Senior Design 03-04: Team 2

"Embedded Motion"

Project Webpage

In addition to this website, our team maintains a dedicated project website found at: embeddedmotion.net

The final product of this project will be a system that records data representing the 3D motion of a human arm. The data will be utilized by a program on a PC to create an image of the motion. This requires between 8 and 12 sensors. The sensors themselves will either be gyroscopes or accelerometers. If gyroscopes are used, then angles relative to a reference point will be measured. If the sensors are accelerometers, then they will measure the movement of points at strategic locations. The two methods will require different algorithms for data interpretation.

Our project will focus on the actual data acquisition and storage system, not the interpretation of the data (though we will write software to show that it works). The device will utilize an embedded system to provide a flexible framework for analog to digital converters and built in USB host controller to interface to USB mass storage devices. An embedded USB host controller will provide USB connectivity to mass storage devices. The mass storage device will be the means by which data is transferred between our device and a PC. On-The-Go USB (OTG USB) will be utilized. OTG is designed specifically for embedded applications, providing the client and host controllers on a single chip and using the same hardware between the controllers.

The device will offer a user interface that consists of an LCD display and four buttons. The interface will be configured as a menu-driven system and will offer the user the ability to change the sample rate, activate individual sensors, re-flash the device firmware, and control the start and stop times for the recording.

Project Status

Embedded Motion has completed its PCB design and has received the fabricated boards. We have tested SDRAM, SRAM, Flash, and QSPI. All have shown some degree of success. SDRAM works perfectly, Flash can be read from and written to manually, but has trouble with block copies. SRAM works perfectly. QSPI can send and receive perfectly for 8 bit transfer sizes, and can send fine in 16 bit transfer mode but has trouble receiving.