University Program

Call for Innovation – Part II

2013-05-20T09:42:09Z

Call for Innovation – Part II

What can you look forward to, if you are taking part in Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge: India Analog Design Contest

C.P. Ravikumar, Texas Instruments

Listen to what the winners of last year’s contest have to say about Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge: India Analog Design Contest!

"This is taking it too far! Even the winners' stand is analog!"

The cake and the icing

I remember the evening of April 5, 2013 distinctly. About 700 people had gathered in the “Silicon Hall” of NIMHANS Convention Center, Bangalore. The atmosphere was charged with excitement. Twenty three teams who had been shortlisted for the second round of the “TI India Analog Design Contest” waited with bated breath for the award announcements. Foot-tapping music played as student teams and mentors climbed on to the stage to receive the awards.

I wish to reiterate what I said at the beginning of this award ceremony in my capacity of the host of the event. Every student who took part in the contest and completed the project is a winner. The true reward of participating in the contest is the learning that the students derived. The awards are only the icing on the cake.

I have already disclosed who the winners of the contest were in an earlier blog post (see [1]). The purpose of this post is different. We had a chance to interact with the winners of the contest when they visited TI’s Bangalore campus and made seminar presentations about their projects to an invited audience. We used the opportunity and asked them to describe their overall contest experience. I will share their secrets with you, if you promise me that you will share it with at least five others.

Fruitful Learning Experience

“It was a fruitful learning experience … made us improve our intellectual and engineering skills.” This is how Dinesh P, an undergraduate student in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapally, sums up the experience of his team. Incidentally, his team won the top prize in the contest.

What was the challenge their team faced? “Designing and debugging the hardware system was the challenging part,” says Dinesh. ”But we learnt a great deal. While we picked up a lot of knowledge in the application domain (solar inverter), there was much to learn about the ICs we used - power electronics ICs, op-amps, voltage regulators.”

His teammate Bhaskar adds to this list. “We learnt to design high power printed circuit boards. We also became adept in using the TI MSP430 series of microcontrollers.

“Working as a team was great fun! And of course, winning the competition was the sweetest experience!” Our project was an exercise in system design. We had to address many concerns, such as power consumption, self sustainability, reliability etc. Now we are planning to patent our idea.”

Their message to next year’s contest aspirants is “Give in your best effort folks! It will definitely be one of the best learning experiences in college.”

Hello, Real World

“Through this contest we experienced what real world electronics system design is!” says Varun Reddy of NIT Surathkal, whose team shared the top award with NIT Trichy. “It gave me a reason to tinker around and experiment with things I normally wouldn't have done.”

“In our project, we touched upon all the aspects of system design starting from hardware aspects (PCB design and sensor design) to software aspects (Linux and C coding.) We also had to think of system integration which involved putting all of these individual components together into a single usable product. I feel final system integration, making every part work together after individual testing was most challenging.

“The technical learnings that we obtained through this project include: PCB design, RTOS coding, various communication protocols such as Zigbee and WiFi, and to some extent, Linux coding. In the initial stages of the contest, TI’s e2e community was very helpful when we needed information on how to get started with the development kits provided by TI. Our faculty mentor was very helpful and provided lot of helpful guidelines on how to make our project better.”

“I am planning to apply for higher studies abroad, and the contest has provided me with exactly the kind of experience to succeed in the chosen field of my study. Winning the contest will definitely help in the admission process, as it is a very important achievement and I can use it to showcase technical capability.”

Felt like Entrepreneurs

“The contest was the best platform to pick up skills in electronic system design,” says Raghav A. His team from BNMIT, Bangalore, won the First Runner-up Award. “Students who are interested in product design seldom get this kind of unique opportunity. I have participated in other contests also, but the kind of support TI provides by giving components, offering tutorials etc. is phenomenal”

“We enjoyed demonstrating our project at TI India Educators Conference! We felt like entrepreneurs!” added Raghav. His team mate Shashanka D agrees. “We enjoyed explaining their project to educators and industry professionals who visited our booth at TI India Educators’ Conference.”

Shashank believes he learnt a great deal during the contest. “I learned a lot about analog ICs and microcontrollers from TI, MSP430. I understood the differences between different IC packages and their importance. I also learnt a PCB design tool and the PCB manufacturing process, and autocad for designing the case for our safety lock.”

“Getting all the components from TI was great encouragement for us. We also appreciate the sharing of project videos and conference pictures through social media and blogs. It was a motivating factor for us.”

“We used C2000 microcontroller from TI - Piccolo F28027 in our project. Learning this controller and interfacing it with MATLAB was a great experience,” said Harshitha N of BMS College of Engineering.

Soft Skills

“Apart from technical skills, the contest helped us in learning lots of non-technical skills such as team management, coordinating with team members, personality development and working under deadlines,” said Prem Sagar, a student member of the team from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, New Delhi.

“I have participated in many contests which are generally open-ended. But the TI contest has clear guidelines & directions, which were very helpful. A unique feature of the contest was project demonstration through video which tested our creative skills. We were thrilled to win the best video award for our video demonstration” says Hitesh Mittal from Chitkara University, Punjab. His team mate Jai Aditya said “We are planning to productize our project prototype and in this regard we are talking to our college for support.”

“The contest exposed us to a wide variety of technologies that has inspired us to pursue higher studies,” said Kishore P of NIT Tiruchirapally. He advice to the next year’s contestants is, “Manage time. Make sure you carefully select a project that you should be able to finish in given time period while managing your academics.”

Innovation Challenge

The purpose of writing this blog post is to encourage students to take part in the next year’s contest, which we have renamed “Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge: India Analog Design Contest.” I hope the positive experiences of the participants who took part in previous contests will motivate more students to take the plunge! I know many of you are completing your semester now and looking forward to a summer break. It would be useful to form your team now and start thinking about your project proposal, which is due by August 15. In the next part of this blog series, I intend to write about selecting projects.

After reading the first part [2] of this blog series, a few students wrote to me. Some of them incorrectly think that the contest is about making new inventions. I want to reiterate that our contest challenges students to “innovate.” Read the article [3] to appreciate the difference between innovation and invention. You may also benefit from reading the interview at [4] and the article available in [5]. You will benefit from the “Guidelines” document we have posted at [6]. The contest website anchored at [7] is also a great resource from where you can get information about the colleges which were shortlisted in the previous years, the links for their video demonstrations, etc. Happy reading!

References

[1] C.P. Ravikumar. Innovation Premier League!

[2] C.P. Ravikumar. Call for Innovation – Part I - Top Ten Reasons for participating in Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge: India Analog Design Contest 2014 http://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/designproject/archive/2013/05/16/call-for-innovation-part-i.aspx

[3] English Wikipedia. Innovation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation

[4] C.P. Ravikumar’s interview published in Electronics Maker, May 2013. http://www.uniti.in/images/interview.pdf

[5] System-level Design: Nurturing College Students to Innovate through TI India Analog Design Contest http://www.uniti.in/images/system-level-design.pdf

[6] Guidelines Document for Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge: India Analog Design Contest. http://www.uniti.in/adc/texas-instruments-innovation-challenge-india-analog-design-contest-2014

[7] Website for Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge: India Analog Design Contest. www.uniti.in/adc

Call for Innovation! - Part I

2013-05-16T11:20:00Z

Call for Innovation!

Part I - Top Ten Reasons for participating in Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge: India Analog Design Contest 2014

C.P. Ravikumar, Texas Instruments

The student walked towards the department's notice board, where a small crowd had gathered. They were peering at a new colorful poster about "Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge: India Analog Design Contest." There was a palpable excitement in the air.

"Should I enroll in this contest too?" the student wondered. Several questions raced through the student's mind. What does it mean to "innovate?" What skills are needed to take to participate in the contest? Am I expected to invent something? Will I be able to manage the contest-related work along with my academic load? How do I select team mates? What project should we select? What components will I need? Who will guide me through this process?

Thousands of Indian students may be going through a similar experience as I write this. We have been organizing the “Analog Design Contest” in India for four years in a row, and we are only too familiar with the frequently asked questions. We decided to help the students a little more this year, and that is the genesis of this blog series.

We decided to begin at the very beginning, a very good place to begin: Motivation! Why should you take part in Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge? Each year, we ask several participants, including winners of the contest, what prompted them to take part in our contest. Sagar has helped me summarize their answers in the table below. If you are that student who stopped by the notice board, wondering if the design contest is your cup of TI, the answer is yes! After you read the "Ten Reasons," I will recommend that you read the guidelines document which we have put together! (This document can be accessed from http://www.uniti.in/adc/texas-instruments-innovation-challenge-india-analog-design-contest-2014).

So here they are, ten practical reasons for which our past participants gave us a for our Analog Design Contest.

	I don’t have to pay any enrollment fee! TI provides to my team semiconductor components (ICs and hardware kits) free of cost!
	The knowledge and experience of the contest will boost my resume – whether I am interested in a job or in higher studies!
	TI provides a comprehensive “Semiconductor Tools Selection Guide” … this will make my job of selecting right TI components for my project a lot easier!
	With about six months for the project, I and my team can do some serious innovation! I can balance my coursework with contest-related work!
	I, my team members and my college get recognized by TI in various forums like contest website, social media etc.
	TI will provide me opportunity to showcase/demonstrate my project in a summit that will be attended by industry professionals, educators and students of Indian engineering colleges across India. This will be a great learning experience for me!
	After the contest is over, TI will allow me to patent my project idea, present it as my final year project, and even publish it in external forums.
	I can improve my non-technical skills like writing a good project report; making a good project video, working in a team, working under deadlines, time management, communication skills etc .
	It will be a lot of fun to work in a team! I am allowed to pick team mates from other departments! A team can have a mix of UG and PG students!
	There are also loads of tangible benefits! 1. Participation certificates for all participants! 2. Cash Prizes for teams shortlisted in First Phase! 3. Opportunity to do internship in TI 4. Cash prizes for winners in Final Phase - Top Prize of $10,000, First Runner-up Prize of $5,000 and Second Runner-up prize of $2,000 5. Chance to win other prizes!

I plan to cover several other aspects of participating in the Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge in the next part of the blog series. Meanwhile, I encourage you to start forming your team and start thinking about writing a proposal!

It’s (t)raining outside! A Weather Report for students and teachers

2013-05-10T04:11:00Z

It’s (t)raining outside! A Weather Report for students and teachers

C.P. Ravikumar, reporting live from Texas Instruments

Yesterday, Bangalore witnessed a heavy downpour. I am not just talking about rain. While people were spotted running indoors, it is not exactly clear whether they were doing this to take shelter. Our correspondents talked to some of them. “It’s training indoors while it is raining outdoors!” said Chanchal. “Both are good reasons for rushing indoors!”

“I love rain. Great time for a hot snack and coffee,” said Sagar. “And TI has put some delicious stuff together this rainy season!”

“There is one thing that is common to raining and training – they are both free,” beamed Shantha Krishnan, before rushing to his laptop.

“Not only that,” chimed in Vaibhav. “The raining may not reach some parts of India, like Rajasthan, but training will reach everywhere!”

After listening to all these cryptic comments, I decided to wear my (t)rain coat and my Sherlock Holmes hat and investigate this further. This is what my investigation lead me to – a website called http://ti.ictraining.in/

I would love to stay and talk same more, but I have to catch some (t)raining. While getting caught in the raining can give you a cold, getting caught in this training can give you a certificate! Other than a PC and an Internet connection, you need only two things to take this training - (a) A large tub of popcorn to keep you company, and (b) A flair for analog, microcontrollers, and power supply design.

Let me know how you did this (t)rainy season.

ARE YOU AN UNDERGRAD STUDENT TEAM FROM ACCREDITED ENGINEERING SCHOOLS IN US / CANADA WORKING ON A SENIOR DESIGN / CAP STONE OR COURSE BASED HARDWARE PROJECT?

2013-05-08T19:46:00Z

If the answer is YES, then register for the Texas Instruments Analog Design Contest (Please note that I am only refering to the contest held in US / Canada region). We have the semiconductor industry's broadest portfolio and can help solve any problem that you are trying to address with your project. If you are already using 3 TI chips in your senior design projects, then you are eligible. This helps you get connected to TI, a world leader in semiconductors apart from getting you closer to a great career at TI. Oh by the way, did I forget to mention the $200 coupon you get to buy anything from the TI Estore. You can also avail of our Free Sample Program which ships overnight.

We had some amazing projects last year and we look forward to a great year this year. We really encourage that you put together a great video to accompany your project report!! That is a very compelling way to get noticed.

Check out the below video from the top student team that won the competition last year from Rice University and received a grand prize of $10000!

http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/video/Portal.tsp?lang=en&entryid=1_5mb3qpk5

What better way to show your motivation and going beyond the ordinary than participating in a contest like this to further your chances in everything including great career opportunities, paying off student loans with prize money, etc? Check out comments from Brad Ruzicka, WW University Program Manager at Texas Instruments from the panel discussion at Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) held earlier this year at Orlando.

http://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/designproject/archive/2013/03/24/read-ti-39-s-advice-to-ece-department-heads-during-the-ecedha-industry-roundtable.aspx

For those of you who have already registered, we are very glad you did and REMEMBER, the project submission deadline of May 10^th 2013, is a few days away for everyone. Please follow the template on the website. The only thing that we ask in addition to your regular report is your analysis behind picking a particular device vs another device and the advantages it brings to your project.

GOOD LUCK and Look forward to meeting you and your team at the Engibous Summit between July 21^st and July 23^rd 2013 where we invite top teams with their professors.

Rub the lamp and make a wish!

2013-04-26T09:07:00Z

Rub the lamp and make a wish!

C.P. Ravikumar, Texas Instruments

The genie appeared when Aladdin rubbed the magic lamp. "Your wish is my command!"

Integrated Circuits are like Aladdin's magic lamp. Rubbing this lamp with innovation can unleash the genie.

Here is the story of an electronic lamp. It is the story of innovative product design from a University campus!

I remember the winter morning on which I visited NSIT, Delhi. With help from Prof. Dhananjay Gadre, who is on the board of faculty of Electronics and Communication Engineering at NSIT, the TI India University Program was hosting four hands-on workshops in January. The event was technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Student Chapter of NSIT.

“Shall I make some coffee for you?” offered Gadre, and to my surprise, proceeded to make two cups of instant coffee using a microwave. In answer to my puzzled expression, he explained – “We keep the condiments for making tea and coffee in this office. My students use my office to do their projects. Some of them even sleep here if they have stayed up all night!” and pointed at the sofa.

I took a sip of hot coffee and looked around the office. Wires, soldering iron, printed circuit boards in various stages of construction, boxes, electronic components, text books. But there is a method in this madness, because Prof. Gadre is able to pull out what he is looking for without much searching.

I broached the subject of TI India Educators’ Conference, planned in April 2013. “Can you make an electronic lamp for the inaugural ceremony, Prof. Gadre?”

Like the coffee, his consent was also instant. I had seen his “birthday candles” project and wanted something similar, but being a free-lance designer, he likes to out-do his own prior designs.

“You may have seen the traditional brass lamp that is used in inaugural ceremonies. Perhaps you could build five small lamps that can be placed as five wicks for the lamp …”

“We will work on it,” he said, and smiled.

* * *

Here comes the lamp!

I told my team members about this conversation. Then we got busy with the preparations for the conference. At some stage, we received a list of semiconductors that Prof. Gadre needed for the lamp project and Vaibhav took care of that request. When we were about three weeks away from TIIEC, Prof. Gadre sent us a mail. The lamp project was going slow, but steady. He expects to have a prototype soon. We were prepared for the eventuality of using the conventional lamp as a backup.

The day before the conference, Sagar, Vaibhav, and I reached the venue at 5.30pm and got busy with some of the preparations we had to do. Prof. Gadre arrived at 8.00pm with a large suitcase. Very carefully, he took out the parts of the lamp and assembled them. He pulled out a matchbox from his pocket and an electronic matchstick. He rubbed the matchstick against the matchbox and the tip of the matchstick glowed milky white. He brought the matchstick in contact with one of the five lamps. The electronic wick caught on the light and began to flicker.

We were all smiles. “Hurrah!” we cried. “Bravo, Prof. Gadre!”

“But wait! The electronics works great. But we have this aesthetic lampstand that we have made for the lamp, which we need to assemble. That will take time.”

At this time, the electricity failed and we were covered with darkness. There was no backup power and we decided on the next action plan.

“There is no point in waiting here. Let’s go. I will be here by 6.00am and start assembling the lampstand. Your inauguration is at 9.00am. I will need at least 2 hours.”

* * *

The stage is all set

Apr 4. 8.45am. The “Silicon Hall” was beginning to fill up. The dignitaries who were going to “light” the lamp were already inside the hall, chatting, waiting for me (the host of the inaugural ceremony) to make an announcement. On the stage, Prof. Gadre and two of his students were kneeling on the floor, assembling the lampstand. Prof. Gadre had a soldering iron in his hand. He was pairing up wires of the same color coming from the power adapter and from the lamp and was going to solder them together. I looked at all this helplessly. What are the odds? I thought. Beads of perspiration formed on my forehead. Prof. Gadre’s steady hands continued to solder.

9.00am. The dignitaries in the front row occasionally looked up at the stage. The suitcase and plastic bubblewrap and boxes containing electronic components were still lying on the stage. Prof. Gadre was soldering. Should I act on the backup plan? The conventional lamp was ready, decorated with flowers and all. But the earnestness with which the students and Prof. Gadre were working did not permit me to say a word.

9.05am. I broke my silence. “Should we begin to clear the stage from the debris?” I said to one of the students. He obeyed. Just then, Prof. Gadre got up. The soldering was completed. Now for the acid test. He repeated the matchbox trick again – this time on all the five lamps. The first four wicks caught the light. The fourth one played hard to get. Wrong wiring? I thought. But Prof. Gadre held the matchstick for a little longer. The fifth wick obeyed. I rushed to the podium and began my welcome speech. It was 9.08am.

A successful lamp-lighting ceremony drew a thunderous applause from the audience. Then I invited our President and Managing Director Dr. Biswadip Mitra to say a few words, he chose to speak about the importance of building electronic systems. “My advice to students is to soil their hands. Choose a system, a sub-system, or even a sub-sub-system for implementation. Build it out of integrated circuits …”

I was thinking about Prof. Gadre kneeling on the floor, soldering the wires. “Surely his hands must be soiled,” I thought.

* * *

The lamp was made in many stages

Many days after the conclusion of the conference, I decided to ask Prof. Gadre to share the story of the lamp so that our readers from the Universities will be benefited. In particular, I am hoping that this story will help all those students who are starting out on projects using Texas Instruments integrated circuits.

“There were many stages during the development of the lamp,” said Prof. Gadre. The first stage was to form a team and brainstorm. A team of four worked with Prof. Gadre on this project – Rohit Gupta, Prateek, Piyush, and Rohit Dureja. More about the team later.

There are so many ways in which we could build an electronic lamp. We wanted a lamp that can be lit like a conventional lamp; simply pressing a switch will be breaking the tradition too much, although it will simplify things considerably. We also talked about several ways to trigger the lamp with the electronic matchstick. Finally, we settled on using infrared (IR) transmitter and receiver used in TV remotes. We tested out the idea by building a quick prototype – that was in the end of Jan.”

The second stage involved building the LED lamp with an integrated IR remote receiver. Several versions were built in February 2013. A final version was tested in early March 2013. The third stage was to build and test the electronic matchstick. This was done in March, about 3 weeks before the date of deployment. The matchstick uses an 8-pin MSP430, an infrared LED, a TPS61070 DC-DC boost converter and a 4.7F/2.7V super-capacitor.

After we got the lamp prototype to work, the next stage was decide on the structure of the lamp. “After much brainstorming, we decided to build a complete lampstand from acrylic sheets. Earlier, our idea was to build the lamp as an add-on attachment for the traditional brass lamp. In hind sight, building an entire lampstand was not a good idea – the stand was fragile and presented challenges in transport. It was also expensive to build.”

So there is a lesson in system design. Reuse what you can.

The final stage was to do “mass production.” Of course, in this case, the team only produced 10 lamps. This was done in the last week of March. “We clicked the image of the prototype, shot a small video demonstration, and sent them off to the TI team,” said Prof. Gadre. "A lot of care was taken to pack the lampstand and the lamps into a suitcase. I took an afternoon flight to Bangalore and when I checked in the luggage, I asked the airline to place a ‘Fragile’ label on my sturdy suitcase!”

* * *

Throwing some light on the lamp

The lamp uses warm white High Brightness (HB) LED which is powered with 12V, as the main source of light. In addition, two lower power (100 mW) 5-mm warm white LEDs are used as additional sources of light to create a perception of flickering. The lamp is powered from a 220V AC mains supply; an adapter converts the AC voltage into 12V DC, which drives the LEDs. An LM117 Low Dropout (LDO) voltage regulator chip from Texas Instruments steps down the 12V DC supply to 3.3V required by the lamp controller circuit. The TV remote IC receiver is also powered with a 3.3V supply from the LM117 regulator. The lamp controller ccircuit also includes suitable drivers for the LEDs. To make debugging easier, the controller card includes a reset switch and an override switch, a power ON indicator LED and a status indicator LED.

Figure 1 - Block Diagram of the Lamp

A block diagram of the lamp controller appears on Figure 1. An MSP430 microcontroller has been used in the lamp controller circuit; in particular, a 14-pin DIP package was selected to simplify manufacturing. When the reset switch is pressed or when power is first applied to the lamp, a status indicator LED begins to blink, indicating that the controller is waiting for a trigger. The MSP430 microcontroller continuously waits for a trigger from the IR receiver or the press of the override switch. When either of these events happens, the microcontroller enters a loop where it shifts out bits from a 32-bit LFSR to the three output pins driving the three LEDs, creating a flickering light pattern. Providing the “override switch” allows the designer of the lamp controller card to independently test the card; it is also a valuable diagnosis tool for later use.

The electronic matchstick is powered by a 4.7F supercapacitor, charged to 2.5V using a pair of external AA batteries prior to use. The supercap drives a DC-DC converter that provides a DC supply voltage of 3.6V to an 8-pin (SOIC package) MSP430 microcontroller as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2 – The Electronic Matchstick

The microcontroller in the matchstick drives two LEDs, a white LED and an IR LED. When the microcontroller is powered, it waits for a trigger signal from a 100mH sense coil. The trigger is provided by ‘rubbing’ the matchstick against conventional matchbox fitted with a couple of powerful neodymium magnets inside. When the matchstick is sharply struck against the matchbox (which side of the matchbox the matchstick is struck, is also important), a short pulse is induced across the sense coil and that triggers the microcontroller to light up the white LED using a random sequence of bits, thus creating an illusion of a real matchstick being lit. Also, the IR LED is fed with a sequence of ‘1’s and ‘0’s modulating a 40 kHz train of pulses. The 40 kHz carrier frequency is required because the IR receiver in the lamp has that requirement. The modulation of a carrier frequency with the required bit sequence offers immunity against unwanted ambient optical noise. The bit sequence transmitted by the IR LED is what triggers the LED lamp when the matchstick is held close to the lamp. The lamp waits for a sequence of five ‘1’s before lighting up. The white LED on the matchstick does not really have a role in lighting the LED lamp; it is only provided for creating an illusion of a burning matchstick!

* * *

The Team

Given that there were only three months to build the whole thing, four students were involved in the project. Rohit Gupta from Delhi Technological University helped in programming the MSP430 microcontrollers used in the lamp and the matchstick. “Piyush Guddu and Prateek Jha, alumni of NSIT, implemented the LED lamp based on a structural design I suggested. Piyush is an artist and Prateek transferred the design to Corel Draw, got the design fabricated, and raised the structure. He also did several designs of the lamp cover using the 3D printer we have in the TI Center of Excellence in Product Design. Rohit Dureja, a final-year undergraduate student of NSIT, helped in mass production. “Rohit Dureja is more experienced, can do better soldering and has some idea about testing,” says Prof. Gadre. “Since the volume was low, only 10 pieces, we managed everything in the lab itself, including the PCBs, soldering and testing.”

No project is without hiccups

To achieve the “flickering” effect, a random sequence of 0s and 1s are sent to a port pin that drives the LED. Rohit Gupta set out to program this on MSP430. Prof. Gadre told him about the Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR), which can be implemented easily on MSP430. The LFSR can generate a pseudorandom sequence of 0s and 1s. If these data bits are shifted at a suitable rate, the flickering effect is easy to create. Being an ambitious student, Rohit decided to try a different approach – use a pulse width modulation (PWM) generator to drive the LED. “This was an overkill,” said Prof. Gadre. “Moreover, there was something in the implementation which was causing the LED intensity to show a pattern in the short term.” In other words, the flickering was not random. Prof. Gadre sat down with Rohit for a debug session, when he realized that PWM has made inroads into the code. He advised Rohit to revert to the planned LFSR scheme, which, of course, worked! Once again, the lesson for the students is to “Keep things simple.” The lesson for mentors is to watch out for feature creeps in an ambitious student’s code!

There were other hiccups. “We noticed some minor errors in the lamp during its field trial,” says Prof. Gadre. “For example, we had not imagined that the flash light of the photographer’s camera could also trigger our lamp! Not sure how many people noticed this! Our plan is to correct this in the next version.”

System-level Design

Prof. Gadre had to think about other “system-level” issues as his students proceeded to carry out the design and implementation of the sub-systems. For example, he thought of adding a feature that can trigger the lamp without the matchstick. “There are two sub-systems – the lamp and the matchstick. Having an independent way to test the lamp will allow the design and debugging of the two sub-systems to proceed concurrently.”

Providing power supply to the lamp without adversely impacting the aesthetics was another concern. The lampstand was made of transparent acrylic material. Having a lot of wires running up the lampstand would be far from desirable. “We used copper tape for attacking this problem,” explained Prof. Gadre. “A vinyl cutter was used to cut the tape in required shapes and sizes. The copper tape was made part of the aesthetic feature!”

Transporting the lamp safely from New Delhi to Bangalore was no mean task. In the book “Soul of a new machine,” Tracy Kidder describes an incident that happened in a computer manufacturing company. The computer was assembled in a room on a higher floor. When the time came to transport the machine out of the office, the workers realized that the computer would not fit into the elevator!

“We were naturally worried about the acrylic sheets breaking. For transporting the fragile acrylic sheets, I had to think of a suitable scheme and I ended up using 6 mm plywood sheets of a size that would fit a large suitcase,” said Prof. Gadre. “I taped the acrylic cut sheets on these plywood sheets and then the entire structure could be transported safely. This has also been a lesson for us. Our next version will overcome these problems, so that the lamp has a higher acceptance in the market.”

Test, test, and test some more!

When the final prototype was ready, it worked just fine. The team then started the mass production, but continued to test the prototype lamp installed on the lampstand. One evening, when testing the lamp without the 3D printed covers, the lab assistant walked in and turned the tube light on. The team stared in disbelief – the lamp had been unintentionally triggered! The humble tube light has significant IR component and could trigger the lamp without the matchstick!

“There were only two days before the deadline. Fortunately, covering the lamp with the 3D printed covers protected the sensor from false triggering,” explained Prof. Gadre. “We heaved a sigh of relief. In hindsight, as we discovered during the conference, even this was not enough! The photographer was using a strong flashlight, which also has a very strong IR component, thereby triggering the lamps without the matchstick!”

The lesson here for students is to test the prototype as much as possible. Having it tested by someone who does not know the working principles of your project will also help!

I asked Prof. Gadre if their team has a solution to the false trigger problem. “The solution is simple – the matchstick and the lamp must trigger on a unique code of IR radiation and not just count 5 pulses of IR radiation, which happens in the prototype. Another lesson we learned at the conference was not to depend on AC power as the source of power for the lamps. Even during the conference, brief power outages happened and that turned the lamp off. In the new design, we are using batteries to power the lamps.”

What next?

I congratulated Prof. Gadre on the first product that officially rolled out from TI Center for Embedded Product Design at NSIT. To be precise, the lamp is the second product. “The Stellaris Guru” educational kit was the first product to be developed; but the Center had then not yet come into existence formally. I asked Prof. Gadre the questions that most people would be tempted to ask – will the design be available to someone who wishes to productize it? How does one approach the Center for this purpose? What support would Prof. Gadre and his team of students be willing to provide?

Prof. Gadre is willing to be a consultant for a company that wishes to bring out the electronic lamp as a product, either in its current form or with customized modifications. “The existing design as well as the new version that we are working on, will be made open source,” says Prof. Gadre. “If there is enough traction, we can think of making it available as a complete product or a DIY kit. I am available on e-mail to take questions about productizing the lamp.”

Pictures!

Here is an attempt to capture the various stages of creation of the lamp!

Schematic Diagram of the Lamp

The bare PCB of the lamp controller

Top view of the lamp controller card

Bottom view of the lamp controller card

The assembled PCB of the matchstick

Assembled Matchsticks

Lamp assembled on the stand. The lamp cover was printed by Prof. Gadre's team on a 3-D printer

Picture of the glowing lamp taken at the stage of testing

Prof. Gadre (in red shirt) explains the working of the lamp to the dignitaries who lit the inaugural lamp – Sanjay Bhan, Brad Ruzicka, Dr. Biswadip (Bobby) Mitra, and Steve Lyle are seen in the picture.

Prof. Gadre receives a memento at TIIEC 2013 from R. Madhu of Texas Instruments

University Technology Day of Texas Instruments in Mexico, Second Edition

2013-04-25T15:38:21Z

The University Technology Day took place on March 21th, 2013 at the National Library of Science and Technology of the university: Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Campus ESIME Zacatenco in Mexico City.

The main purpose of the event was to demonstrate the benefits of using Texas Instruments high performance technology as a teaching tool at the main engineering universities of the country.

Conferences and workshops

The event consisted of conferences and workshops that offered updates on microcontrollers (MCU) technology such as MSP430, Stellaris, C2000, and analog design using TI’s WEBENCH® Design Center tools. Brad Ruzicka, Worldwide University Program Manager gave a speech about the benefits the universities get with the University Program. The agenda contained presentations like:

“University Program and MSP430” The conference was about University Program, and MSP430 Applications. It was an explanation of the benefits of this TI program. It focused on the TI portfolio and Value Line MSP430 MCUs.
“WEBENCH® Workshop” It was a hands on workshop to learn how to use the WEBENCH® on line tool. WEBENCH® is a tool to help analog designers implementing TI sockets in their design. The workshop consisted on designing a buck power source for automotive applications.
“MSP430 LaunchPad Workshop” This workshop was an introduction to the value line. The presenter taught about initialization of LaunchPad, GPIOs and ADC uses. There were many examples like a temperature sensor using the LaunchPad.
“Stellaris LaunchPad Workshop” This workshop focused on the use of GPIOs, watch dog timer, interruptions and UART communication.
“C2000 LaunchPad Workshop”This new LaunchPad Workshop focused on the hardware and the controlSUITE tool for C2000. The presenter taught how to initialize the C2000 LaunchPad and the use of the GPIOs. He showed some lighting DEMOS controlled by this LaunchPad.

ShowRoom

Applications and evaluation modules were showed and explained. The showroom was divided in three settings:

MSP430 BoosterPacks, focused on MSP430 LaunchPad BoosterPacks. There were capacitive touch, audio, OLED Display, RF, and other applications.
MCU & microprocessors (MPU), focused on TI MCUs in general and MPUs like the BeagleBoard and Sitara touchscreen DEMO. There was also a DSP intelligent vision application with a DaVinci EVM.
Analog Tools focused on analog applications, such as dimming LED Lighting, power sources, and amplifiers. There was also shown a new university kit: ASLK Pro University Kit, for helping students to learn about analog design and control applications.

The main purpose of these activities is to show university professors the tools from Texas Instruments and to prepare them in order to implement laboratories at their universities and teach their classes with the best technology. Professors from the most important Mexican engineering universities attended to this event. The University Technology Day let Texas Instruments create new relationships with professors.

Show your Beagle some LOVE!!

2013-04-22T17:39:00Z

My BeagleBone is now running more exciting experiments with LED'S! This 2nd lab gives a new user a chance to experiment with all the different components of the breadboard and the BeagleBone. From discovering the fun of transferring power from one side of the breadboard to using both panels of the BeagleBone, this exercise will show you more of what the BeagleBone is capable of. This friendship heart extends a users experience and knowledge to a close friend who will benefit from the project! So hangout with your best friend and create a friendship half heart!

Please refer to "How to get your Beagle Running" for set up instructions.

Link to "How to get your Beagle Running" : http://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/designproject/archive/2013/04/02/how-to-get-your-beagle-running.aspx

Half Heart - Friendship

Materials:

8 super bright 5mm LED's
8 330 ohm resistors.
15 wires
1 Breadboard

Look carefully at the Cape Expansion header chart on the right. Notice that there are two panels : P8 and P9 . When connecting your wires make sure you have a wire connected to the breadboard (+ SIDE) that is connected to the ground (pin 1, 2,45,46) on P8 or P9) (Look at Figure A).

You can continue to add many LEDs , make sure you have a wire connected to a pin and a resistor (connected to + SIDE) for each LED (Look at Figure B).

NOTE : When using both sides of the breadboard make sure to transfer over power and ground, otherwise your setup won’t work. (wire + to + and – to – )

Here is a sample code to make half of a heart lightup.

Make sure to setup the LEDs like half of a heart ; you can substitute the wires to connect to a pin where you seem convenient. (Make sure to check the expansion header chart and change the pin in your bonescript) .

var bb = require('bonescript');

setup = function () {

//pinMode (bone. (P8orP9)_(pin#), Output)

//this identifies a pin

pinMode(bone.P8_41, OUTPUT); //identify pin 41

pinMode(bone.P8_43, OUTPUT);//identify pin 43

pinMode(bone.P8_39, OUTPUT);//identify pin 39

pinMode(bone.P8_37, OUTPUT); //identify pin 37

pinMode(bone.P8_35, OUTPUT);//identify pin 35

pinMode(bone.P8_33, OUTPUT);//identify pin 33

pinMode(bone.P8_27, OUTPUT);//identify pin 27

pinMode(bone.P8_29, OUTPUT);//identify pin 29

};

loop = function () {

//pinMode (bone. (P8orP9)_(pin#), (High or Low)) // turns pin On or Off

digitalWrite(bone.P8_41, HIGH); //turns pin 41 on

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_41, LOW); //turns pin 41 off

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_43, HIGH);//turns pin 43 on

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_43, LOW);//turns pin 43 off

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_39, HIGH);//turns pin 39 on

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_39, LOW);//turns pin 39 off

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_37, HIGH);//turns pin 37 on

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_37, LOW);//turns pin 37 off

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_35, HIGH);//turns pin 35 on

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_35, LOW);//turns pin 35 off

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_33, HIGH);//turns pin 33 on

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_33, LOW);//turns pin 33 off

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_27, HIGH);//turns pin 27 on

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_27, LOW);//turns pin 27 off

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_29, HIGH);//turns pin 29 on

delay(00);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_29, LOW);//turns pin 29 off

delay(00);

};

bb.run();

Press “save” and then “run”.

Example Outcome!

Did you have a great learning experience with your best friend? Don't forget to comment below and tell us your experience! (upload a picture of your own half heart if you can!)

Puttin on the Ritz! - BeagleBone is getting ready to step out at Design West

2013-04-22T01:54:23Z

It's getting exciting at Beagleboard.org this week preparing for the launch of the next generation. (I just love the ritzy new graphics!)
You can sign up to receive notice when order entry will be open. If you are going to be in San Jose this week, stop by the TI DESIGN West Booth #1607
and see demos or attend one of the sessions with founders Jason Kridner and Gerald Coley.

Reply to this post and tell us what you want to create...

Stay tuned at the University Program blog for updated information this week about BeagleBone, project opportunities, teaching materials and more.

~ Look forward to hearing about your project ideas! ~ Cathy Wicks, TI University Program www.ti.com/university

Next Gen BeagleBone is coming - sign up for more info!

2013-04-15T21:37:00Z

Hello Educators and Students, the next generation BeagleBone is coming soon. Are you signed up to receive more info?

Check out this teaser video and sign up to receive info as soon as the product launches www.beagleboard.org/unzipped

(Please visit the site to view this video)

With lower price, Higher performance, On-board HDMI to connect directly to TVs and monitors, More and faster memory now with DDR3 and On-board flash storage frees up the microSD card slot

It promises to be even more compelling for teaching and projects!

Cathy Wicks
TI University Program and beaglefan

www.ti.com/university

The Innovation Premier League - 2013!

2013-04-13T12:15:00Z

The Innovation Premier League – 2013!

C.P. Ravikumar, Texas Instruments

Art by Ananya Ravikumar

"Welcome to IPL 2013!" I announced, as the host of the inaugural ceremony of the first TI India Educators’ Conference (TIIEC 2013). The venue was the NIMHANS Convention Center, Bangalore. The date was April 4 - the first day of the two-day conference. More than 700 participants were seated in the Silicon Hall - about 300 educators, 300 students, and 100 professionals from electronics industry.

Several people exchanged puzzled expressions. IPL 2013, the popular cricket tournament, was slated to begin the same day.

"Welcome to TI India Educators' Conference!" I quickly corrected myself. "That was just a little humor to get you into a good mood!"

But it is fair to call TIIEC 2013 by the name IPL 2013 - or "Innovation Premier League 2013." The conference featured the presentation of about 100 innovative technical papers, about 60 innovative student projects that mesmerized the visitors, and about 40 poster papers describing innovative applications.

If you missed attending TIIEC 2013, this report will try and recreate it for you. And if you prefer a picture to a thousand words, we have also created a Picture Book for you! Read on.

Inaugural Ceremony

It is Indian custom to light a lamp before beginning a ceremony. We kept this tradition and broke it at the same time.

The conference made a strong statement about innovation in college campuses by using an electronic lamp, designed by the TI Center of Embedded Product Design, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, at the inaugural ceremony. I will write about the lamp project another time. The lamp was lit by Dr. Bobby Mitra, President and Managing Director of TI India, Steve Lyle, Director of Diversity & Work Force Development, TI, Sanjay Bhan, Director of Human Resources, TI India, Brad Ruzicka, Director of University Marketing, TI, R. Madhu, Director of University Marketing, TI India, and Dr. K.R.K. Rao. A number of TI ICs are used in the lamp, including MSP430 and a number of analog ICs.

Dr. Bobby Mitra addressed the educators and stressed the importance of building things. He urged the students to “soil their hands” and build electronic sub-systems using integrated circuits. Steve Lyle delivered a talk entitled “We share your passion for education” and provided an overview of TI’s University program activities both globally and in India. Steve Lyle thanked IEEE Bangalore Section and IEEE Circuits and Systems Bangalore Chapter for the technical co-sponsorship of the event.

Three short “techno-skits” were enacted. In “The Infinite Coffee Cup,” enacted by the students of IISc, Bangalore, they demonstrated an implementation of an “Internet of Things” project based on TI integrated circuits. In another play called “Sherlock Holmes in the Modern Times,” the students demonstrated a project to guess the emotional state of an individual; this project also makes use of several TI integrated circuits. “Let there be light,” enacted by TI employees, brought out the applications of DLP technology.

Technical Papers

The conference included 16 technical sessions which were distributed over two days into four concurrent tracks. A total of 91 papers were presented at the conference. These papers were classified according to the central TI technology used. Experts from TI and from outside TI were invited as Session Chairs. Please see more details of the technical sessions at www.tiiec.in. A CD-ROM compendium of the technical papers presented at the conference was distributed at the conference. The technical sessions were well attended, with good Q&A following the presentations. “It was a great experience participating in TIIEC 2013 and the arrangements were excellent,” said Prof. Ammasai Gounden of National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapally, who was a session chair. “The Technical sessions were very interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed, both as mentor and session chair, the complete proceedings”.

Selected technical papers from the conference will be archived on IEEE Xplorer.

Exhibits Program

Steve Lyle inaugurated the Exhibits program. More than 60 projects were demonstrated at the Exhibits floor. Most of these exhibits were put up by students who had won prizes in the first phase of “TI India Analog Design Contest 2013.” The exhibits were classified based on application areas, such as Robotics, Industrial Electronics, Automotive, etc. “The 2 hours I got to spend at the student booths turned out to be totally inadequate - there was so much to see and learn!” said Ashok Hattangady, who was a panelist in the Panel Discussion held at TIIEC 2013.

Poster Sessions

Brad Ruzicka inaugurated the Poster Sessions – more than 40 poster papers were showcased. The poster papers were also classified based on the application areas. The poster sessions were held during the breaks, when the attendees of the conference visited the booths and interacted one-on-one with the authors. Often, more than one author of the paper was available at the posters to answer the queries. The authors of poster papers received certificates.

Post-conference Tutorials

Six post-conference tutorials were held in six parallel tracks during Apr 6-7, 2013. Each of these tutorials was of two-days duration and included lectures and hands-on sessions. The following tutorials were held – “Digital Signal Processing Using OMAP- L318, “Internet of Things,” Low Power Embedded Systems Using MSP430 Microcontroller, Embedded Android on Beagleboard Introduction to Motor Control,” and “Designing Analog Systems.” The tutorials received good response from educators and students.

Panel Discussion

A panel consisting of four experts discussed the topic - "Leveraging the opportunity of ESDM - The role of industry-academia interaction". The moderator was C.P. Ravikumar of Texas Instruments. The panelists were Prof NJ Rao (former Chairman of CEDT, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore), Mr Ashok Hattangady (Innovator), Mr Sham Banerji (Founder, i2iTelesolutions), and Dr. Sarat Babu (Executive Director, CDAC, Bangalore). Prof. N.J. Rao spoke about the ESDM (“Electronic System Design and Manufacturing”) initiative from the Government of India, which aims at providing support to the growing electronics industry in India. “The electronics market in India has the potential to grow to $400B. Unfortunately, in the engineering curriculum, the subject of electronics has not received its due recognition,” Prof. Rao said. “The time is right for emphasizing the topic of electronics systems engineering. I urge the engineering educators to think of starting a new academic program on electronic systems engineering.”

Mr Ashok Hattangady, a successful innovator, spoke about the process of innovation and how we must understand, create, and preserve the factors that influence innovation. Sham Banerji, who initiated a “start-up” company a few years ago, shared his experiences as an entrepreneur. Dr. Sarat Babu spoke about the initiatives from Government of India in the space of ESDM and the opportunities for faculty training at CDAC. At the end of the panel, the audience raised a number of questions, leading to a healthy discussion.

Award Ceremony!

In a colorful ceremony, Mr. Hitesh Mehta, President of IEEE Bangalore Section, presented certificates to the authors of the papers presented at TIIEC 2013. Brad Ruzicka of Texas Instruments gave away the awards to winners of consolation prizes in the preliminary round of TI India Analog Design Contest 2012-2013. Apart from cash prize, certificates were awarded to the team members. A plaque was presented to the faculty mentor of every winning team. Steve Lyle presented the awards to the winners of the first phase of TI India Analog Design Contest (2012-2013).

This year,a new award was initiated to encourage participation from girl students. The "TI India WIN Aspiring Tech-Talent Award" was given to a team consisting of only girl students. There were six teams that qualified, and among them, the team from Madras Institute of Technology was selected by the panel of judges for the award. The students received iPods and certificates.

Mr K.S. Narahari, Director (Internal Communications) at TI India, gave away the awards for the winners of the "Best Video Demonstrations" There were three winners in category from the preliminary round (Sardar Patel College of Engineering, PSG College of Technology, and College of Engineering, Pune) and one winner (Chitkara Institute of Engineering & Technology, Punjab) from the final round.

Dr. Biswadip (Bobby) Mitra, Managing Director and President of Texas Instruments India gave away the awards for the final round of “TI India Analog Design Contest: 2012-2013.” There were two consolation prize winners: a team from NIT Surathkal and a team from NIT Tiruchirapally. Two teams shared the Second Runner-Up Award ($2000): a team from NSIT, Delhi (“Road Accident Prevention Unit”) and a team from VNIT, Nagpur (“Subsitute Eyes for the blind”). The First Runner-Up award ($5000) was shared by a team from BNMIT, Bangalore (“The Safest Key – Smart Key”) and a team from BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore (“Harmonic Pollution Reduction”). The top award (Tom Engibous award, $10,000) was shared by a team from NIT Surathkal (“Fast Response Search and Rescue Robot, Assisted Low Power WSN Net for Navigation and Detection”) and a team from NIT Tiruchirapally (“Solar Power based Intelligent Battery Charging System Compatible with existing Home Inverters”).

Second Runner-Up Award

(a) “Road Accident Prevention Unit (R.A.P.U)” by Dibakar Barua, Jitesh Gupta, Pranshu Jain of Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, mentored by Prof. Dhananjay Gadre

(b) “Substitute eyes for blind with Navigator using Android” by Rohan Thakker, Harsharanga Patil, Sachin Bharambe of VNIT, Nagpur, mentored by Dr. K. M. Bhurchandi

First Runner-Up Award

(a) “The Safest Key-Smart Key” by Shashanka D, Tejas D C, Raghav A, Sumukha Chandr of BNMIT, Bangalore, mentored by Mr. Subodh Kumar Panda

(b) “Harmonic Pollution Reduction” by Harshitha N , Ramya M.S , Bhaskar S. , Yadhunandana R.K. of BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore, mentored by Dr. D Seshachalam, D. R. Ambika, and Dr. Meena P.

Tom Engibous Award

(a) “Fast Response Search and Rescue Robot, Assisted Low Power WSN Net for Navigation and Detection” by Preejit Prakash, Siddahrtha Kumar, and Varun Reddy of NIT Surathkal, mentored by Dr. Aparna P

(b) “Solar Power based Intelligent Battery Charging System Compatible with existing Home Inverters” by B.Kowshick, Ramesh.K.Govindarajan, P.Dinesh, Pankaj Raghav.P of NIT Trichy, mentored by Dr.G.Saravana Ilango

Feedback!

There was an outpour of enthusiastic feedback from the participants at the conference. A lot of this was also expressed by them on the social media. “Great experience & exposure to all research scholars and faculty” wrote Prof. Usha Joshi of BMS College of Engineering, on Facebook. A “Feedback Wall” was erected at the conference for the participants to scribble their immediate feedback.

Many educators who attended the event wrote back to the organizers. “TIIEC'13 was a wonderful event and a great platform for the students to showcase their innovative minds,” wrote Prof. Abhishek Appaji of B.M.S. College of Engineering.

“The conference was excellent and it did gave us an idea on thought and capabilities of youngsters from technology,” was the reaction from Prof. Pradeep Chhawcharia of Techno India NJR Institute of Technology, Udaipur. “Your efforts and TI are really to be appreciated for providing such a great platform to students and educators.

The organizers also received excellent feedback from many of the dignitaries who were present at the conference. “The TIIEC program provided an excellent opportunity to me to meet a large segment of students and faculty members,” wrote Prof. N.J. Rao, who was a panelist in the Panel Discussion held at TIIEC 2013. “It further reinforced my urge to create a BE program in Electronic Systems Engineering. Most of the students who participated had ideas and enthusiasm.”

“Let me congratulate you and your team for the great arrangements at the very apt and timely conference,” wrote Ashok Hattangady, who was a panellist. “When I went around the booths, I saw how the students were truly excited and motivated! Most students said the experience had really drilled in the basics like proper soldering, grounding, initialization, etc, knowledge that is essential but which no textbook can teach. In our very academic and hands-off educational system, such project based learning experiences really make a huge difference.”

“The exposure given to us and our students is worth treasuring for many more years to come,” wrote Prof. Padma Vasavi of Sri Vishnu College of Engineering for Women. “We were able to interact with many eminent persons at the conference. After seeing the project expo, we understood the effort involved in shortlisting the projects!”

A Picture Book!

A “Picture Book” has been created to tell the story of TI India Educators’ Conference – 2013! The book tells the story of a little bird, whose curiosity drew the bird to attend the conference! The first part of the book builds the background to the story. The second part of the book talks about the inaugural ceremony. The third part of the book covers the “Exhibits Program.” The fourth part covers the technical paper presentations. The panel discussion held at TIIEC 2013 is captured in the fifth part. In the sixth part, an attempt is made to capture the excitement of the award ceremony. All the pictures taken at the conference are also available from here.

Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge: India Analog Design Contest 2014

TIIEC 2013 is over, but preparations are already ongoing for the next year's contest - the "Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge: India Analog Design Contest 2014" will be bigger in scale and our effort will be to make it even better. I will write about the Innovation Challenge another time. At this stage, I only want to share my personal disgruntlement with you - I suggested the name "IPL 2014" for this contest, but can you believe it that they did not approve it? I am still moping about it. Oh, well :-)

Will be delighted to hear from you, if you have any thoughts on TIIEC or TIIC!

TI's spotlight session at ECEDHA “TI, an education partner like no other”

2013-04-05T20:31:50Z

Larissa Swanland, TI’s Worldwide University Marketing Microcontroller Manager presented a spotlight session in the 2013 ECEDHA Annual Conference and ECExpo last week. She presented “TI, an education partner like no other” to the largest gathering of ECE (Electrical and Computer Engineering) department heads throughout North America. Sad you missed it? Let me summarize!

Larissa began with an overview of Texas Instruments – a global semiconductor design and manufacturing company, operating in more than 35 countries, serving more than 100,000 customers worldwide, innovating for more than 80 years, with more than 100,000 analog ICs, embedded processors and software and tools, and a total revenue of $12.8 billion. Then began a deep dive into TI’s University Program- we offer educators discounted tools, free products, and lab donations so students can learn TI technology in teaching labs that are smarter and more fun. From teaching materials to design projects, our advanced Analog and Embedded Processing technologies fuel the passions of students and educators in more than 4,000 universities worldwide.

Larissa then went in depth around TI’s embedded processing tools, products and resources. TI microcontrollers offer the broadest range of options. We offer the spectrum of low power, low cost, entry level processors to the higher power, highly specialized application specific processor. These include TI’s MSP430 ultra low-power, 16-bit microcontrollers, C2000 real time control microcontrollers with DSP function, Stellaris general purpose ARM® Cortex-M4F 32-bit microcontrollers, and Hercules ARM Cortex-R4 32-bit microcontrollers. Larissa further highlighted TI’s LaunchPad: a low-cost, fully featured development ecosystem that is designed to have the lowest barrier of entry to TI’s microcontroller portfolio. Available on the MSP430, the C2000 and Stellaris, the LaunchPad is a cohesive Ecosystem consisting of hardware, software, community of support and additional add-on boards. At a sub-$20 price tag, it’s no wonder it’s proliferated over 300 university curriculums and sold over 400,000.

Design your own hardware to expand your LaunchPad/make your own BoosterPack and share your projects and your experiences with the rest of the LaunchPad community. Build your own BoosterPack for the LaunchPad ecosystem and turn your BoosterPack into a product! BoosterPack modules plug in to the header pins on the LaunchPad and allow to you to explore different applications that your favorite TI MCU can enable. There is a broad range of application-specific BoosterPacks available from both Texas Instruments and third parties, including capacitive touch, wireless sensing, LED lighting control and much, much more. BoosterPacks are available in 20- and 40-pin variants and multiple BoosterPacks can plug into a single LaunchPad to greatly enhance the functionality of your design.

TI University Program also offers FREE software development environment with the hardware. We encourage as many options to be available without any preference, but also provide a free software to academic instructors and students. Code Composer Studio™ (CCStudio or also known as "CCS") is an integrated development environment (IDE) for TI's embedded processor families. CCStudio comprises a suite of tools used to develop and debug embedded applications. By using CCStudio, instructors and professors can have 'One Install for All' making maintenance of shared lab equipment easy and support of all TI microcontrollers, microprocessors or DSP's possible on student owned copies.

Our broad embedded processing portfolio and accompanying software allow students to gain familiarity with TI at the earliest point of their Engineering Curriculum, but it also scales to more advanced Integrated Development Environments and complimentary tool chains during more advanced curriculum. TI covers everything from Intro to Engineering all the way to Senior Design.

To supplement TI’s tools, hardware, and software offering – TI bundles them all with educator developed teaching materials. These teaching materials are designed to help make the development of course materials seamless. TI’s Teaching ROMs are written by educators for educators and include introductory overviews to TI’s MCU or DSP, a walkthrough of the various architectures, and updated labs for today's most popular platforms. They are available to download or you can request a copy on CD free of charge. TI also offers a large selection of TI recommended engineering textbooks supporting analog, MCU or DSP curriculums. Educators can now collaborate across curriculums, schools, and countries within TI’s teaching repository. Share your course material or explore your fellow educators posted materials. Leverage this online resource to get informed and stay ahead.

In summary, TI encourages professors to enrich their students education with more hands-on project based learning. The TI University Program makes it easy to teach students on the latest industry products from TI.

Hardware: Fully Featured With everything you need ready to go at prices that are manageable
Software Development Environment: Development Environment that matches the skill set of the user either by TI or software partner
Teaching Materials: Creation of a community and shared bodies of knowledge
Services value added: Enabling a network of providers to go beyond T,I IEEE, Third Party Partners

How to get your Beagle Running.

2013-04-02T19:10:00Z

The mission of this first blog is to share with new users my out-of box experience of beaglebone while lighting an LED in less than just 10 mins! We want to share this BIG moment with you too so comment below and tell us your experience and how fast you got your LED lit!

Materials:

1 super bright 5mm LED's
1 330 ohm resistors.
2 wires
1 Breadboard

These materials should be available at your local electronics store, if not they are available on digikey.com

NOTE: Your BeagleBone is accessible through either Chrome or Firefox (Internet Explorer will NOT work).

Part 1:

Step #1: Plug in BeagleBone via microUSB

You'll see the PWR LED lit steadily. Within 10 seconds, you should see the USR0 LED blinking in a heartbeat pattern. During accesses to the SD card, you should see the USR1 LED turning on.

Step #2: Install Drivers

Install the Drivers needed for your Operating System

Operating System	USB Drivers	Comments
Windows (32-bit)	BONE_DRV.exe	Note #1: Windows Driver Certification warning may pop up two or three times. Click "Ignore" or "Install" Note #2: To check if you're running 32 or 64-bit Windows see this:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827218. Note #3: On systems without the latest service release, you may get an error (0xc000007b). In that case, please install the following and retry:http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=13523. Note #4: You may need to reboot Windows.
Windows (64-bit)	BONE_D64.exe
Mac OS X	FTDI_Ser.dmg	Note: Driver installation is not required for rev A5 boards or newer. Check sticker on Ethernet port for revision.
Linux	mkudevrule.sh	Note: Driver installation is not required for rev A5 boards or newer. Check sticker on Ethernet port for revision.

Step #3: Eject BEAGLE_BONE (If like me you have an older version of the SD Card)

The EJECT operation tells your BeagleBone to switch from "storage mode" to "network mode", enabling you to access the networking features over your USB cable. On each power-up, BeagleBone defaults to "storage mode".

(Note: Safely removing the hardware is NOT the same as eject. Make sure you repeat this step every time you plug in your beaglebone)

Step #4: Explore Cloud9 IDE

Cloud9 IDE can be used to develop software on your BeagleBone without the need to download any development software. Cloud9 IDE runs directly on your BeagleBone and is accessible through either Chrome or Firefox (Internet Explorer will NOT work).

Click here to launch: http://192.168.7.2:3000/

Note : Every time you connect the BeagleBone you must Eject it to access Cloud9

Step A: Close any open file tabs.

Step B: Click the "+" in the top-right to create a new file.
Step C: Save as, and name it “myblink.js”

You can RUN any code by selecting the arrow to the right of "run" (or "debug") in the toolbar to pull down the list of files to run and select your new file.

You can STOP any code by clicking "stop" in the toolbar.

PART 2 :

How to Light 1 LED

Materials: 1 Led, 1 resistor, 3 wires

Note: The Expansion header state chart on the bottom right side, lists the functions of all the pins. The pins labeled as “gpio” are the ones you will use to light an LED.

Connect a wire on pin P8_1 (ground) to the (-) Side (Row 1)
Connect another wire on the pin of your choice (ex : P8_3) to the breadboard (column H, Row 7)
Connect the resistor from the breadboard to the (-) Side. (Column H, Row 8)
Put the LED in Vertically ( Long leg next to the wire (Column G, Row 7) and short leg next to the resistor (Column G, Row 8)).

Copy and paste this example code :

var bb = require('bonescript');

setup = function() {

pinMode(bone.P8_3, OUTPUT); // identify pin

};

loop = function() {

digitalWrite(bone.P8_3, HIGH); //Pin On

delay(1000);

digitalWrite(bone.P8_3, LOW); //Pin off

delay(1000);

};

bb.run();

Press “Save” and then “run”

Try Playing with the delay time and different pins! This was my first embedded processing code project experience and I want to hear about yours!

Don't forget to comment below and tell us your experience!

Read TI's advice to ECE department heads during the ECEDHA Industry Roundtable

2013-03-24T11:26:21Z

Brad Ruzicka, TI’s Worldwide University Marketing Manager participated in the 2013 ECEDHA Annual Conference and ECExpo Executive Industry Roundtable yesterday, March 23, 2013. ECEDHA is the largest gathering of ECE (Electrical and Computer Engineering) department heads throughout North America. Within this academic forum, Brad sat with his peers and shared TI’s perspective on the evolution of ECE disciplines to the top engineering departments in North America.

Brad’s advice to university leaders on how they can best prepare their engineering students to enter industry after graduation was that they look to incorporate more hands-on, project-based learning into their curriculum. This project-based experience is fundamental to engineering students needing the real-world experience necessary to transfer their college education beyond academic theory to industry ready skills. To help universities enable this type of learning, TI sponsors the TI Analog Design Contest. Named in honor of Thomas Engibous, the retired Chairman of Texas Instruments, the Engibous Prize is eligible to any student teams in the U.S. and Canada who use 3 or more TI analog ICs in their senior design project or 2 analog ICs and a TI processor. The prizes for first-, second-, and third-place are $10,000, $7,500 and $5,000. Student teams participating will receive a $200 coupon code good for free evaluation modules! Students can leverage the contest as a platform to demonstrate their understanding of theory put into practice.

Brad also discussed the shift in industry interest from the typical “lone-wolf” engineer who works by themselves all day, every day to a need for a better-rounded collaborative engineer. Brad said that “being an intern at TI is like dating – we are looking for more than just the singular engineer. We want a well rounded engineer who not only demonstrates superior technical skills, but who are strong social and corporate citizens.” Motivated students are the key to fueling the industry’s growth into the future. TI looks for these motivated students through their participation in industry contests like the TI Analog Design Contest or through their involvement with student groups, and their active engagement with peers and educators.

The TI University Program website offers students a chance to demonstrate their proactive spirit through an interactive website that houses a project repository. Students can upload project reports, videos, photos, etc. to the project repository and share their TI-based projects with future classes of engineering students. TI even offers vanity URL’s that link to the student’s projects for us on resumes or professional profiles – this custom and unique differentiator can make all the difference!

The TI University Program offers educators discounted tools, free products, and lab donations so students can learn TI technology in teaching labs that are smarter and more fun. From teaching materials to design projects, our advanced Analog and Embedded Processing technologies fuel the passions of students and educators in more than 4,000 universities worldwide. There’s still time to stop by TI’s booth (#206) at ECEDHA for some serious discussions, idea exchange, best practice solutions, product demonstrations, and enjoyable networking.

The case of the Haptic Effects

2013-03-21T01:04:00Z

The Adventures of COFIE Club

The case of the Haptic Effects

C.P. Ravikumar, Texas Instruments

Art by Ananya Ravikumar

“It was such a touching experience,” said Simran. The members of the COFIE club had decided to visit an orphanage meant for women with disabilities. The orphanage provided not only shelter for its inmates, but also offered them vocational training that could earn them a living someday. Little artefacts made by the women were on display for passers-by who may want to purchase them. Several inmates were also enrolled in part-time educational programs. Lakshmi aspires to get a degree from a women’s polytechnic college. But the subject on Computer Architecture is proving to be her bête noire.

Sitting on her wheelchair, Lakshmi listens intently to Rahul’s explanation of instruction sets and assembly language programming. He tries his best to teach her bubble sorting. The other members of COFIE club are busy teaching mathematics, physics, and history to some of the young girls who are appearing in the tenth grade exam. An elderly couple is visiting the inmates with a large box of sweets. The members of the COFIE club are also rewarded. Timmy is especially happy about this part of the visit. He also does not mind all the affection the inmates shower on him.

“Woof! Woof!” he expresses his sense of satisfaction.

“It was such a touching experience,” said Simran, when they came out of the gate of the orphanage. “We take so many things for granted, like being able to pick up a pencil that you accidentally drop. Or being able to go and get a glass of water when you feel thirsty.”

The others were silent. Indeed, it was a touching experience for all of them, especially when the inmates thanked them with great sincerity.

“A touching experience,” Milind repeated. “I was reading an article about Haptics just yesterday. In fact, haptics provides the users of electronic gadgets a touching experience in a literal sense of the word.”

“Would you care to elaborate?” said Sahil, dramatically.

Haptics

“Take the cell phone, for example,” continued Milind. “In the vibration mode, it can alert a user about an incoming call or a message by taking recourse to the sense of touch. I was just thinking how useful haptics can be in the orphanage. Did you notice that they had one attendant for all of them to take care of their needs? What if this attendant could carry a little device – something that she could carry in her pocket or even wear as a ring or a bracelet – that would alert her when an inmate needed help?”

“Such a thing can be useful for nurses on duty at a hospital as well,” agreed Sahil. “A cell phone can be a distraction, but an application-specific device such as this one can improve the quality of service. It would also be less expensive.”

“I remember reading about a project from IIT Madras about an assistive system for the blind!” said Simran. “This project won a prize in TI India Analog Design Contest. Their system warned the blind user about a sudden change in altitude in their walking path. What if the user is approaching a gaping hole or a flight of stairs? There was also a project from Sri Vishnu College of Engineering to assist the blind user about obstacles in the indoor environment. Imagine if the blind person’s cane has a Haptics actuator. It can catch the attention of the user more effectively.”

“Who needs the Wikipedia when you are around?” said Rahul. “You are right. I can think of another application. How about a wakeup alarm for students? The haptics device can be worn as a wristband. I know I could use one!”

“According to an article that I read, there are three types of haptics actuators,” continued Milind. “What we are familiar with, the vibration of the cell phone, is the first one to become popular. It is known as eccentric rotating mass, or ERM technology.”

“You just described yourself,” teased Rahul. “You are eccentric and a rotund mass.”

“Ha Ha,” scoffed Milind. “The linear resonant accelerator, or the LRA, is a more power-efficient device. It takes half the power to produce twice the force. As its name indicates, an LRA operates on the principle of resonance. If the frequency of the input waveform matches that of the rotatable mass, a resonance phenomenon occurs and the mass will vibrate. ”

“I remember resonance!” said Simran. “The reactance of the inductor becomes equal in magnitude to the reactance of the capacitor in a series RLC circuit at the frequency of resonance! And that frequency is one over two pi root LC.”

“You pass!” said Sahil. “Now, let us continue with the lecture.”

Piezo Actuators

“Well, there is a new kind of actuator called piezo actuator,” continued Milind. “A piezo actuator vibrates when you apply a voltage. Piezo actuators are used in high-definition haptics. There are lots of haptic effects available today for gadgets such as cell phones. To create a haptic effect, you need an actuator and a driver to provide the input voltage waveform for the actuator. Haptics technology adds a new dimension to infotainment. There are software development kits and Haptics libraries available for application developers. Haptics technology is also being used in applications such as simulation of surgery. One can also think of new applications, like we were discussing earlier.”

“Imagine a cooking program on TV where you can feel the texture of the cake or the crunchiness of the potato chips,” drooled Sahil.

“Cake and chips! I am hungry now!” said Milind.

“Woof! Woof!” agreed Timmy. At last, the humans had spoken two words that he really liked to hear.

Before I conclude

I encourage you to follow the links that I have provided and read the online literature which I have cited. And for those of you who are keen to pursue a project using Haptics technology, TI provides Haptics drivers for all the three types of actuators – ERM, LRA, and Piezo. Evaluation modules are also available to demonstrate the capabilities of these drivers. If you are an educator who teaches mobile computing, biomedical instruments, or human-machine interfaces, these products will trigger your imagination. I believe excellent student projects can be carried out using these tools. Students who wish to take part in the Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge – India Analog Design Contest 2014 – I hope I have “touched” your imagination!

As usual, I will end the blog with a quiz. Read the online literature before answering these questions!

Quiz!

1. The following table shows the acceleration a of vibration of an LRA when the frequency f of the input voltage is varied, keeping the amplitude of the voltage constant.

f	130 Hz	140 Hz	150 Hz	160Hz	170 Hz	180 Hz	190 Hz
a	0	0.707g	1g	1.414g	1g	0.707g	0

The bandwidth of the LRA is given by

a) 160 Hz

b) 20 Hz

c) 40 Hz

d) 60 Hz

2. The DRV8601 driver is used to drive the above LRA. This driver is known to support the auto-resonance feature. The benefit of auto-resonance is

a) The driver automatically adjusts the resonance frequency of the LRA through tuning, if the resonance frequency were to change due to aging or environmental factors

b) The driver automatically adjusts the frequency of the AC voltage input to the LRA if the resonance frequency were to change due to aging or environmental factors

c) The driver automatically adjusts the amplitude of the AC voltage input to the LRA if the resonance frequency were to change due to aging or environmental factors

d) All of the above

3. Which of the following is NOT included in the evaluation kit DRV2605EVM-CT from Texas Instruments?

a) ERM and LRA actuators

b) MSP430 Launchpad

c) Capacitive touch buttons

d) On-board MSP430 Microcontroller

4. Haptic effects are used in smart phones for

a) Improve typing speed and reducing entry errors

b) Entertainment e.g. haptic emoticons in messages

c) Add another dimension to games

d) All of the above

5. “Crunch” is an example of a haptic effect. To create this effect,

a) From the audio signal for “crunch,” a waveform is generated by a driver such as DRV2605 so that it can be applied to the actuator for the simulation of the crunch effect

b) A waveform for the haptic effect “crunch” can be stored in the ROM of the driver such as DRV2605, and played out for creating the haptic effect

c) A microcontroller generates the necessary PWM waveform to be applied to a driver such as DRV2605, which in turn generates the inputs to be applied to the actuators

d) Either (a), (b), or (c)

The curious case of LED lighting

2013-03-10T09:08:00Z

Adventures of the COFIE Club

Episode 2 – The curious case of LED lighting

C.P. Ravikumar, Texas Instruments

Art by Ananya Ravikumar

“Home-made Samosa and chai! Long live mothers!” declared Sahil, as he walked in with a large tray loaded with goodies. Timmy expressed his happiness by wagging his tail and running around the room. The others felt the same way as Timmy did, but expressed themselves slightly differently. Simran made a “Like” gesture with both her thumbs.

Rahul also gave a thumbs-up, but decided to also throw in a comment. “I would have preferred coffee! After all, we are the COFIE club!”

And as they sat enjoying the treat, they heard someone play the guitar in the adjacent room.

“That is my brother Samir, practicing for his school’s annual day celebration,” said Sahil, in answer to the quizzical look on Milind’s face.

“Wow, that brings back memories,” said Milind, feeling nostalgic.

“Sure does!” agreed Simran. “Remember the play we had staged about the life of Buddha?”

“You may be surprised, but they are staging the same play again!”

“Really? I bet good old D’souza ma’m is directing it too! What else are they doing?”

“Why don’t you ask Samir himself?” offered Sahil and left the room to invite his younger brother to their meeting. Samir walked in with his guitar and smiled at the To-Be-Famous-Five. Timmy ran to Samir and wagged his tail excitedly. Samir gave them all the juicy details they wanted to hear. There was going to be a candle light dance from Class 8, the play Life of Buddha from Class 9, and a symphony performance from Class 10.

“I am sure you are all excited!” asked Simran, suddenly feeling a couple of years younger.

“Well, we were, until we found out that there is going to be a music performance by The Lazy Grasshopper on the same day!” said Samir. This band was the latest craze among school kids and was threatening to steal audience away from the annual day celebration!

COFIE Club to the Rescue!

“Surely, we should be able to do something to help our school!” said an agitated Milind. “Come on, COFIE club, put on your thinking hats!”

They never forgot to carry their thinking hats to their meetings. Even Timmy had one. They put on their hats and one could suddenly hear the cranking sound coming from inside their heads.

“I think I have an idea!” shouted Rahul. “Why don’t we do some fantastic lighting for the stage? Special effects that would give the Oscar awards ceremony a run for their money!”

“You mean with light emitting diodes?” said Simran. Her Internet search had already revealed a large number of uses for LED lighting on the stage. "But stage lighting is high on cost and power!"

“Yes, I mean LED lighting. But I am talking about battery powered LED lighting. It is low-cost and low-power. If solar energy is used for charging the batteries, it places no stress on the environment! Let us see, the candle dance can become a great hit if we make special candles that use LED!”

“The dancers can turn the lights on and off!” Sahil said. “We can add the flickering effect to the candles! There can be red, green and blue lights and mixing of colors!”

“And look at the opportunities we have in the play!” said Rahul. “The scene where Buddha gets enlightened under the Bodhi tree … we can have an aura emanating from the tree! The lighting can go from dark to dim to bright! The lights on different branches can be made to glow in different patterns!”

“One who plays the Buddha can carry the switch in his hands!” Milind showed off his creativity. “It can use capacitive touch-sense! A single-touch switch, or even a slider!”

“Or even a mobile phone that he can carry, silly! Legend has it that it was an SMS that brought enlightenment to the Buddha …” joked Samir.

“It would be a challenge to synchronize lighting with the music in the symphony!” said Simran. “Imagine if we could sense the sound level and control the intensity of lights! Imagine if we could detect the instrument being played and light up different colored LED!”

“Woof! Woof!” agreed Timmy, responding to the charged atmosphere the brainstorming had created. “Woof! Woof!”

Do It Yourself!

You can join the COFIE club in this “Do It Yourself” project. When we ran a “Do It Yourself” Diya (light) contest a few months ago, the response was fantastic, prompting me to blog about it. There may be fun events in your own college where you may be able to show off your LED lighting skills. You may wish to view some of these websites that are available to help you in such projects:

Get Started with Launchad Evaluation Platform
8x8 LED Matrix Booster Pack
Energia (Prototyping platform for MSP430 launchpad)
Spoke Ink – Persistence of Vision for your bike
LED Lighting Reference Design and Cook Book

The Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge (design contests from TI) can be one of the avenues for you to unleash our creativity!

Quiz!

I know there are many quiz aficionados among our readers! Here is a quiz for you. You will find the answers in the online literature. But more importantly, the quiz aims at getting you to read. Your comments are welcome! If you actually end up doing a project, tell us all about it!

Q1. Among the devices in the MSP430 family of microcontrollers, what benefits does MSP430F51x2 for battery-powered lighting LED applications?

(a) Low Power consumption

(b) On-chip analog comparator

(d) All of the above

Q2. Which of the following components on the MSP430 does not play a role in implementing dimming control?

(a) I2C controller

(b) Analog-to-digital converter

(d) Comparator

Q3. The intensity of a string of white LEDs must be controlled. This is done by

(a) Varying a series resistance to control the forward current in the LEDs, thereby controlling the intensity of the LEDs

(b) Using a DC/DC converter (controller) to adjust the voltage input for the LED string

(d) Both (b) and (c) above

Q4. Three strings of LEDs are used in a lighting application. One string consists of red LEDs, the second one consists of green LEDs, and the third consists of blue LEDs. The intention is to implement color mixing by varying the intensity of light of the LEDs. Which of the following will be a preferred approach?

(a) Feeding the R,G, B strings from a common DC/DC converter and varying the current in the strings by controlling the output voltage of the converter

(b) Feeding the R,G, B strings from an independent DC/DC converter and varying the current independently in each of the strings by controlling the output voltages of the converters

(c) Feeding the R,G, B strings from an independent DC/DC converter, adjusting the current in a string by adjusting the outputs of the DC/DC converters, and turning the LEDs in each string on/off at a controlled rate

(d) All of these are equally good approaches

Q5. In an LED lighting application, two strings of white LEDs are used, say A and B. Due the manufacturing tolerances of LEDs, the string A happens to contain LEDs that have higher brightness for a given forward current. In order to adjust the final brightness

(a) Use two independent DC/DC converters to drive strings A and B. Use the same PWM duty ratio to switch the series transistors in strings A and B, but drive a lower voltage at the output of the string A converter.

(b) Use a lower PWM duty cycle to control the series transistor in string A.

(d) None of the above