Our Embedded Systems and Networking Laboratory supports courses, course laboratory sections, and undergraduate research projects in these areas.
The heart of the embedded systems lab is seven experimental stations that accommodate two students each. Each station has a Dell Optiplex GX620 workstations (2.8GHz Pentium Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM), an HP 16100A Logic Analyzer, a DC power supply, a ColdFire 5206E single-board computer (donated by Freescale Semiconductor), and custom-designed experimental boards. In addition, each ColdFire SBC connects to a transition board that permits the logic analyzer to easily connect to the experiment and observe the address, data and status busses of the ColdFire microprocessor running in real time. Experiments include:
- Setting the internal registers of a microcontroller
- Designing interrupt-driven systems
- Measuring latency and cache performance,
- Writing a flash memory programming algorithm
- Determining the analog waveform of an unknown source (A/D converter experiment)
- Designing a scrolling message display
The lab also is equipped with a Dell Optiplex GX110 workstation (667MHz Pentium 3, 256MB RAM) running Red Hat Linux, connected to a custom-designed Motorola 68000 processor computer "farm". This facility provides remote network access to 10 single-board computers for embedded systems software development work.
Additional equipment in the lab includes an HP 64700 series in-circuit emulator and an optional traffic light programming experiment, robot arm experiment, a CodeTest measuring tool for real-time performance measurements, and Fluke oscilloscope and a Fluke graphical multimeter.
- Other laboratory hardware includes:
- 11 Dell Optiplex GX280 desktop workstations (3.8GHz Pentium 4, 512MB RAM, Windows XP)
- One Dell Optiplex GX280 housed in an "e-podium", along with a variety of audio-visual equipment, and connected to a ceiling-mounted data projector
- An array of advanced data/voice networking hardware, including two
- Nortel Passport 8006 and two Nortel Business Policy Switch 2000
- Additional workstations running Windows 2000
Besides the standard CSS software load, this lab also includes specialized embedded systems and networking related applications, such as a 68000 editor, assembler, and simulator and EASy68K.