Milestones Reached
Printed Circuit Board
We completed the PCB schematic.
Wireless Network
A two system wireless network has been set up. The radio uses serial message packets to communicate with the host device; in this case the host device is a computer running a python program.
One program connects with a radio and acts as the transmitter. It asks the user for an input and then sends the message to the other radio
Transmitter test example
The other program acts as the reciever. It monitors the serial port of the radio, and if the radio gets a message from another radio, the contents of the message are printed to the screen
Reciever Test from the mexsage sent by the transmitter.
MATLAB Decoding and Encoding
A simulation using MATLAB simulates an encoding emplementaiton and transmitter. Simulated noise is then inserted into the message. At the end of the sumulation, the recieving and decode process is carried out.
Hardware and Software Tools
Two programming languages used for different steps of the process. The communication with the radio is done in python. The encode decode simulation is implemented in MATLAB. The radio we have chosen is the SiFLEX02 by LS research. For testing, we are using the development kit for the SiFLEX02.
Tradeoffs and Design Decisions
We picked the SiFLEX 02 for our radio. It is not the cheapest, most power efficient or the most powerful radio. It was average in all its specifications compared to the set of radios we picked from. Therefore, we decided that it was the most ideal for the system.
We have not been able to have the AVR32 communicate with the microprocessor because we ran out of time. Instead we have chosen to implement a proof of concept using Python to communicate with the radios in place of the microprocessor; we are simulating encoding, transmission and decoding using MATLAB.
Problems
Many of the requirements we set for ourselves were not able to be met. We over-estimated the amount of time and effort it takes to carry out all of the tasks we set out for ourselves. Decisions about tradeoffs had to be made. We set up a proof of concept with our design instead of an actual implementation.