Project Ideas

Please choose to do either a report or a project.

Proposal due 11/21

Project: Describe the system that you wish to build. List

- The risk issues or concerns you have

- Milestones designed to address the highest risk as early as possible

- Minimum functionality that you are shooting for

- Any materials or advice that you think you will need

Report

                    - Describe your topic
                    - List the source documents that you already know about
                    - Try to clearly scope the research question: what is included and what is not
                    - Make sure to include some industry as well as academic sources if appropriate.

Outcome
     Project: Demo and 10 minute presentation.
                 Website with all information needed to understand and reproduce your results
     Report: Slide presentation in the form of a lecture/tutorial on the subject.
                You should be prepared to give a short version (10-15 minutes) of your talk
                but the slides should be sufficient material for a 1 hour lecture on the subject, with examples.

Project Ideas:

Port ECOS (an open source, modular embedded operating system from Red Hat) to the CerfBoard (or try anyway)
Build a MIDI music synthesizer with the 8051 and an analog to digital converter.
Dig deeper into the balance beam problem: add the serial interface, write data capture software for the PC. Experiment with frequency response, different control algorithms, etc.
Learn to use the audio capabilities of the Cerfboard and breakout board. Make it into an MP3 player (using available decoding software)
Try to build a three-layer network stack for the 8051 using the I2C protocol. We have an attempt at this by students from previous years. You could build on their effort.
Build a collision/trap avoiding robot with the motors and the sonar (define some interesting task for it to perform)
Build a self-stabilizing model airplane with 8051, Accelerometers, and servo motors.
Port an embedded java implementation to the Cerfboard.
Connect a web server to a physical device (camera on a motor) for remote control.

Research Report Ideas:

Comparative embedded OS analysis (VxWorks, Linux, ECOS, Tiny OS (different than RTX Tiny), etc.)
Report on UML for real time. Develop examples for the balance beam or other application
Embedded/Wireless Networking (Blue Tooth and competing technologies)
Issues with Embedded Java (Real time computing with Java)