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
Oh... www.antronics.co.uk/.../index.htm
By sheer coincidence I have made a project (a rotary knitting machine) that involved 51 '51s. Otherwise the processor count has been 1-7
LED signs Amber and Color CDMA cell phones Leak detection system Remote terminals Postal Scales Densitometers Rotary knitting machine Automatic dosage of chemicals control for huge mixers (up to 3000 gal) Golf cart engine testing automation General industrial automation Dissolution meter
.. my current quick recall
Erik
erik,
I find that many engineers don't like doing muli-processor designs. I have no problem with that, but the resistance to do it I find odd. Fifty one 8051! thats a lot.
My list includes:
Time and attendance terminals (of various complexity) Barcode reading (specifically the decoding of raw data) TCP/IP protocol stacks (from basic principles) Access control (from single door through to >500 door) Loads of loggers (temperature, pressure etc)
Including Z80, 6502, 8051 (numerous variants), V25, V55, 80x86, STR9 and now on the LPC3250.
"Time and attendance terminals ... Loads of loggers"
If you combined them for a firm of lumberjacks, could that be a logger's logger logger...?!
Fifty one 8051! thats a lot For pattern knitting, a rotary knitting machine has 48 "selectors" each controlled by 8 "flapflippers". each selector was equipped with a '51, and a PC interface card had 3 each 51s driving 16 "flapflipper" controllers. Then PC code (in the DOS days I did that too) to interpret a pattern template and send the apprpiate controls to the machine.
I find that many engineers don't like doing muli-processor designs. I guess that is because they are ONLY taught using a multitasking OS and thus have no perception of the advantages of multiprocessor over multitasking.
There is a lot of resistance to going outside whatever box they happen to be in.
(I'm back from the doctors... I'm sane. <whew>)
That sounded like a fun project.
And yes, some people are afraid of multi-controller designs because they have a hard enough time with just one controller.
What really hurts their brains is when you arbitrate between processors using FPGAs as a gateway, with a migration path to incorporate the uCs into the FPGAs.
I enjoyed the number of different projects listed in these posts. Like Eric, my first computers used little glass thingies called 'valves'. At least across the pond they were called valves. So, I have many project memories but none that intentionally went "boom". One more memorable project was a simple battery charger/controller for 2000 Amps at 880 Volts. Another project where I re-discovered the difference between a flame front and a flow front while extinguishing a hydrogen torch. For that project, I was invited to remove my prototype far from the lab area. A third effort was moving material on an air track while operating in a partial vacuum.
But, going back over some war stories, the one thing that jumps foremost to mind is the fantastic tools that we have today. Compilers, wizards, embedded logic analyzers and debuggers make todays efforts more fun and a lot more effective. As the good Cpt. mentions, multicore processors embedded in FPGA fabric are very exciting to work with. Again the tools are awesume and the vendors continue to out perform each other and we get the benefit. Al Bradford
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