Scan Interface Applications - Five Members Win A Target Board And An MSP-FET

[bluehash 1,581]

@@greeeg, Added your project!

[abecedarian 330]

Might have to withdraw- property owner won't permit me to modify things this way, despite the obvious benefits he could have. Maybe I'll change it to something more apropos, that reflects my nephew wasting water by having flow meters on the shower head upstairs (which my wife and I use) and downstairs (which he uses).

 

 

Or possibly change to a fuel economy thing where I can put two flow meters and a driveshaft speed sensor on my wife's truck and gather fuel usage and driving habits to help her learn how to save fuel?

[rampadc 29]

These can probably be done cheaper using other microcontrollers but how about:

 

1. Absolute positioning servomotors with hobby brushless motors 

2. Another smart thermostat, the controller unit that came with my house's heater is doesn't handle temperatures in different rooms very well. The right side of the house is always hotter than the left side.

[abecedarian 330]

These can probably be done cheaper using other microcontrollers but how about:

 

1. Absolute positioning servomotors with hobby brushless motors 

2. Another smart thermostat, the controller unit that came with my house's heater is doesn't handle temperatures in different rooms very well. The right side of the house is always hotter than the left side.

#2 was a thought I'd had- having the registers open or close to maintain more balanced temperatures throughout the house.

 

*edit to add: maybe a small DC motor placed in the air-stream could act like a generator to provide power to the device controlling the register?

[rampadc 29]

Okay, so this is going to be my entry:

 

An improved central heating controller/interface for my home. The current controller measures the temperature in kitchen and use it to govern the temperature for the rest of the house. It sets the fan speed and temperature based on user input for each day. The current controller is hooked up to the mains and has a RJ-45 connector. What I would like to do is for the 430 to collect temperature data from each room then control fan speed and temperature, I probably will also put in some sort of heat flow diversion mechanism into the tubes so it can control the temperatures a bit better. 

 

If it's possible, maybe develop apps for phones to switch the heating on/off and input temperatures and fan speed manually. 

[bluehash 1,581]

@@rampadc Added your entry to the first post.

[chicken 630]

I wonder if the low participation so far is due to the complexity of the peripheral. The single page overview in SLAU367 doesn't tell you much about what's really going on. One has to read another 26 pages to figure that out.

 

@@bluehash should give away one of the prices to the person that comes up with the best layman description of the ESI peripheral

[bobnova 59]

I'm trying to find time to put together a proposal. There are a couple (hell, a few) different things I can think of to make with it.

Need to sit down with the datasheet for an hour or five and figure out exactly what it does, and why it'd be easier to use it than an interrupt and a timer.

[Foghorn 8]

I wonder if the low participation so far is due to the complexity of the peripheral. The single page overview in SLAU367 doesn't tell you much about what's really going on. One has to read another 26 pages to figure that out.

 

@@bluehash should give away one of the prices to the person that comes up with the best layman description of the ESI peripheral

 

I must admit that this peripheral looks like a jack-of-all-trades kind. It's like an ADC, DMA, Comparator, Timer, and Processor all rolled into one.

 

From what I gather, what makes this peripheral extra special is its configurable state machine.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this peripheral seems to act "generally" in this way:

1) Takes an ADC sample.

2) Stores it in dedicated RAM.

3) Configured state machine processes that data and stores results. Sets up for the next measurement.

4) State machine may or may not check/change its timer running in capture mode depending on the measurements being taken.

5) May generate Interrupt.

6) Repeat

 

A lot of this can be easily replicated in software by lots of microcontrollers, but the advantage of this peripheral is that all of the sampling and processing takes place in the background without processor intervention and allows the processor to sleep longer and save more power.

 

So, the ultimate benefit of this peripheral is to save power in applications that requires the processor to supervise the measurement-taking process. This is especially important in battery applications that require constant measurement taking.

 

I can see why some of the applications would be flow metering and fitness tracking (they both require lots of measurements).

 

My submission for this contest would be battery-powered auto-balancing applications. Auto-balancing requires constant sampling of motion sensors and sometimes combines optical data to aid in balancing by detecting the distance of a sensor relative to the ground. If the auto-balancing device moves, a quadrature encoder's velocity data would supplement the acceleration data of an accelerometer and angular velocity of a gyroscope. 

[Fred 453]

My submission for this contest would be battery-powered auto-balancing applications. Auto-balancing requires constant sampling of motion sensors and sometimes combines optical data to aid in balancing by detecting the distance of a sensor relative to the ground. If the auto-balancing device moves, a quadrature encoder's velocity data would supplement the acceleration data of an accelerometer and angular velocity of a gyroscope. 

If you can use the ESI to read from an accelerometer and gyro, and help to implement the Kalman filter to combine them and a PID controller to make use them then I'll be very impressed. That would be really useful for self balancers, quadcopters, etc.

[chicken 630]

@@Foghorn that's what I mean, my interpretation is a bit different

 

1. two analog front ends (AFE) with multiple inputs, a few outputs to stimulate sensors, and a multiplexer/DAC/comparator combo to compare inputs to a given voltage, including programmable hysteresis
2. the binary result of the comparator can either drive a timer or be further processed by the ESI
3. a pre-processing unit (PPU) that can store sequences of comparator results
4. a timing state machine (TSM) that is programmed with a timed sequence of up to 32 states that controls AFE, PPU and PSM (see 6), e.g. which input to compare to what value when and what to pass on to PPU, timer or PSM
5. the TSM can be driven by ACLK, SMCLK or external 32KHz oscillator, enabling operation in most (all?) LPM modes
6. a processing state machine (PSM) that is programmable with up to 127(?) states, with state transitions driven by output of the PPU
7. the PSM controls three 16bit counters and can raise MCU interrupts when a certain state is reached
8. Once TSM and PSM are programmed, the above runs independent of the MCU

There is no ADC, only sample-and-hold logic before the comparator. Your balancing project will have to work with comparator thresholds (DAC values) instead of numbers and math.. which might be perfectly viable.
 

[Foghorn 8]

@@chicken

 

That's true. I'd have to check into whether my idea is feasible with only comparator inputs (then again, I suppose there is always slope A/D conversion available if an integrator is used although I'm spoiled on ADCs). Truthfully, if I were to use the ESI, I'm not sure how long it would take for me to get a good grasp on its functioning to see how it fits into a design choice.

 

Usually whenever I design something, I already have a good grasp of what microcontrollers are able to do and what peripherals I'll need. Then, I choose the best microcontroller that has what I need for the price. I'm more a fan of top-down rather than bottom-up design and build trees starting with the trunk rather than the branch.

[chicken 630]

@@Foghorn given that a common line-follower circuit is built around a comparator, I think you have a good chance to succeed.

 

As for top-down vs. bottom-up: I like the puzzle of using bits at hand in an unconventional way. Like the cooking shows, where they give participants odd ingredients and they have to come up with a meal

[ivanc 5]

@@chicken

 

Your high level description of the ESI module is spot on. I will like to add my two cents to the description.

 

 

1. two analog front ends (AFE) with multiple inputs, a few outputs to stimulate sensors, and a multiplexer/DAC/comparator combo to compare inputs to a given voltage, including programmable hysteresis

Each AFE has two types of inputs (ESICIx and ESICHx), The main difference is that with ESICHx you can excite sensors (AFE1 and AFE2 use the same excitation logic)  and ESICIx inputs are not connected to the excitation logic.

 

 

      5. the TSM can be driven by ACLK, SMCLK or external 32KHz oscillator, enabling operation in most (all?) LPM modes

In addition to ACLK, SMCLK or 32KHz oscillator you can also use ESICLK which has a nominal frequency of 4.8 MHz but can be tunned to operate between 2.3 -7.9 MHz in ~78 KHz increments. Also, the ESI module allows you to divde your low frequency clock source by a wide number of dividers (refer to Table 28-25 in SLAU367)

 

 

6.  a processing state machine (PSM) that is programmable with up to 127(?) states, with state transitions driven by output of the PPU

Correct, you can program up to 127 states and the state transition are driven by output of PPU(PPUS1, PPU2,PPUS3) and bit Q6. Note: if you are using PPUS3 and bit Q6 for next PSM state transition you need to properly configure the ESIPSM register for such operation.

[zeke 693]

Wow! This device is complex - like it was designed for a specific client application but is now being re-purposed for regular, everyday applications.

 

The built in state machine application has me wondering, could it be used as a programmable logic controller (PLC) for industrial applications? 

 

I have an idea.

 

It would measure wellhead contact temperature, impeller rotation speed, fluid pressure, barometric pressure, air temperature, fluid temperature and RTC time. Then, based upon a whole lot of floating point calculations, it would calculate the instantaneous and running average flow rate of the wellhead.

 

Just for fun, I could add in wireless and modbusTCP communications.

 

Now, I wished I had an oil field client that required a new wellhead flow meter.