Tower System in the classroom?
Any professors or students on here? Do you have any ideas on how the Tower System would be cool to teach embedded system course(s) or to develop a senior design (aka capstone) project? Take a look at this paper written for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) 2009 conference with some ideas on how the Tower System can be useful in the classroom.
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Permalink Reply by Moises on -
Eduardo
If you want point your tower idea to the academia.
you gonna have to do better than what you are doing now.
You need to focus more on real world applications. Motion control, audio, vision, pressure, temperature, etc
You need more sensors, actuators, motors, lower power, etc
think Mechatornics.
In the class room students want hardware that is modular and easy to hook up
and upgrade, stack together like building blocks.
Freescale need to consider make their compilation tools more user friendly
and free. Codewarrior as it is now is not user friendly and for sure its price tag
is not student friendly.
Have about considering a more compact modular form factor, similar to PC104.
Hope this helps.
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Permalink Reply by Eduardo Montanez on -
Moises,
All valid points. When I released this paper the Tower System was brand new and FSL was still exploring it's growth. We are currently working on some peripherals that will satisfy your request for more real world applications. Some application use cases being developed further for Tower peripheral modules are:
- rechargeable battery
- accelerometers
- pressure sensors
- capacitive touch
- segment displays
- rf
- motor control
- audio
Regarding CodeWarrior, the FSL University Program engages many universities and in many cases provides academic licensing.
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Permalink Reply by Moises on
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Eduardo,
Great! It nice to know that you guys are moving into the mechatronics arena.
Students will then have a chance to develop more interesting real world applications.
Which is the whole point of any learning system, to teach you not only the inter-workings of the system, but also how to apply it in the real work. Although, flashing leds and displaying text on LCDs is fun, in a real world this is the least of your worries.
The reason why parallax's basic stamp boards became popular in the class rooms was not because the stamp was a very interesting development system, or because it gave students lots of computer power and resources, no. It was because Parallax realize that if they gave students the software and hardware tools and lots of real world examples, they have a winner among students. And so they did.
Now, don't think I am for parallax's basic stamps, No. I think for what it is is a over price system, but the learning materials and samples that you get with it is great for students. Plus parallax has brought into their development systems all types of sensors and actuators, which are essential in robotics.
Once the Tower System incorporates real world applications its going to be a great learning tool
specially for the mechatronics students.
I like the idea of rechargeable battery.
You know, if only Freescale were to incorporate into the ColdFire chips quadrature encoders
the motor control needs in robotics will be greatly simplified.
Thanks for your prompt reply.
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Permalink Reply by William Lovell on -
Moises,
Valid points, there are 3rd party designs in the works or completed that address Mechtronics more directly.
Form factor from a development standpoint for an initial pass this works well. Having used PC104 and developed at least 3 other stack-up configurations this platform still stands up to what it was developed to do. It stands well enough that we moved the entire platform into our robotic control systems.
Software has and always will be the issue in academia, and that is from experience from the front of the room. What would you suggest the software look and feel like?
Bill
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Permalink Reply by Moises on
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Bill,
Point taken.
When developing any system being embedded
or large scale like PC control.
One of the things you should not worry or dread about is
your design and programming tools.
The IDE should be straight forward with minimum bells and whistles.
IDE should be simple. The usual text entry and editing with maybe color code highlighting.
It should give you simple setup and selection of the compiler tools. And the usual debug interface
with feedback to the user. And that is it.
Why complicate your development process.
As embedded designers and engineers we already have enough to worry about.
Don't you think so?
I give is an example of too complicated IDE interface which game me many headaches
The Texas Instruments Code Composer Studio 3.0. which is base on the so popular Eclipse IDE.
Here is a good example of the software should look and feel like :
http://www.codeblocks.org/
Bill
Hope this helps
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