EE 476: Laboratory 7

Design project.

For this exercise, we want you to pick a project, then design and build it. During this period there will be no other assignments, so we expect you to spend all of your time for this course on the project. You will be expected to be in lab at the usual times and to show significant progress each week of the project. Each week in lab a one-page progress report will be due.

When choosing a project you will need to consider availability of hardware, time available, and your programming skill. You may want to look at several of the links on the 476 home page for project ideas.

Depends on what you will build. You should talk often to your lab instructor. You can use either ASM or C or a mixture of the two. Your project will be limited to using one STK-500 development board. If you need more than one cpu, you will have to use a STK-200 board or build a prototype board.

A group in 2002 added the following thoughts.

Here are the top 10 things you can do to survive EE 476 Final Project Month:

1. If you use a chip other than the one you've been using in class all semester, read the documentation thoroughly, subtle differences are going to kill you. It's just a matter of for how long they kill you.
2. If you feel heat from your board, or smell burning: THERE IS A SHORT. Don't look for the short first. TURN OFF THE POWER!
3. If the voltages look right, and the wiring looks right, but nothing's happening, it is possible that your chip is fried, don't be afraid to ask for another chip. This would've saved me a week of pain, and a bad hit to morale.
4. If you're stuck on something, ask Bruce or the TA's. Make a reasonable attempt to solve it yourself, but don't sit there for three hours just because you cannot remember which port of the opamp is correct. Remember, we all look like we're working, so Bruce's spider sense won't kick in. You must call him, he can't call you.
5. Order parts early. Order duplicates if you can afford it.
6. If you're going to solder onto a perf board, you don't have to rip apart your breadboard. Just make another copy of the circuit.
7. You will not finish if you don't start early.
8. You probably won't finish if you don't take advantage of extended lab hours.
9. Do what you can do out of lab out of lab.
10. Seriously, pick a project you'll enjoy. These four weeks can be pain, or the most fulfilling of your Cornell Career.

You will be graded on several aspects of the project:

1. Appropriate level of hardware/software complexity.
2. Appropriate use of assembler and C.
3. A project which works according to specification (which you will write).
4. Level of effort and organization shown in lab.
5. A demonstration of the final project during the last regular scheduled lab period of the semester. The demonstration will include an explanation of your web page describing the project.
6. Completeness and understandability of the final report. The report must be handed in when you do the project demo during your last regular lab period. The report which you hand in must be printed directly from a web page which you construct. Documentation must include:
   • Introduction -- what you did and why.
   • High level design -- rationale, math, logical structure.
   • Program/hardware design -- program details, hardware details.
   • Results of the design -- speeds, accuracy, usability, etc.
   • What you would do differently next time.
   • Appendix with listing
   • Appendix with schematics

The web page may optionally be submitted for inclusion on the class web page.
If you wish to do this:

1. Put all of your web page files in one directory.
   Since the pages will be on a UNIX server, you should:
   • Make sure the cases (upper/lower) of all filenames agree with their hyperlinks.
   • Use only alphanumeric characters, periods, and underscores in filenames.
   • Check all your links to make sure they are relative to your main page.
2. ZIP or tar the directory.
3. email it to BRL4@cornell.edu.

Copyright Cornell University Feb 2002