Academic Newsletter First Quarter 2012 Q1 2012 Greetings Academics! IN THIS ISSUE... Welcome to this edition of the Academic Newsletter. Last year we saw the development of many new tools and BassMasta ....................................................2 Academic resources including solutions that introduce PIC® Microstick II ...................................................4 microcontrollers to developers who traditionally may not have Microchip and Digilent Create Network and used embedded devices fearing that the learning curve would be Basic I/O Shields, Support Resources for too steep. These new products provide a high-level experience the chipKIT™ and Arduino™ Community ............4 expanding embedded development into many new disciplines Microchip Introduces Smallest, Lowest-Cost beyond EE or CSE. PIC32 Microcontrollers ...................................5 chipKIT™ Development Platform Third Party Corner The chipKIT Platform was truly a team effort including hardware Flyport Wi-Fi openPICUS ..............................6 researched and developed by Digilent Inc., software from EasyPIC™ 7 Development System ................8 experienced Arduino™ developers from the Fair Use Building and Mini-32 Board .............................................8 Research Hacker Space in New Jersey, and of course Microchip RetroBSD for PIC32 MCUs ...........................8 hardware and software engineers. Using a forked version of the Arduino IDE to support PIC32 microcontrollers, great attention was Microchip and Digilent® Announce Embedded paid to ensure that new users could leverage the vast existing Motor Control - Cerebot™ MC7 Development resources of code examples, curriculum, reference materials and Kit for Academia and Hobbyists .......................9 more from the www.arduino.cc website. Low-Cost Solution for a Surface EMG-Actuated Prosthetic Hand Control dsPIC®Blocksets for MATLAB/Simulink System ........................................................10 Microchip Technology developed dsPIC® Blocksets for MATLAB/ Simulink continue to be updated with new blocks for Switch Mode DesignSpark chipKIT™ Challenge ..................13 Power Supplies, additional dsPIC® device support and more on the Interact with Microchip at “MCHP Tube” .........14 way. These blocksets provide a very intuitive, graphical method of developing digital signal processing and control designs within the very popular Simulink modeling tool from Mathworks. MPLAB® C Code for dsPIC Digital Signal Controllers is generated and imported CALLING ALL... into MPLAB IDE for simulation, programming and debug of the target device. In this way, the user never really needs to touch a Students, Professors & single line of code! Third Party Tool Developers, Flowcode 4 for dsPIC® DSCs and PIC24 MCUs Fans of the Matrix Multimedia graphical programming environment want to submit an article for can now use this graphical programming environment to develop the Academic Newsletter? 16-bit applications. Using Flowcode 4 for dsPIC DSCs and PIC24 MCUs allows users with little to no programming experience to create complex electronic systems in minutes. Contact us at: Now more than ever, Academics from many disciplines can take [email protected] advantage of the products and technologies from Microchip. To learn more about these or any other Academic-friendly products please contact Microchip’s Academic Team at academic@microchip. com or visit us at www.microchip.com/academic. Thanks for reading! Marc McComb, Editor Facebook Fan Pages (click on the name to view) Academic Support Fan Page Microchip Technology Inc. Fan Page Microchip En Espanol Technical Training Centers www.microchip.com/academic First Quarter 2012 Microchip Academic Partners Newsletter BassMasta By: Roberto Vigil, Delgado and Felipe Galindo Sanchez, Galactic Core Engineering Team, Technologico de Monterrey Guadalajara University Campus Introduction But, if my bass is not tuned, how can the user The project “BassMasta” works with a similar look and play or select the options? feel of the Guitar Hero® game series only functional A tuner loads at using a full size bass guitar. BassMasta will act as the start of the a personal bass guitar trainer and is intended for game and when any beginner and intermediate level players. string is pulled, the BassMasta is developed on a PIC32 Multimedia tuner software will Expansion Board (MEB) and contains an embedded indicate whether MP3 Player, Color GLCD Display and SD Card interface. the user needs to tighten or loosen This prototype is capable of detecting the string that is the frequency of the string that the being played. This user is pulling and the time at which will ensure that the it was pulled. All of these notes are user can accurately control the system. compared with the actual notes of the MP3 version that the user is How Do We Detect the String that was Played? expected to play along with. Accuracy is measured and This PIC18F4620 (two timers, one ADC and five output displayed on the screen as the resulting score. bits of GPIO) performs the string detection. The signal carries the harmonics of the sound, so we establish a Bass Masta Main Screen threshold. If the voltage is less than the threshold, we treat it as 0V, thus we remove the harmonics. We have two objectives: determine the string that was played, and when it was played. For the first objective, we use a timer. The timer collects time between waves; with this we can determine the frequency. We take 5 samples and troubleshoot how to achieve better How Does the User Interact with the Device? results. The problem is when we encounter unusual The user can select options frequency. We solve this by setting the mode of the and songs with the string of results with ±5 Hz of mode; this operates as a filter the bass acting as buttons. when the average of frequency is on ± near the mode. Everything is displayed on a For example: samples = {3,53,20,54, 55,240}; mode: screen which is controlled 50; average: (53+54+55)/3 and we receive an average by the master PIC32 MCU frequency of 54. and the MEB. A scheduler RTOS runs the tasks on time, depending on the music tempo, so the music and the notes to be played can be synchronized. 2 www.microchip.com/academic First Quarter 2012 Microchip Academic Partners Newsletter The next objective is to determine when a new Bass Amplifier string is played. The Guitar (LM358) Note bass outputs a signal Detection that detects when a string is pulled. There's Note a brief moment when Decoder the signal is down (when Graphics MEB string is stopped by a PIC® MCU finger.) As a result, we've established a backup timer. If the silent (0V) of the signal is greater than the lowest frequency, (it ensures detection of frequency with the longer period between waves) we've set a flag to wait MP3 for another string. The ADC detects voltage when Player another string is pulled. For more information please visit: http://www.wix.com/byshox/bassmasta http://www.microchip.com/stellent/ idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=2615&dDoc Name=en548037 www.microchip.com/academic 3 Microchip Academic Partners Newsletter Microstick II chipKIT™ and Arduino™ A Complete 16 and 32-bit Development Kit at Just $34.95 USD Support Microchip and Digilent Create Network and Microchip recently announced Basic I/O Shields, Support Resources for the the lowest-cost development tool supporting 3.3V 16-bit chipKIT™ and Arduino™ Community and 32-bit PIC® microcontrollers (MCUs), as well as Microchip and Digilent have announced expanded 16-bit dsPIC® Digital Signal Controllers (DSCs) in capabilities for the 32-bit PIC32 microcontroller- 28-pin SPDIP packages. The flexible Microstick II tool based chipKIT Development Platform for the Arduino features everything Academics need to get started with community. The companies recently unveiled two these devices, including an integrated debugger and shields for the chipKIT platform – the chipKIT Basic programmer, user LED, reset button and DUT socket for I/O and Network Shields. In addition new online easy device swapping. support resources for the community are now The USB-powered tool can be used standalone or available, including software library support for plugged into a prototyping board for extremely flexible Ethernet, CAN and USB, as well as an online chipKIT development, and is supported by the MPLAB® forum and wiki. The shields and online support Integrated Development Environment (IDE). This tool resources enable users to take advantage of the makes it easy to evaluate and develop with Microchip’s high-performance, 32-bit PIC® microcontroller-based broad range of 16- and 32-bit products, while providing chipKIT development platform to add more features an ideal student solution at a cost effective price point. and functionality to their projects. The chipKIT development platform is a 32-bit Arduino solution Key Features: that enables hobbyists and academics to easily and ■ Low cost inexpensively integrate electronics into their projects, ■ Integrated USB programmer/debugger – no external even if they do not have an electronic-engineering debugger required background. ■ USB powered – ease of use, no external power The platform consists of two PIC32-based required development boards and open-source software that ■ MPLAB support is compatible with the Arduino programming language ■ DUT socket – flexible, easy device replacement and development environment. The chipKIT hardware is compatible with existing 3.3V Arduinoshields ■ 0.025˝ pin headers – enables plug-in