RISC CPU Design

Description
This project's goal was to design a Central Processing Unit (CPU) incorporating a fairly large instruction set and a multistage pipeline design with the potential to be used in a multi-core system. The CPU was coded and synthesized with Verilog.

This project's goal was to design a Central Processing Unit (CPU) incorporating a fairly large instruction set and a multistage pipeline design with the potential to be used in a multi-core system. The CPU was coded and synthesized with Verilog. This was accomplished by building on the CPU design from fundamentals learned in CSE320 and increasing the instruction set to resemble a proper Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) CPU system. A multistage pipeline was incorporated to the CPU to increase instruction throughput, or instructions per second. A major area of focus was on creating a multi-core design. The design used is master-slave in nature. The master core instructs the sub-cores where they should begin execution, the idea being that the operating system or kernel will be executing on the master core and the "user space" programs will be run on the sub-cores. The rationale behind this is that the system would specialize in running several small functions on all of its many supported cores. The system supports around 45 instructions, which include several types of jumps and branches (for changing the program counter based on conditions), arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, or, and, etc.), and system calls (for controlling the core execution). The system has a very low Clocks per Instruction ratio (CPI), but to achieve this the second stage contains several modules and would most likely be a bottleneck for performance if implemented. The CPU is not perfect and contains a few errors and oversights, but the system as a whole functions as intended.
Date Created
2016-05
Agent

Wi-Fi Enabled Message Transmission: An Implementation

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Description
The Internet of Things has spread Wi-Fi connectivity to household and business devices everywhere. It is important that we understand IoT's risks and capabilities as its popularity continues to grow, and that we recognize new and exciting uses for it.

The Internet of Things has spread Wi-Fi connectivity to household and business devices everywhere. It is important that we understand IoT's risks and capabilities as its popularity continues to grow, and that we recognize new and exciting uses for it. In this project, the ESP8266 Wi-Fi controller, powered by a lithium battery, is used to transmit messages from a user's browser or mobile phone to an OLED display. The ESP8266 is a system on a chip (SOC) which boasts impressive features such as full TCP/IP stack, 1 MB of flash memory, and a 32-bit CPU. A web server is started on the ESP8266 which listens at a specific port and relays any strings from the client back to the display, acting as a simple notification system for a busy individual such as a professor. The difficulties with this project stemmed from the security protocol of Arizona State University's Wi-Fi network and from the limitations of the Wi-Fi chip itself. Several solutions are suggested, such as utilizing a personal cellular broadband router and polling a database for stored strings through a service such as Data.Sparkfun.com.
Date Created
2016-12
Agent

Voice Reconfigurable Networks

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Description
The software element of home and small business networking solutions has failed to keep pace with annual development of newer and faster hardware. The software running on these devices is an afterthought, oftentimes equipped with minimal features, an obtuse user

The software element of home and small business networking solutions has failed to keep pace with annual development of newer and faster hardware. The software running on these devices is an afterthought, oftentimes equipped with minimal features, an obtuse user interface, or both. At the same time, this past year has seen the rise of smart home assistants that represent the next step in human-computer interaction with their advanced use of natural language processing. This project seeks to quell the issues with the former by exploring a possible fusion of a powerful, feature-rich software-defined networking stack and the incredible natural language processing tools of smart home assistants. To accomplish these ends, a piece of software was developed to leverage the powerful natural language processing capabilities of one such smart home assistant, the Amazon Echo. On one end, this software interacts with Amazon Web Services to retrieve information about a user's speech patterns and key information contained in their speech. On the other end, the software joins that information with its previous session state to intelligently translate speech into a series of commands for the separate components of a networking stack. The software developed for this project empowers a user to quickly make changes to several facets of their networking gear or acquire information about it with just their language \u2014 no terminals, java applets, or web configuration interfaces needed, thus circumventing clunky UI's or jumping from shell to shell. It is the author's hope that showing how networking equipment can be configured in this innovative way will draw more attention to the current failings of networking equipment and inspire a new series of intuitive user interfaces.
Date Created
2016-12
Agent

The Coffee Hutch

Description
The Coffee Hutch project is derived from the field of Computer Science and consists of a website, a database, and a mobile application for Android devices. This three-tiered scheme is designed to support a point-of-sale payment system to be integrated

The Coffee Hutch project is derived from the field of Computer Science and consists of a website, a database, and a mobile application for Android devices. This three-tiered scheme is designed to support a point-of-sale payment system to be integrated with a standalone product dispensing machine. The website contains landing pages which provide navigation and functional capabilities for users. The site also features a variety of PHP web services which communicate with the database using SQL commands. The application, programmed in the Java language, makes use of these services in a simple, utilitarian design aimed at modification of user data stored in the database. This database, developed with MySQL and managed with the phpMyAdmin application, contains limited information in order to maximize speed of read and write accesses from the website and Android app. Together, these three components comprise an effective payment management system model with mobile capabilities. All of the components of this project were built at no cost. The website hosting service is free and the third-party services required (such as Paypal payment services) are simulated. These simulations allowed me to demonstrate the functionality of the three-tiered product without the necessity for monetary supplication. This thesis features every aspect of the development and testing of The Coffee Hutch software components. Requirements for each function of the software are specified in one section, and they are aligned with various pieces of the code in the source documentation. Test cases which address each requirement are outlined in another section of the thesis.
Date Created
2016-12
Agent

PRODUCTIZING EMBEDDED SYSTEMS PROJECT BOARDS AND DEMONSTRATING EXPANDABILITY

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Description
The purpose of this project was to create a modular embedded systems platform that would provide a hands-on lab experience for students learning about embedded systems protocols. The system would be designed to be modular, expandable, and productizable. Its modularity

The purpose of this project was to create a modular embedded systems platform that would provide a hands-on lab experience for students learning about embedded systems protocols. The system would be designed to be modular, expandable, and productizable. Its modularity would eliminate errors in the design and make the entire system more robust. It would also be expandable, which means additional project boards could be created in the future without requiring a complete redesign of the system. And finally, productizing the entire system would allow it to be sold to other universities who may have a similar program that would benefit from a system such as the OCTOPUS.
Date Created
2013-12
Agent

Aerial Camera Control and Electronic Stabilization System

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Description
Image stabilization is a highly desired feature for many systems involving cameras. A camera stabilizer effectively prevents or compensates for unwanted camera movement to provide this stabilization. The use of stabilized camera technology on board aerial vehicles is one such

Image stabilization is a highly desired feature for many systems involving cameras. A camera stabilizer effectively prevents or compensates for unwanted camera movement to provide this stabilization. The use of stabilized camera technology on board aerial vehicles is one such application where the stabilization can greatly improve the overall capability of the system. The requirements for such a system include a continuous control algorithm and hardware to determine and adjust the camera orientation. The topic of developing an aerial camera control and electronic stabilization system is thus explored in the contents of this paper.
Date Created
2014-05
Agent

Web Solutions for Scholastic Tracking: Increasing Efficiency through Web Development

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Description
Web Solutions for Scholastic Tracking is a project which aims to develop a website in order to help the scholarship committee of an Arizona State University sorority save time. Details and flaws of the former approaches to scholastic tracking for

Web Solutions for Scholastic Tracking is a project which aims to develop a website in order to help the scholarship committee of an Arizona State University sorority save time. Details and flaws of the former approaches to scholastic tracking for the sorority \u2014 such as scattered data, low visibility, and the need for manual calculations \u2014 are provided. Based on these flaws and the requirements of the scholarship committee, a new approach was designed and developed in order to track scholastics online in a more efficient manner. A study hours tracking website was developed utilizing Apache, PHP, and MySQL in order to create an efficient approach to tracking scholastics. The developed website allows sorority members to view their required weekly study hours and submit hours for approval online to specific proctors. The scholarship committee members can then approve or reject the submitted hours that they proctor. This approach has improved the visibility of the required and remaining weekly study hours for each sorority member while also decreasing the time it takes for proctors to approve hours. These improvements serve as examples of the various ways that this project has met its initial goal of increasing the efficiency of the sorority's scholarship program. Additional results as well as the requirements, development approach, technologies used, and testing methods are described in detail throughout this document.
Date Created
2014-05
Agent

Coldfire Processor Modeling

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Description
This project was centered around designing a processor model (using the C programming language) based on the Coldfire computer architecture that will run on third party software known as Open Virtual Platforms. The end goal is to have a fully

This project was centered around designing a processor model (using the C programming language) based on the Coldfire computer architecture that will run on third party software known as Open Virtual Platforms. The end goal is to have a fully functional processor that can run Coldfire instructions and utilize peripheral devices in the same way as the hardware used in the embedded systems lab at ASU. This project would cut down the substantial amount of time students spend commuting to the lab. Having the processor directly at their disposal would also encourage them to spend more time outside of class learning the hardware and familiarizing themselves with development on an embedded micro-controller. The model will be accurate, fast and reliable. These aspects will be achieved through rigorous unit testing and use of the OVP platform which provides instruction accurate simulations at hundreds of MIPS (million instructions per second) for the specified model. The end product was able to accurately simulate a subset of the Coldfire instructions at very high rates.
Date Created
2014-12
Agent

Wireless Mecanum Wheel Vehicle

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Description
The purpose of this project was to construct and write code for a vehicle to take advantage of the benefits of combining stepper motors with mecanum wheels. This process involved building the physical vehicle, designing a custom PCB for the

The purpose of this project was to construct and write code for a vehicle to take advantage of the benefits of combining stepper motors with mecanum wheels. This process involved building the physical vehicle, designing a custom PCB for the vehicle, writing code for the onboard microprocessor, and implementing motor control algorithms.
Date Created
2015-05
Agent

Raspberry Pi Radio: Programming a Multiple Source Music Player

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Description
The purpose of this project was to program a Raspberry Pi to be able to play music from both local storage on the Pi and from internet radio stations such as Pandora. The Pi also needs to be able to

The purpose of this project was to program a Raspberry Pi to be able to play music from both local storage on the Pi and from internet radio stations such as Pandora. The Pi also needs to be able to play various types of file formats, such as mp3 and FLAC. Finally, the project is also to be driven by a mobile app running on a smartphone or tablet. To achieve this, a client server design was employed where the Raspberry Pi acts as the server and the mobile app is the client. The server functionality was achieved using a Python script that listens on a socket and calls various executables that handle the different formats of music being played. The client functionality was achieved by programming an Android app in Java that sends encoded commands to the server, which the server decodes and begins playing the music that command dictates. The designs for both the client and server are easily extensible and allow for any future modifications to the project to be easily made.
Date Created
2015-05
Agent