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.

Master Bus Processor

Clay Kaiser, Philip Macias, Richard Mannion

Master Bus Processor

Featured Project

General Description

We will design a Master Bus Processor (MBP) for music production in home studios. The MBP will use a hybrid analog/digital approach to provide both the desirable non-linearities of analog processing and the flexibility of digital control. Our design will be less costly than other audio bus processors so that it is more accessible to our target market of home studio owners. The MBP will be unique in its low cost as well as in its incorporation of a digital hardware control system. This allows for more flexibility and more intuitive controls when compared to other products on the market.

Design Proposal

Our design would contain a core functionality with scalability in added functionality. It would be designed to fit in a 2U rack mount enclosure with distinct boards for digital and analog circuits to allow for easier unit testings and account for digital/analog interference.

The audio processing signal chain would be composed of analog processing 'blocks’--like steps in the signal chain.

The basic analog blocks we would integrate are:

Compressor/limiter modes

EQ with shelf/bell modes

Saturation with symmetrical/asymmetrical modes

Each block’s multiple modes would be controlled by a digital circuit to allow for intuitive mode selection.

The digital circuit will be responsible for:

Mode selection

Analog block sequence

DSP feedback and monitoring of each analog block (REACH GOAL)

The digital circuit will entail a series of buttons to allow the user to easily select which analog block to control and another button to allow the user to scroll between different modes and presets. Another button will allow the user to control sequence of the analog blocks. An LCD display will be used to give the user feedback of the current state of the system when scrolling and selecting particular modes.

Reach Goals

added DSP functionality such as monitoring of the analog functions

Replace Arduino boards for DSP with custom digital control boards using ATmega328 microcontrollers (same as arduino board)

Rack mounted enclosure/marketable design

System Verification

We will qualify the success of the project by how closely its processing performance matches the design intent. Since audio 'quality’ can be highly subjective, we will rely on objective metrics such as Gain Reduction (GR [dB]), Total Harmonic Distortion (THD [%]), and Noise [V] to qualify the analog processing blocks. The digital controls will be qualified by their ability to actuate the correct analog blocks consistently without causing disruptions to the signal chain or interference. Additionally, the hardware user interface will be qualified by ease of use and intuitiveness.

Project Videos