1. Tabletop Notifier Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
ECE Computer Engineering Design Project
Tabletop Notifier
Alexander Cheung, Michael Federau, Krista Oribello
2015
Motivation
The Tabletop Notifier concept was designed to provide a means for quickly viewing Android notifications without physically accessing your phone.
The device sits on top of a desk, bedside table, or kitchen countertop and pairs with a companion application on the user’s Android device in order to deliver notifications directly to the display in real time.
As the device does not persistently store user information or notifications, it can also be used as an accessory for many increasingly common shared workstations found in modern offices.
Features
View the current time at a glance
View new notifications in real-time as they are received by a paired Android device
Play music from a paired Android device via mm audio port
Hardware Design
The development platform for the project is the Altera DE2 Development Board. The onboard Cyclone II FPGA was flashed with the Nios II “fast core” embedded processor along with the required SPI and UART cores for interfacing with off-board components.
Onboard Components:
Cyclone II FPGA
8 MB SDRAM
4x pushbutton switches
Off-board Components:
RA8875 LCD Controller Board
STMPE610 Touchscreen Controller Board
5.0” 40-pin 800x480 TFT Display with Touchscreen
RN-52 Bluetooth Module
Software Design | µC/OS-II
The Tabletop Notifier software runs on the µC/OS-II real-time operating system. The main program is a collection of system tasks, each responsible for a major behavioral component of the device.
Software drivers provided by Altera for the SPI and UART cores were used to facilitate interaction with the respective interfaces. Additionally, the open source drivers available for the LCD display controller, which were originally written for the Arduino, were ported to the platform and used to write to the display.
Hardware block diagram of major components
Software Design | Android
The companion Android app is a small footprint application consisting of a handful of Activities and a single Fragment which provide the user interface for connecting the Android device to the Tabletop Notifier. After a successful connection, further user interaction is not required.
The majority of the work is done by two Android Services, processes that run in the background on the device. One service listens to the operating system for new notifications which can originate from any app on the device. The service sends the content of these notifications to the second service which manages the Bluetooth connectivity using the Android Bluetooth Stack. This service writes the data to the Tabletop Notifier using the Bluetooth Serial Port Profile.
For colour ideas, University Visual Identity Guidelines can be found here:
Poster Essentials
Keep the poster title to two lines in length. Below the main poster title is the information table where you supply the names of your group members, the client (if applicable) and the year. The column widths may be changed by dragging the vertical column separators.
Three or four column text box formats are recommended as a wide single column of text is difficult to read.
Font Sizes and Types
For paragraph text pt text works well. Section titles should be sized appropriately, 40 pt is a good start. Be consistent with your font sizes.
A good test for font size is to print the poster scaled to fit on 8.5x11 paper; if you can read it easily at arm’s length then it should be ok.
If using formulas or variable symbols, be sure to italicize them so they are recognized as such… e.g. y + g(x).
Poster Size
Please print the poster so its final dimensions are: W: 31 x H: 24 inches. Landscape posters are required.
Image Resolution
Pictures and images should be created at high resolution (600 – 1200 dpi). Remember that graphics will be printed larger than normal due to the poster size. Low resolution images will result in aliasing and low quality results.
Background & Colour
You may change the colour of the section titles to something other than black, but use a solid colour make the colour consistent for all titles. Paragraph text should be kept black.
The background colour of this interior poster region must be white.
Experiment with colour and gradients. Use colours that enhance visual appeal while maintaining readability. Images can make very effective backgrounds, or can be very distracting, experiment with transparency to achieve the desired effect.
Experiment with layout, form and colour to achieve a visually appealing and informative technical poster. Something that you would read!
Printing Instructions
See course web page
Deviation from any of these specifications will require that your group pay for the full production costs. Also, if you need to re-print the poster for whatever reason, the cost of re-printing is to be looked after by you or your group. Rigorous quality-control according to AICT's protocol is encouraged to avoid this situation.
See the course website and AICT’s website for details and suggestions regarding printing:
More Information
Check out these online poster resources:
Remember
Remove comment bubbles from template before printing! Acknowledge your client if you have one.
Data Communication
Communication with the Android device was performed over the Bluetooth Serial Port Profile, enabling the transfer of serial data. This data was transmitted and received in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).
This data was parsed into C structures using the microjson parsing library. These C structures were then passed to the required classes for processing and display.
Prototype development breakout
Process interaction diagram
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering