RISC-V Based Safety System-on-Chip with Hardware Comparator

In this paper, a Safety System-on-Chip based on the open-source RISC-V processor SweRV EH1 from Western Digital is presented. A hardware comparator concept is followed. The SSoC is implemented on a Xilinx FPGA system and extended with standard peripherals from the Xilinx IP library and from Cobham Gaisler, so that the overall system has an Ethernet interface in addition to GPIO and UART. The goal is to create a complete redundancy approach with a hardware fault tolerance of nearly 1 from input to output based on the freely available RISC-V instruction set and prove its feasibility.

Terminal++ for Robot Researcher Using C#

Purpose: Sometimes our robot researcher needs a terminal program to exchange the data with the robot or automation device. Nevertheless, the readily available terminal program lacks some functionality that is most relevant to the researcher. We feel that a featured rich terminal program can handle lots of communication overhead for the researcher and relieve them from repetitive and time-consuming tasks. In mind for this, we researched and developed a utility program. We added extra features like automatic send, change dynamic data, etc., so our robot researcher can test the system communication better. In this paper, we demonstrated the utility program in detail. It is built using C#, which is under the Microsoft dot net framework. The code is uploaded to GitHub. Anyone can download and use it. It can be customized for their need. All used classes are available in .cs format. Design/Methodology/Approach: This is the software utility program built by the dot net framework of Microsoft visual studio. It has a graphical user interface (GUI) and some object classes. It has a serial and ethernet interface to test the channel. Once the medium is selected, the application will send whatever is written in the input text box. The Data sending may be an automatic or manual process. In manual mode, after typing the command, we need to press the “Enter” key to send the data. In automatic mode, it will send automatically within the preset interval. The transmit and receive content is displayed inside the list box. Findings/results: sometimes, our project goes into a critical phase. We need to have good tools to overcome the situation immediately. This is a helpful tool to trace the communication-related issue. Using this tool, we can observe the outgoing and incoming data traffic. The robot researcher can use it for their communication-related debug purposes. Originality/Value: Using this terminal program, our robot researcher will get lots of benefits where readily available utility programs cannot provide them. It has some unique features like automatic sending, changing dynamic content, etc. It has a serial and ethernet interface channel so that most of the device communication can be debugged through this interface software. It is entirely free and open source. Anyone can download and use it for personal as well as commercial purposes. Paper Type: Experiment-based Research.

ADDER

The article describes an electronic multifunctional adder for electricity metering SEM-3. The authors give the technical characteristics, the device and the principle of its operation. The presented adder is designed to monitor and account for the consumption of electricity generation and power directly from consumers, as well as in automated centralized accounting and control systems, and is designed for round-the-clock operation. The adder can collect and transmit information over six independent serial interfaces. The adder with a builtin GSM module provides bidirectional information exchange via cellular modem communication with remote devices and the transfer of accumulated data to the upper level of the automated electricity metering system. It provides bidirectional exchange of information over a local network with a PC over the built-in 10/100 Base-T Ethernet interface.

ISODATA SOPC-FPGA implementation of image segmentation using NIOS-II processor

<p>This paper presents an FPGA image segmentation-binarization system based on<em> </em>Iterative Self Organizing DATA <em>(ISODATA)</em> threshold using histogram analysis for embedded systems. The histogram module computes pixels levels statistics which are used by the ISODATA algorithm module to determine the segmentation threshold. In our case, this threshold binarizes a gray-scale image into two values 0 or 255. The prototype of the complete system uses an ALTERA CYCLONE-II DE2 kit with a lot of component and interfaces, such as the SD-CARD reader or a camera to read the image to be segmented, the FPGA which will implement the intellectual property (IP) core calculation with the NIOS processor, the VGA interface to view the results, and possibly of the ETHERNET interface for data transfer via internet. The use of FPGA contains the ISODATA, histogram, NIOS processor and others custom altera IPs hardware modules greatly improves processing speed and allows the binarization application to be embedded on a single chip. For the project elaboration, we have used QUARTUS-II software for the hardware development part with VHDL description, SOPC-builder or QSYS for the integration of NIOS-system, and NIOS-II-STB-ECLIPSE for the software program with eclipse c++ langage.</p><p> </p>

Design and Development of Perimeter Security Platform

There are many integrated perimeter security solutions available, the main objective of this paper is to provide cost effective solution. This paper mainly focuses on design of a Low-cost vibration module with RS485 interface, Controller hub with RS485 interface and Ethernet interface and a Command Centre server. The platform consists of RS485 daisy chained vibration sensor network connected to control server via Controller hub. It is designed to pin point the area of intrusion and cueing the camera to that specified location. It can be integrated with smart devices like PTZ/Thermal/IR cameras or radars. Each daisy chain consists of 250 sensors with each sensor 3 metres apart, each ethernet hub can handle 2 daisy chains. The Controller hub gets vibration sensor information via RS485 and transmits data to Command centre using TCP/IP protocol. The Controller centre identifies the location of the sensor and moves the PTZ camera to the specific location and live streams the data to the user.

Design of Ethernet-VLC Data Conversion System Based on FPGA

Visible light communication (VLC) has attracted people's attention due to its wide range of spectrum resources and good privacy in recent year. But research on visible light communication is mostly focused on LED materials, transfer protocol, transmission rates, etc. Lack of research that connect the visible light communications with existing communications methods. In this paper, we propose an Ethernet-visible data conversion system based on FPGA, including Ethernet interface logic, bit-width conversion logic, data buffer logic, and visible light communication transceiver logic. The proposed system achieves Ethernet and visible light access, and realizes 1000Mbps Ethernet data and 625Mbps visible light data conversion. Through buffer control, Ethernet data can be completely and reliably transmitted from high speed to low speed. By defining the structure of visible light communication frame and adding data self-recovery mechanism, data transmission has higher stability on the path of visible light. The feasibility of the system is proved by actual measurements.

New blade tip-timing system for measuring rotor blade vibration of steam and gas turbines

One of the crucial issues regarding turbine maintenance is registering blade vibrations. These vibrations can cause serious damage to the engine. Turbine blade vibrations were measured during nominal speed as well as during run up and run down. A new, low cost Blade Tip Timing (BTT) is presented in this paper. It composes of two main modules: the FPGA unit and PC unit. The system is based on the TerasIC DE0-CV development board controlled by the Cyclone V 5CEBA4F23C7 chip. Units communicate via an Ethernet interface. The system measures a signal for every revolution as well as up to three signals coming from independent rotor blade sensors. The PC unit records these data in .csv files. The system can be adapted to process the signals of additional sensors. The measurements of the 1st stage compressor blade vibrations in an SO-3 engine prove that the system works correctly, with no data loss during transmission between system units, and compares well with other measurement systems as well as numerical results.