Hardware

Hardware Resources

The Srivastava Senior Design Lab has a wide variety of hardware available for use in projects, including microcontrollers, DSP boards, LINX RF transmitters and receivers, GPS units, webcams and more. These things can all be checked out from you TA for use on your project. See below for more details, and check out the links above.

Development Boards

Intel Galileo Development Boards

The lab has 25 Intel Galileo Development Boards available for checkout. The following links are useful resources for working with these boards:

Microcontrollers

PIC Microcontrollers

The lab has a number of PIC16F877A microcontrollers available for use in projects. It is understandable that wiring errors might happen, so each student is allowed to burn out a maximum of two PICs. They are programmed in a simplified C instruction set and are used to simplify design and perform IO with ease. Check the PIC Tutorial for more information.

BASIC Stamp Microcontrollers

The BASIC Stamp is a simple, tiny microcontroller with serial communications abilities, programmed in BASIC. This makes it ideal for simple applications where I/O speed is not critical, and the complexity of the HC12 is not needed.

DSPs

TI TMS320C54x DSPs

We have several C54x DSPs available for checkout (if demand is high, sharing a DSP with another group may be needed). Check out these resources for more information:

TI TMS320C6713 DSP

We have one TMS320C6713 (16 Mb) Floating Point DSP that was graciously donated by TI. The board is in the TA cabinet and is available for checkout.

LINX RF modules

We have a number of LINX transmitters and receivers available in the lab for RF projects, with a choice of the LC Series (315 or 418 MHz) or the HP series (902-928 MHz band).

GPS kits

We have 2-3 Garmin 12 XL GPS receivers. The Garmin units are equipped with a serial communication port and can be interfaced with microcontrollers or computers to provide information on position (lat, long, altitude, time) and velocity (differentiation of position). We also have one equivalent Motorola kit, and another kit by Ashtech (Eval and development kit, 990285). There are antennas on the roof of EL with wires into the lab so that data can be acquired while in the building (for testing purposes). The antennas can be accessed through connectors in the back left corner of the lab, by the far computer.

BarPro Weightlifting Aid Device

Patrick Fejkiel, Grzegorz Gruba, Kevin Mienta

Featured Project

Patrick Fejkiel (pfejki2), Kevin Mienta (kmient2), Grzegorz Gruba (ggruba2)

Title: BarPro

Problem: Many beginner weightlifters struggle with keeping the barbell level during lifts. Even seasoned weightlifters find their barbells swaying to one side sometimes. During heavy lifts, many people also struggle with full movements after a few repetitions.

Solution Overview: BarPro is a device that straps on to a barbell and aids the lifter with keeping the barbell level, maintaining full repetitions and keeping track of reps/sets. It keeps track of the level of the barbell and notifies the lifter with a sound to correct the barbell positioning when not level. The lifter can use the device to calibrate their full movement of the repetition before adding weight so that when heavy weight is applied, the device will use data from the initial repetition to notify the lifter with a sound if they are not lifting or lowering the barbell all the way during their lift. There will be an LCD screen or LEDs showing the lifter the amount of repetitions/sets that they have completed.

Solution Components:

Subsystem #1 - Level Sensor: An accelerometer will be used to measure the level of the barbell. If an unlevel position is measured, a speaker will beep and notify the lifter.

Subsystem #2 - Full Repetition Sensor: An ultrasonic or infrared distance sensor will be used to measure the height of the barbell from the ground/body during repetitions. The sensor will first be calibrated by the lifter during a repetition with no weight, and then that calibration will be used to check if the lifter is having their barbell reach the calibrated maximum and minimum heights.

Subsystem #3 - LED/LCD Rep/Sets Indicator: LEDs or a LCD screen will be used to display the reps/sets from the data measured by the accelerometer.

Criterion for Success: Our device needs to be user friendly and easily attachable to the barbell. It needs to notify the lifter with sounds and LEDs/LCD display when their barbell is not level, when their movements are not fully complete, and the amount of reps/sets they have completed. The device needs to work smoothly, and testing/calibrating will need to be performed to determine the minimum/maximum values for level and movement positioning.