CS-345 Final Project Guidelines

Once you have completed the structured laboratory assignments for the course, you are to use your experience with the laboratory environment to design and build your own final project for the course. The project doesn't have to be big and complex. After all, there are only a few weeks available for completing it. But it should take the experience you've developed in the structured laboratories to "the next level" in some way. Perhaps you would like to elaborate on one of the structured labs in an interesting way, or perhaps you'd like to work with one of the interfaces not covered in the structured labs. The choice is up to you.

This guideline gives you some ideas of the parameters and requirements for doing your project.

You may work in a group or individually, as you prefer. But if you are going to work in a group, make sure everyone in the group is seriously "signed on to the project." It's just not fair to others if you say you are going to work on a project and then don't pull your weight. It would be better to take on a small project of your own than to agree to help out on a group project and then to let the team down by not contributing fully. Despite that last sentence, there is no requirement that group projects be "big" to justify having multiple people working on them. Grades will not depend on group size.

There will be a final report for the project, written according to the Lab Report Guidelines for the course. All code is to be structured and documented in accordance with the Coding Guidelines for the course.

Instead of a final exam for the course, the class will meet at the scheduled time for the final exam in SB A-205, for presentations of the projects. There will be about 15 minutes for each project and part of the project grade will depend on the quality of the presentation. The presentation consists essentially of the contents of the Laboratory Report: Introduce the rationale for the project, describe the Methodology used to implement the project, tell the Results obtained, and finally, Discuss the project's significance, successes, and/or failures. Provide a live demonstration of the project during the Results part of the presentation. A projector will be available for showing the RC-200E LCD display and/or PowerPoint-type slides.

You must submit a description of your project to me by email and receive my approval for it before starting to work on it. If you are not sure exactly what you want to do, just give me an idea of the general thoughts you have, and we'll pin it down iteratively. The idea is to make sure your idea is appropriate for the RC200E and can realistically be done in the time available.

As you think about your project, remember that the RC200E is a student laboratory platform designed to provide you with a chance to learn how build interfaces between logic functions and various peripheral devices. If you try to build a radio controlled airplane using the RC-200E, it probably won't fly. But if you wanted to mimic the functionality of an airplane controller using the touchscreen to control servomotors, you could do it.

Remember, there is no CPU on the RC-200E, only (a lot of) gates and flip-flops. So if you try a project that is software intensive you will have less chance of success than if you tackle something that concentrates on hardware interfaces. File I/O, for example, is going to be a problem. Despite the graphical features of the touchscreen/LCD, an interactive drawing program is going to be a problem. On the other hand, it's perfectly all right to have a software component of the project that runs on the PC and communicates with the RC-200 through the serial or Ethernet ports.

Finally, here are some project ideas, along with comments about what people have done in the past:

1. Bluetooth! Nobody's gotten this to work yet. The Bluetooth protocol stack is very deep and complex. On the other hand, there is more documentation available now than previously, and it's possible somebody could pull it off.
2. SmartMedia! Another device that's caused more problems than one might expect. It's not easy to read and write this device. It can be done, but be aware that if you want to work with a file that was prepared on a PC, it's a piece of work to get it onto a SmartMedia card and from there into the RC-200E.
3. Ethernet. There have been several projects that were successful in getting Ethernet communcation going, even to the point of transmitting audio and/or video from one device to the other. But it's a challenge.
4. Audio. There are numerous options here, both for input (microphone or line in) and output (headphones or speakers). Voice over Ethernet has worked, and there are a number of interesting "digital signal processing" (dsp) algorithms that could be developed. If you know what an FFT is, you might be interested in something along those lines.
5. Video. Surprisingly difficult to get "right," but possible nonetheless. Students have been able to transmit video over the Ethernet at about 15 frames per second. Can you do better?
6. Stepper motor controller. If you have any electronics background, this could be interesting. Unlike a servomotor, a stepper motor moves a fixed amount each time it receives a pulse, making it ideal for robots, plotters, and other devices that need precise control over the amount of movement. We have some motors, but have not yet built the electronic interface between them and the FPGA pins.
7. Games. People have successfully built classic video games, like "Snakes" and others like tic-tac-toe using the touchscreen/LCD. But make sure there's not too much video processing involved.
8. Piano keyboard. One project in the past made a nice piano interface, but was limited by the fact that the touchscreen will register only one point at a time. Try to play a chord, and you get the average position on the screen of all points touched simultaneously. Take this into consideration for any sort of touchscreen application.
9. Novel ideas welcome!