ECE 4760: Laboratory 2

Cricket-call generator.

Introduction.

You will construct a cricket-call generator which will produce audio output of a simplified cricket call. A cricket call may be very complex, but we will limit ourselves to the following form.

  1. A call is made up by repeating indefinitely a chirp and a silent period. The chirp starts again after the chirp repeat interval.
  2. A chirp is made up of a certain number of syllables with specific duration and repitition interval.
  3. A syllable is made up of a sine wave burst at a certain frequency.
    The burst starts at low amplitude, which increases quickly to a maximum, sustains the maximum amplitude until just before the end, then decreases amplitude to zero.

The image below summerizes the definition ( from Manfred Hartbauer).

cricket song structure

A matlab program generates such songs, but is not real time. The following images are three zoom levels of a song generated with chirp_repeat_interval=0.5 sec, syllable_duration=0.02, syllable_repeat_interval=0.05, syllable_count=4 and burst_freq = 2500 Hz. The syllable rise time was set to 4 mSec. The second image shows one chirp of the first image and the thrid image show one syllable of the second image.
cricket callzoom1zoom2

Procedure:

Hints on debugging are here.
Remember to fix the floating point library: In the menu item Project-> Configuration Options -> Libraries click on libm.a, then click on Add Library, and press OK.

Keypad
You will use a keypad to control cricket synthesis with audio output to a speaker. Analog output will be in the form of a PWM signal which will be filtered using a simple RC circuit to low pass filter the analog signal. Use a big enough resistor so that you don't load the port pin, and small enough to be below the input resistance of the speaker audio input (10 kohm). You should set the RC time constant to about 2 to 10 times the period of the PWM, but not big enough to excessively attenuate the call frequencies. The output of the lowpass filter will go to the audio input of the speaker. The PWM signal will be sine wave bursts generated using Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) technique. A short example shows how you might implement a DDS. For this lab, you will need to modulate the amplitude of the DDS unit. The sine wave table will need to be scaled to prevent overflow. Use the timer0 fast PWM mode with the prescalar set to 1 to produce about 62500 samples/sec. This example shows how you might amplitude modulate a sine wave.

You will need to control various intervals of time and generate the PWM signal. I suggest the following timing scheme, but you may use any scheme you want. Timer 0 is used to generate the high speed PWM-based D/A signal necessary for the sound synthesis. The output will be through OC0A (port pin B.3). In PWM mode, each PWM cycle completion is signaled by the overflow interrupt. The timer0 overflow ISR is therefore used to load a new output compare value for the next audio sample. In this ISR you can also increment a counter to count to 1 mSec. The resulting 1 mSec time base will be used to control all other timing (in the main program, not in the interrupt).

You will need to get user input from a keypad with one of two following configurations. Some keypads have the connector on the top, as shown. Some have them on the bottom. A demonstration keypad scanning code for testing your connections is here. An example of a debounce state machine for a single pushbutton (not the keypad) is included here for reference. Both of these examples assume active-low pushbuttons and active-low LEDs. If you use PORTD for the keypad, you must unmount the serial communication jumpers which connect D0 and D1 pins to an USB interface chip. 

Connector:  top:8-pin      top:9-pin   bottom
Pin 1  ---- row 1 2 3 A    col 1       col 1
Pin 2  ---- row 4 5 6 B    col 2       col 2
Pin 3  ---- row 7 8 9 C    col 3       col 3
Pin 4  ---- row * 0 # D    col 4       col 4

Pin 5  ---- col 1 4 7 *    row 1       row 1
Pin 6  ---- col 2 5 8 0    row 2       row 2
Pin 7  ---- col 3 6 9 #    row 3       row 3
Pin 8  ---- col A B C D    row 4       row 4
Pin 9  ----              (NO CONNECT--common)

(a) Each switch shorts one row to one column.
(b) Each pin should be connected to one bit of an i/o port.
Use a 300 ohm resistor between each i/o port and keypad pin.
(c) The i/o port pins will be used both as inputs and outputs. 
    When they are inputs, they should have active internal pullup resistors.
Audio
Connection to speakers will be by connecting clipleads to the speaker audio plug. There are three connections on an audio plug.
Normally these would be called left, right and ground, but we will call them channel 1, channel 2 and ground.
A typical plug is shown below. Connect you filtered PWM output to Channel 1 and MCU ground to Ground.
audio jack

Scope to Computer
You can connect the oscilloscope to the computer with a USB cable (type-B connector) attached to the back of the oscilloscope (not the type-A connector on the front).
To use the Tektronix software on the PC:

  1. Search for OpenChoice Desktop in the start menu, and start the program.
  2. When the main panel appears, choose Select Instrument.
  3. In the select dialog box, choose the USB device, and click OK.
  4. Back in the main panel, click Get Screen.
  5. Copy or save the image or data to your lab report.
Assignment

  1. Write a C program which implements a cricket-call generator with the following specifcations:
  2. Connect the circuit to the speaker audio input (green stereo jack) and listen the calls. This will aid in debugging and is required for the demo.
    You may need to lowpass filter the PWM signal at around 10,000 radians/sec.

Demo this program to a staff member using a speaker. Show that all specifications are met by verifying times and frequencies with an oscilloscope. Your program should not need to be reset during the demo.

Your written lab report should include the sections mentioned in the policy page, and :

Copyright Cornell University September 21, 2012