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It seems to me that many of the 'regular' contributors are very savvy in the art of embedded design. I was wondering just what projects they are doing, or have done in the past that are worthy of mentioning?
I think our readers might be interested in such works, and give the casual reader something to ponder: especially since they are taking advice from these 'regular' contributors.
--Cpt. Vince Foster 2nd Cannon Place Fort Marcy Park, VA
P.S. I'm an irregular contributor
One 'horror story' slash 'war story' I had was when we were building a machine that had 800+ amps at 128 volts via batteries.
When it was time to hook up the high-power wires, an engineer was going to cut the wires and hook them up to the fusing system.
Suddenly another engineer was screaming "DIFFERENT LENGTHS !! DIFFERENT LENGTHS !!!"
But alas the first engineer, Lee, cut both the positive and negative wires the same length as he had both +/- wires in the same wire-cutters ("dikes") at the same time.
While I was working on another part of the system, my face was about 16 inches from the activity going on.
The dikes detonated/exploded.
I saw an ultra bright light and then it rained red balls of molten metal all over us and the equipment.
Lee, the Senior and High Power Expert (he really was The Man for that kind of work we did), was the guy who cut the wires and sustained some hospital worthy wounds on his hand.
We dubbed the remaining remnants of the dikes as "Lee's Ammeter" and had it mounted on a placard with such verbiage.
This machine was controlled by a Ti DSP (TMS320C206--"Code Composer" and not Keil) feeding three 9-hp custom built motors through a specially designed high-power controller board (Lee's Design). I designed the CPU section (PWA and it's firmware). It used the PWM and a pulse width/duty cycle input from a remote control unit. It was a fairly simple project on my end.
Lee's only job was to hook up the high-power to our machine. (I don't like dealing with that much power, so we called our expert in to do it: Lee).
Lee recently died of a heart attack: a man with a wall of placards and awards from the various branches of the military for outstanding engineering work. The aerospace business lost a great asset, and I lost a good friend.
Lee's Ammeter wasn't exactly a shinning moment... it did indeed explode. Other than Lee, my face was the closest, yet I was un-harmed (whew).
TMS320C206--"Code Composer"
Should have been TMS320C2406--"Code Composer"
Please tell us what particular processor/micro-controller that you guys are currently using?
I just thought it would be nice to know who is doing what with what.
I'm working with a Ti DSP (non-Keil) TMS320F28032 focus.ti.com/.../tms320f28032.html
are SILabs Mcus f0xx-f2xx
Erik
Any form of PIC!
This is not by any specific intention or avoidance - it's just happened that way. I came close to breaking that duck recently, but still haven't.
Other than that, it's been pretty eclectic from 4 to 32 bits...
Hm, let's see:
TI TMS320VC5407 ADuC 845 AT91SAM7S256 Some part from Renesas' M32 series. Not sure which one, I wasn't doing a lot of hardware-specific stuff on that project.
Soon:
AT91SAM3S. Hope that thing is as sweet as the datasheet promises.