Internet applications. My e-mail client system is surely one of the most exciting. I can think of many other interesting possibilities. At the moment, my MiniEmail assembly serves as an online thermometer so I can check my room’s temperature from anywhere in the world…

Mann’s entire article appears in Circuit Cellar 204, 2007. Type “miniemailopen” to access the password-protected article.

DIY Solar-Powered, Gas-Detecting Mobile Robot

Posted on 2012/07/30 by C. J. Abate

German engineer Jens Altenburg’s solar-powered hidden observing vehicle system (SOPHECLES) is an innovative gas-detecting mobile robot. When the Texas Instruments MSP430-based mobile robot detects noxious gas, it transmits a notification alert to a PC, Altenburg explains in his article, “SOPHOCLES: A Solar-Powered MSP430 Robot.” The MCU controls an on-board CMOS camera and can wirelessly transmit images to the “Robot Control Center” user interface.

Take a look at the complete SOPHOCLES design. The CMOS camera is located on top of the robot. Radio modem is hidden behind the camera so only the antenna is visible. A flexible cable connects the camera with the MSP430 microcontroller.

Altenburg writes:

The MSP430 microcontroller controls SOPHOCLES. Why did I need an MSP430? There are lots of other micros, some of which have more power than the MSP430, but the word “power” shows you the right way. SOPHOCLES is the first robot (with the exception of space robots like Sojourner and Lunakhod) that I know of that’s powered by a single lithium battery and a solar cell for long missions.

The SOPHOCLES includes a transceiver, sensors, power supply, motor
drivers, and an MSP430. Some block functions (i.e., the motor driver or radio modems) are represented by software modules.

How is this possible? The magic mantra is, “Save power, save power, save power.” In this case, the most important feature of the MSP430 is its low power consumption. It needs less than 1 mA in Operating mode and even less in Sleep mode because the main function of the robot is sleeping (my main function, too). From time to time the robot wakes up, checks the sensor, takes pictures of its surroundings, and then falls back to sleep. Nice job, not only for robots, I think.

The power for the active time comes from the solar cell. High-efficiency cells provide electric energy for a minimum of approximately two minutes of active time per hour. Good lighting conditions (e.g., direct sunlight or a light beam from a lamp) activate the robot permanently. The robot needs only about 25 mA for actions such as driving its wheel, communicating via radio, or takes pictures with its built in camera. Isn’t that impossible? No! …

The robot has two power sources. One source is a 3-V lithium battery with a 600-mAh capacity. The battery supplies the CPU in Sleep mode, during which all other loads are turned off. The other source of power comes from a solar cell. The solar cell charges a special 2.2-F capacitor. A step-up converter changes the unregulated input voltage into 5-V main power. The LTC3401 changes the voltage with an efficiency of about 96% …

Because of the changing light conditions, a step-up voltage converter is needed for generating stabilized VCC voltage. The LTC3401 is a high-efficiency converter that starts up from an input voltage as low as 1 V.

If the input voltage increases to about 3.5 V (at the capacitor), the robot will wake up, changing into Standby mode. Now the robot can work.

The approximate lifetime with a full-charged capacitor depends on its tasks. With maximum activity, the charging is used after one or two minutes and then the robot goes into Sleep mode. Under poor conditions (e.g., low light for a long time), the robot has an Emergency mode, during which the robot charges the capacitor from its lithium cell. Therefore, the robot has a chance to leave the bad area or contact the PC…

The control software runs on a normal PC, and all you need is a small radio box to get the signals from the robot.

The Robot Control Center serves as an interface to control the robot. Its main feature is to display the transmitted pictures and measurement values of the sensors.

Various buttons and throttles give you full control of the robot when power is available or sunlight hits the solar cells. In addition, it’s easy to make short slide shows from the pictures captured by the robot. Each session can be saved on a disk and played in the Robot Control Center…

The entire article appears in Circuit Cellar 147 2002. Type “solarrobot” to access the password-protected article.

Q&A: Ayse Kivilcim Coskun (Engineer, BU)

Posted on 2012/06/22 by C. J. Abate

Ayse Kivilcim Coskun’s research on 3-D stacked systems has gained notoriety in academia, and it could change the way electrical engineers and chip manufacturers think about energy efficiency for years to come. In a recent interview, the Boston University engineering professor briefed us on her work and explained how she came to focus on the topics of green computing and 3-D systems.

Boston University professor Ayse Kivilcim Coskun

The following is an excerpt from an interview that appears in Circuit Cellar 264 (July 2012), which is currently on newsstands.

NAN: When did you first become interested in computer engineering?

AYSE: I’ve been interested in electronics since high school and in science and physics since I was little. My undergraduate major was microelectronics engineering. I actually did not start studying computer engineering officially until graduate school at University of California, San Diego. However, during my undergraduate education, I started taking programming, operating systems, logic design, and computer architecture classes, which spiked my interest in the area.

NAN: Tell us about your teaching position at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boston University (BU).

AYSE: I have been an assistant professor at BU for almost three years. I teach Introduction to Software Engineering to undergraduates and Introduction to Embedded systems to graduate students. I enjoy that both courses develop computational thinking as well as hands-on implementation skills. It’s great to see the students learning to build systems and have fun while learning.

NAN: As an engineering professor, you have some insight into what excites future engineers. What “hot topics” currently interest your students?

AYSE: Programming and software design in general are certainly attracting a lot of interest. Our introductory software engineering class is attracting a growing number of students across the College of Engineering every year. DSP, image processing, and security are also hot topics among the students. Our engineering students are very keen on seeing a working system at the end of their class projects. Some project examples from my embedded systems class include embedded low-power gaming consoles, autonomous toy vehicles, and embedded systems focusing on healthcare or security applications …

NAN: How did you come to focus on energy efficiency and thermal challenges?

AYSE: Energy efficiency has been a hot topic for embedded systems for several decades, mainly due to battery-life restrictions. With the growth of computing sources at all levels—from embedded to large-scale computers, and following the move to data centers and the cloud—now energy efficiency is a major bottleneck for any computing system. The focus on energy efficiency and temperature management among the academic community was increasing when I started my PhD. I got especially interested in thermally induced problems as I also had some background on fault tolerance and reliability topics. I thought it would be interesting to leverage job scheduling to improve thermal behavior and my advisor liked the idea too. Temperature-aware job scheduling in multiprocessor systems was the first energy-efficiency related project I worked on.

NAN: In May 2011, you were awarded the A. Richard Newton Graduate Scholarship at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) for a joint project, “3-D Systems for Low-Power High-Performance Computing.” Tell us about the project and how you became involved.

AYSE: My vision is that 3-D stacked systems—where multiple dies are stacked together into a single chip—can provide significant benefits in energy efficiency. However, there are design, modeling, and management challenges that need to be addressed in order to simultaneously achieve energy efficiency and reliability. For example, stacking enables putting DRAM and processor cores together on a single 3-D chip. This means we can cut down the memory access latency, which is the main performance bottleneck for a lot of applications today. This gain in performance could be leveraged to run processors at a lower speed or use simpler cores, which would enable low-power, high-performance computing. Or we can use the reduction in memory latency to boost performance of single-chip multicore systems. Higher performance, however, means higher power and temperature. Thermal challenges are already pressing concerns for 3-D design, as cooling these systems is difficult. The project focuses on simultaneously analyzing performance, power, and temperature and using this analysis to design system management methods that maximize performance under power or thermal constraints.

I started researching 3-D systems during a summer internship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in the last year of my PhD. Now, the area is maturing and there are even some 3-D prototype systems being designed. I think it is an exciting time for 3-D research as we’ll start seeing a larger pool of commercial 3-D stacked chips in a few years. The A. Richard Newton scholarship enabled us to do the preliminary research and collect results. Following the scholarship, I also received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for designing innovative strategies for modeling and management of 3-D stacked systems.

The entire interview appears in Circuit Cellar 264 (July 2012).