VS Electronics and Embedded Development

Most versions of this story are vaguely correct:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/20060620-9999-1m20whizkid.html or http://securitypronews.com/news/securitynews/spn-45-20060620YoungProgrammerDevelopsSecuritySolutions.html

But don’t you hate when you get crap like this?: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32543

“Already, a manufacturer has created a working prototype based on Sergeev’s design and he is trolling around the tech fairs flogging his ideas.” Yeah, I love those juicy insults.
There was one (rather big) mistake in the original article: there is no hardware manufacturer “producing my device”. In fact, I designed the pcb schematic and board entirely in CadSoft EAGLE Lite. The pcb got printed/etched by Advanced Circuits ($83 with 1 day turn around for 3 prototype boards), and I assembled the boards myself with parts either sampled from the companies (Microchip, Philips, etc.) or from Mouser and Digikey. As for specifics: the board is based on a Philips LPC2148 ARM microcontroller, and two Microchip ENC28J60 ethernet controllers. RJ-45 jacks are actually Magjacks with integrated magnetics. Other goodies include a serial port, JTAG header, and of course basic voltage regulation.

You know what I loved the most, though? This: “where it probably beat off opposition from another kid’s ant farm and the display ‘My dad’s a scientist’.” As for my dad, well, he’s actually a high-level database programmer (FoxPro), so his expertise does not apply and could not have applied to the science fair project what-so-ever. Writing firmware for a microcontroller (an ARM one by Philips, in my case) is usually low-level C or assembly (mostly C in my case), and includes driving interfaces like UART or SPI (which I do in my project), not query and select statements to a db. Not to mention the whole other side of the project: digital electronics and pcb board design. So yes, I did well in science fair… why? because I honestly built, wrote, and conceived my project by myself, and the judges obviously judged the way they did after they got to know me well enough to realize that this was true. What explains my experience in these subjects? Take it or leave it, but it’s all self-taught. Also, GSDSEF (Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair) is hardly your ant-farm project fair. The senior divison projects, particularly, go through some pretty extensive screening sessions to keep the bullshit projects out. A good handful of the projects progress into bigger fairs, patents, or even to the market.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

My Science Fair project on the “Embedded Secure Network Bridge” was definitely a success. I am continuing work on the project to hopefully have a new version of the device by June, this time implementing the networking and cryptography. I fixed up the SPI line mix ups and various other blunders (such as incorrect package) in the schematic, but I’m still working on updating the board design in Eagle. It seems I have to make these changes manually in Eagle, which is why it is taking some time. The project report is privately available: feel free to contact me at vsergeev at gmail dawt com for an electronic copy.

“g1powermac” from the ##microcontrollers IRC channel on Freenode has organized a group PCB and components buy of the “miniLA” mini logic analyzer, freely available at http://minila.sourceforge.net/ . This will be an invaluable tool for FPGAs and CPLDs, which I’m looking to getting into. The device itself has some very impressive features: 32 channels, 100MHz, 128Kb memory for *each* channel, compatible with 3.3v and 5V, and it is of course free. The price will probably end up being under $70 as well. There is also a simple parallel port to USB converter designed for the miniLA, and it looks relatively easy to build.

I’ve been researching several FPGA and CPLD development boards with another fellow member on the Freenode ##microcontrollers channel, “Plugh”. After extensive research we have decided to go with the Xilinx FPGA and CPLD Starter Kit for $99 (the HW-SPAR3-CPLD-DK), just because it is a very very good deal. The included FPGA board has a Spartan3 FPGA with 200K gates (a little bit low for some IP cores, but very decent for this deal) and a separate CPLD board (CoolRunnerII and XC9500-XL) is included in the entire package. There really isn’t a better deal for $99. However, it’s proving to be rather difficult to find this kit in stock.

The Spartan-3E development board by Xilinx also looks tempting, but it has so many peripherals onboard I figure it would take several months just to figure out how to interact with these parts, but my primary goal is to learn VHDL or Verilog and gate design. If I can’t find the $99 Xilinx FPGA and CPLD Starter Kit in stock somewhere, I guess it will be back to square one.

This is a test post at my new domain name, frozeneskimo.com, and new hosting with DreamHost. 

This is my electronics and embedded development blog, just setup 12-30-05. The image at the top of the page is from one of the best movies, Office Space, obviously. The primary categories I have setup for my posts are AVR, ARM, and Misc. I’ll be posting updates to projects, very small projects in whole, or just general notes. Soon I’ll setup the ARM Microcontroller Matrix page which doesn’t have anything on it, yet. It will be a table (preferably sortable) of all of the existing [hobbyist] ARM microcontrollers. Hopefully it will inspire someone else to either copy the table or create a new one at the ARM microcontroller wiki, where it would be most useful. Other pages will include bigger projects I’m working on, with pictures/schematics/etc.