1. Journey: Introduction to Embedded Systems
Amarjeet Singh
April 17, 2012

2. Repeat: A Small Exercise
Course Objective
Repeat: A Small Exercise
On a small sheet of paper explain the following:
What are the different interfaces through which a CPU talk to external peripherals?
Name some microcontroller platforms that you may have heard of
How much power is consumed by a typical motherboard?
Where do you see embedded systems around you?
What are the different kind of memory devices you are aware of?
Cyber-physical systems: Interfacing cyber world and physical world
If you were to be given an option to collect data/information about 2 of your daily activities, what would that be?

3. Course Objective
Motivational View
Often people with Electronics background think that programming is tough
People with programming background shy away from hardware
Good understanding of both hardware and software often is very beneficial
Basic knowledge of hardware instills confidence
Exposure to embedded systems get you to experience tangible things happening for real - robots moving, LEDs blinking!
Learning such activities are fun and will create the right mindset for other IT courses
Embedded is now everywhere - Metro card, Driving License, Microwave, Automated Car Controls….
Basic knowledge of its operation will help in better understanding of how these systems operate

4. Proposed Learning Outcomes
Based on how much effort you put in (irrespective of what grade you get), I expect you to achieve the following through this course:
Programming microcontroller (using embedded C) and use several of its internal modules including Pulse Width Modulator (PWM), Timer, Counter, Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC), Serial Port (UART), Memory (EEPROM, SRAM)
Learn to interface off-the-shelf external components with the microcontroller over multiple interfaces such as SPI, UART, GPIO, ADC
Develop your own simple hardware attachments for the microcontroller; Learning to debugging the hardware in the process

5. Proposed Learning Outcomes
Based on how much effort you put in (irrespective of what grade you get), I expect you to achieve the following through this course:
Appreciate broader system level constraints like power consumption, synchronization, scheduling that may arise when building a network of embedded systems
Exposure to recent work in the domain of Cyber Physical Systems
Learn about the challenges in real world deployment of the system through hands-on exposure in the course project;

6. Learning activities – Effective?
Lectures:
Lectures before mid-sem gave you basic understanding of the microcontroller architecture - Power, Memory, External Interfaces …
Lectures in the remaining course, reading based, taken by students
No formal lab sessions:
Increasing difficult lab assignments
Demo sessions to explain the lab assignments
Advanced AVR boards
Learning new IDE for programming
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7. Learning activities – Effective?
Group Presentations:
Were the readings useful to provide you with a broader perspective of embedded systems?
Did you find in-class discussions helpful/interesting?
Group Project – Phase1:
Code understanding
Installing the whole system on your own
Real data from the system installed by you
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8. Support Online readings? Peers? Manish/Ankit
Course material – slides/audio recordings/reference material (datasheets, programming guide)
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9. What did we cover? Embedded Systems Overview
Typical challenges in embedded systems
Timing issues in cyber physical systems
Embedded platform design space
Overview of 8-, 16-, 32-bit family devices
Overview of embedded programming options

10. What did we cover? Microcontroller architecture and programming:
Details of AVR CPU architecture
Details of microcontroller memory – Flash, SRAM, EEPROM, Registers
Bus arbitration, direct memory access
Pin configuration and settings
System control and reset options
Clock selection and configuration
Sleep modes and power management
Interrupt service

11. What did we cover? Microcontroller peripheral modules
Timers/Counters
Analog Comparators
Analog to Digital Converters
External interfaces
I2C (two wire)
SPI (four wire, explicit chip select)
UART/USART
DC/Power Characteristics
PDI
JTAG

12. What did we cover? On-board connections: Voltage regulators
Interfacing external sensors
Decoupling capacitors
Pull up/down registers
Other common wired interfaces:
RS-232
RS-422
RS-485
USB
CAN

13. What did we cover? Other common wireless interfaces: Infrared
Bluetooth
/Zigbee
WiFi
System level issues:
Timing and Synchronization
Scheduling
Low power platform design

14. What did we cover? Broad challenges: Specialized topics
Power line communication
Energy scavenging
Designing plug load measurement system
6LowPAN standard
Broad challenges:
Cyber physical systems design challenges – primarily timing
Pervasive computing – how is it different from mobile/ distributed computing; what are the typical challenges in designing and developing unified system