Hey Guys,
Look here to see an interesting snippet about a wireless ECG monitoring system provided by Analog Devices.
http://www.analog.com/en/rfif-components/rfif-transceivers/adf7021/products/technical-articles/ICs_for_Low_Power_Low_Cost_ECG_Holter_Monitors_Sup/resources/fca.html
This is a single lead system ... something definitely worth looking at twice.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Meeting notes for Wednesday, Oct. 1st, 08
Guys,
Per our discussion this week, we were able to outline the following points:
Me: to provide Len with part numbers for 2 different Gumstix configurations, 1 with Audiostix and 1 with the LCD driver. They are to communicate via USB or Bluetooth. I will provide the part #s for the board with built in bluetooth, more RAM and flash ROM as originally layed out in the proposal.
The following will be proposed:
1 Verdex Pro XM4-BT motherboard + audiostix2 ($159 + 40)
1 Verdex Pro XM4-BT motherboard + consoleLCD16vx ($159 + 49)
1 Samsung LCD ($85)
I will work on getting a copy of the SDK for Linux OpenEmbedded running. I will grab a recent CVS copy of the codebase, compile it and become accustomed to doing custom kernels with modules. I will also look into Qtopia Core and see how easily that can be compiled for OpenEmbedded and built on top of the Linux OE. I will also look into Graph plot and plotting widgets for Qtopia.
Ashish: Check up on chest strap left behind by Jenna and see what kind of condition it is in. Try go get some sample data captures from it. Check the coil and take some measurements. Perhaps look at winding a new coil with help from Len and Nagui for the magwire.
Octav: Is to work closely with Ashish on the chest strap and coil measurements so as to get a good idea how to pickup the signals and help with signal conditioning before transmission.
Len: send us the links to the Israeli company that makes the heartbeat monitor chips.
Per our discussion this week, we were able to outline the following points:
Me: to provide Len with part numbers for 2 different Gumstix configurations, 1 with Audiostix and 1 with the LCD driver. They are to communicate via USB or Bluetooth. I will provide the part #s for the board with built in bluetooth, more RAM and flash ROM as originally layed out in the proposal.
The following will be proposed:
1 Verdex Pro XM4-BT motherboard + audiostix2 ($159 + 40)
1 Verdex Pro XM4-BT motherboard + consoleLCD16vx ($159 + 49)
1 Samsung LCD ($85)
I will work on getting a copy of the SDK for Linux OpenEmbedded running. I will grab a recent CVS copy of the codebase, compile it and become accustomed to doing custom kernels with modules. I will also look into Qtopia Core and see how easily that can be compiled for OpenEmbedded and built on top of the Linux OE. I will also look into Graph plot and plotting widgets for Qtopia.
Ashish: Check up on chest strap left behind by Jenna and see what kind of condition it is in. Try go get some sample data captures from it. Check the coil and take some measurements. Perhaps look at winding a new coil with help from Len and Nagui for the magwire.
Octav: Is to work closely with Ashish on the chest strap and coil measurements so as to get a good idea how to pickup the signals and help with signal conditioning before transmission.
Len: send us the links to the Israeli company that makes the heartbeat monitor chips.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Chipset, Video Interface on Audiostix
Guys,
It seems that the Audiostix board incorporates LCD connection technology which is detailed here in the specs for the Philips UCB1400. The Philips UCB1400 is the core driver on the Audiostix board which is the audio codec, A/D functionality built in, and a 4-pin resistive touch screen driver. I looked at the specs file but much of it went over my head.
I will bring a few pages of the specs with me for us to look at. Perhaps Len can help us decipher it a bit.
It seems that the Audiostix board incorporates LCD connection technology which is detailed here in the specs for the Philips UCB1400. The Philips UCB1400 is the core driver on the Audiostix board which is the audio codec, A/D functionality built in, and a 4-pin resistive touch screen driver. I looked at the specs file but much of it went over my head.
I will bring a few pages of the specs with me for us to look at. Perhaps Len can help us decipher it a bit.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Gumstix Power Consumption
It would seem as per this specs page that the Gumstix utilizes 1.5Watts of power with Wifi inactive and 2.0Watts with Wifi active. That is referring to the XM4-BT board which has built in Bluetooth. I will be changing the part #s in the specs now since our discussion.
As far as the daughter boards with audiostix and the video display boards, they are both 60-pin expansion boards so I'm not sure how we're going to work this out. Perhaps Len can offer some feedback on this. The assortment of expansion boards can be viewed here.
The audiostix does have an LCD interface according to the specs here but it seems that some soldering is required to make this work. I don't know what that means but I would say its safe to exclude the audiostix board if we want a nice display interface.
As far as the daughter boards with audiostix and the video display boards, they are both 60-pin expansion boards so I'm not sure how we're going to work this out. Perhaps Len can offer some feedback on this. The assortment of expansion boards can be viewed here.
The audiostix does have an LCD interface according to the specs here but it seems that some soldering is required to make this work. I don't know what that means but I would say its safe to exclude the audiostix board if we want a nice display interface.
Visio Block Diagram
Hey guys, the visio block diagram is ready. I've emailed it to everyone as an attachment.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Gumstix Update
I will look into more on Qtopia and the multimedia capabilities and see if there is an MP3 decoder that can interface with it.
Gumstix
Hey guys, I just watched a very interesting seminar/presentation on the Gumstix and how they're trying to work with Microsoft to provide Win CE 6 support for the Gumstix. The presentation is quite informative and gives excellent insight to some of the applications of Gumstix. With customers such as HP, Boeing, Nokia and Motorola, I think we can rest assured that we're getting a product that is solid. The company itself has been in operation for 5 years.
The presentation with slides and video is available at: http://content.digitalwell.washington.edu/msr/external_release_talks_12_05_2005/14736/lecture.htm.
Okay, so it looks like Gumstix has several variations for their motherboards that we can purchase. The main difference between them is the iteration of production. Their verdex boards are the most current (with the verdex2 or verdex pro board to come soon).
We should look at the verdex XL6P board which has bluetooth capability built right in, 128MB RAM, 32MB Flash and operates at 600MHz. http://gumstix.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=27&products_id=178
This would allow us to add two expansion boards to it. We could add, for example, an audio board, and an LCD driver board. I think we should add the following board: http://gumstix.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=31&products_id=158 to provide the audio I/O, USB and LCD display connection support.
It updates data to the flash rom using a serial connection which is quite slow. In order to do the updates, the wiki mentioned of a USB-serial cable being the easiest, slowest, yet stable method of updating the kernel, and other apps onto the rom.
As far as the operating system is concerned, they are using a customized version of Linux OpenEmbedded. There is extensive documentation available on their site as to how to acquire, compile and flash the linux OS onto the Gumstix.
Take a look here: The particular sections of interest to us are the Getting Started and Build System Overview
http://www.gumstix.net/Software/111.html
Of course, there is also the Linux OpenEmbedded wiki which has much more detail about the structure of the kernel and the Linux OE system itself. See here: http://wiki.openembedded.net/index.php/Main_Page.
Another interesting piece of info that I came across is that we can actuall run Qtopia ontop of Linux OE on our Gumstix board. This would give it a very nice prebuilt cell-phone like interface. Perhaps the functions can than be tweaked to give a display of heartrate/ECG waveform, date/time, workout info/records stored on SD and MP3 playback information. Take a look here to see an example of the GUI provided by this package: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qtopia. Also take a look at this link to see some of the devices that are currently using the Qtopia interface: http://trolltech.com/company/customers/customer-devices.
Qtopia also provides a set of built-in classes to provide Music Player functionality. We could also use simple GUI programming techniques to create a custom canvas and layout music controls which then utilize the classes provided in the Qtopia core system to play music. Qtopia requires a backend MP3 decoder or Quicktime or some sort of streaming server for linux to actually provide the MIDI/Wav/MP3 data to the player. This would greatly cut down on the work involved while giving a very polished look-and-feel to the interface. See here: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.4/phonon-capabilities.html and here: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.4/phonon-musicplayer.html to get some idea of how this would work.
My computer just blue-screened on me so I am afraid to keep going further. Therefore, I am posting this for now. I will continue once I have recovered from the psychological shock and aftermath of the blue screen.
The presentation with slides and video is available at: http://content.digitalwell.washington.edu/msr/external_release_talks_12_05_2005/14736/lecture.htm.
Okay, so it looks like Gumstix has several variations for their motherboards that we can purchase. The main difference between them is the iteration of production. Their verdex boards are the most current (with the verdex2 or verdex pro board to come soon).
We should look at the verdex XL6P board which has bluetooth capability built right in, 128MB RAM, 32MB Flash and operates at 600MHz. http://gumstix.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=27&products_id=178
This would allow us to add two expansion boards to it. We could add, for example, an audio board, and an LCD driver board. I think we should add the following board: http://gumstix.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=31&products_id=158 to provide the audio I/O, USB and LCD display connection support.
It updates data to the flash rom using a serial connection which is quite slow. In order to do the updates, the wiki mentioned of a USB-serial cable being the easiest, slowest, yet stable method of updating the kernel, and other apps onto the rom.
As far as the operating system is concerned, they are using a customized version of Linux OpenEmbedded. There is extensive documentation available on their site as to how to acquire, compile and flash the linux OS onto the Gumstix.
Take a look here: The particular sections of interest to us are the Getting Started and Build System Overview
http://www.gumstix.net/Software/111.html
Of course, there is also the Linux OpenEmbedded wiki which has much more detail about the structure of the kernel and the Linux OE system itself. See here: http://wiki.openembedded.net/index.php/Main_Page.
Another interesting piece of info that I came across is that we can actuall run Qtopia ontop of Linux OE on our Gumstix board. This would give it a very nice prebuilt cell-phone like interface. Perhaps the functions can than be tweaked to give a display of heartrate/ECG waveform, date/time, workout info/records stored on SD and MP3 playback information. Take a look here to see an example of the GUI provided by this package: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qtopia. Also take a look at this link to see some of the devices that are currently using the Qtopia interface: http://trolltech.com/company/customers/customer-devices.
Qtopia also provides a set of built-in classes to provide Music Player functionality. We could also use simple GUI programming techniques to create a custom canvas and layout music controls which then utilize the classes provided in the Qtopia core system to play music. Qtopia requires a backend MP3 decoder or Quicktime or some sort of streaming server for linux to actually provide the MIDI/Wav/MP3 data to the player. This would greatly cut down on the work involved while giving a very polished look-and-feel to the interface. See here: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.4/phonon-capabilities.html and here: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.4/phonon-musicplayer.html to get some idea of how this would work.
My computer just blue-screened on me so I am afraid to keep going further. Therefore, I am posting this for now. I will continue once I have recovered from the psychological shock and aftermath of the blue screen.
Friday, September 12, 2008
2008-2009 Project Description
Dr. MacEachern's project for 2008-2009 will be the development of a CMOS Active Pixel image sensor. This is the type of image sensor commonly used in cameraphones and most consumer-grade digital cameras. Students will be designing the following components: (1) the active pixel sensor itself; (2) read-out and addressing circuits; (3) low power and high speed amplifiers; (4) low power and high bandwidth analog to digital converters; (5) mixed-signal building blocks, such as comparators, amplifiers, and filters; (6) FPGA-based interface and test systems; (7) image processing algorithms in hardware; (8) auxiliary support circuits.
Industry is currently facing problems developing imagers that have high dynamic range (can be used in both low light and high light conditions), that perform well in low light conditions without showing excessive image noise, and that enable rapid image stabilization. If you've ever been frustrated by blurry, noisy pictures taken using your expensive cameraphone, this is your chance to fix things for the better.
Industry is currently facing problems developing imagers that have high dynamic range (can be used in both low light and high light conditions), that perform well in low light conditions without showing excessive image noise, and that enable rapid image stabilization. If you've ever been frustrated by blurry, noisy pictures taken using your expensive cameraphone, this is your chance to fix things for the better.
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