since my roots are in the software world I have used team collaboration tools for many of my projects.
I know there are many tools which are perfectly fitted for software engineering by having tools such as repository browsers, code review, ticket (issue) systems and so on.
In my opinion many of these techniques are also usable for electronic engineering. I wanted to ask the community and the engineers: What do you think?
What are the tools needed for good team collaboration for electronic engineers?
What do you expect from a good team collaboration software?
What I though of: The classic ones: Ticket/Issue system Tasks and Milestones Messages/Blog/Forum/etc. "Design review" where you can add a comment to anything inside a library, schematic or PCB design. This could be displayed in a graphical way so you have "post-its" on your design. This would be the really tricky thing.
I'm thinking about creating an open source, web-based team collaboration platform. Since there are many for software engineers I though of one for electronic engineering.
I just found out (I don't know if this exists for a long time or if this is new or if this was posted here already) that ITeadStudio can produce 4 layer PCBs :).
on Thursday I visited the Frankfurter Buchmesse (a book fair in Frankfurt, Germany). There was an extra building by the car manufacturer Audi which had lot of Audi stuff inside and a room for some antique things.
In the main room of this building there were a few cars standing around and an art installation.
The art installation is the mainly interesting thing:
For rows of 34 thermal printers each. All 136 thermal printers were printing - guess what - twitter messages.
It was impressive - an impressive waste of paper :)
The file IMG_20111013_142304.jpg shows the waste of paper on the second day - I don't know if they already removed some of the paper or not.
Just wanted to share those photos with you (sadly I only had my smartphone for photos and not much time).
my new project is to develop a development board containing an ARM microcontroller and a FPGA (much like the LeafLabs oak it seems).
My choice for the micro is the new STM32F207 (ZE I think).
I'm struggling with the FPGA.
I would like to use something I never worked with and that would be an Altera FPGA. My "problem" is that the Xilinx Spartan 3E FPGAs come in a PQFP208 package even for the XC3S250E which, I think, has plenty of space (if not it can be changed against the 500k version). The XC3S250E comes with a price of ~20€ @ 1 here in Germany.
Since I don't want just 144 pins I searched for an Altera Cyclone with > 144 pins and found the EP3C16Q240C8N which comes in a PQFP240 package (240 pins? wtf? who needs BGA :D).
The downsite of this is that the chip would cost ~32€ @ 1. But compared to the Xilinx (compared with the compare table on the Altera website at http://http://www.altera.com/cgi-bin/device_compare.pl) it is much bigger than the Xilinx XC3S250E and even has more space than the XC3S500E (the Altera chip would roughly be like an XC3S750E if it would exist :) ). The XC3S500E would be at 27€ @ 1. So the Altera solution is much cheaper for what you get than the Xilinx solution but more expensive when ~5000 LC/LE would be enough...
So my question: What is your opinion? Which one should I choose? Also statet the possibility that there could be a small manufacturing run if people are interested in this? (that's an unrealistic thought I think but who knows...)
The other chips aren't very cheap, too. The STM32 comes at ~10€ @ 1 via Digikey and there should be a SDRAM and eventually a SRAM which are about 10€ each, too.
for my current project I will have to design a PCB which will hold a controller (maybe I will use some ATtiny oder ATmega's, they are cheap... But the STM32F100 series is also cheap :) ) which is interfaced by a SPI interface and some capacitive touch buttons (using http://http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/devices.asp?category_id=170&family_id=702&subfamily_id=2259: Atmels QTouch). I also would use a PIC but I've never done anything with it... :).
The plan is to have some simple buttons (maybe with LED in the middle) and one slider. I would like to have a wheel slider (e.g. for menus) but I don't know if this will fit the project.
Maybe this is a thing in which other people are interested? Maybe this could be something for DP?
I chose QTouch at this point because it's damn simple and only consists of one resistor, capacitor and electrode for one touch field. And it can be implemented with a few lines of code on every microcontroller which supports putting it's pins to a floating state.
Any suggestions? Any things you would like to see?
Just a thought: Maybe you want to also think about connection the FT2232H BDBUS1 (UART RX) to a free pin of the CPLD - it's imo the only thing needed to build the KT-Link interface into the CPLD (KT-Link: http://www.shop.kristech.eu/product_inf ... anguage=EN, user manual with interface diagram on site 6: http://www.shop.kristech.eu/download/KT-LINK-UM-ENG.pdf). The KT-Link is prepared for the use of the SWD protocol (UART style - so it needs the UART RX) and since this protocol is currently beeing build into OpenOCD I think there will be a lot of people who will use it :).
So my idea was: Why not create a small board which interfaces a single SDRAM chip from a CPLD and gives the MCU the possibility to interface it like any SRAM. First parallel but maybe also via SPI or so.
The CPLD they used for the interface to the mobile SDRAM was a XC2C128 with 128 mcells and 144 pins (VFQ144 package) (102 macrocells and 86 pins used). This chip costs about 8Euro @ 1.
For the DDR SDRAM interface they even only used 60 macrocells and 78 pins...
I would like to see your suggestions to this. I don't know if I will try to develop this board some time but maybe there are others who are also interested in this :). Maybe it will push my motivation ;).
I was developing my own version of a JTAG programmer with the FT2232H as I saw this project here.
I liked the Idea with the CPLD very much and I'd love to play with CPLD's or FPGA's so I decided to adopt this idea.
I didn't want to wait for this project not because I need it fast but because I wanted to have a JTAG programmer which also breaks out the B-BUS of the FT2232H so I could do other things with it than only JTAG at a time.
Well, now I wanted to share my somewhat forked design with you .
It did get a little bit crazy: I have the FT2232H and a XC2C64A (I want to play with it, so this is the slightly bigger version ^^). The CPLD is used as a buffer for the JTAG channel A of the FT2232H (support for a wide range of voltages ). It can be programmed via the JTAG channel B.
The connection JTAG channel B -> CPLD JTAG can be interrupted - there is a buffer in the middle which can be disabled by removing a jumper - so the full channel B can be used otherwise.
I like the overall setup because this now is somewhat of a USB -> Dual Serial Communication + FT2232H breakout board + XC2C64A breakout board + XC2C64A small development board ^^. You could even cut the pcb in two halfs and each one would work as a breakout board on its own ^^.
I attached the schematics and a quick&dirty version of the PCB (100mmx46mm in size). The design is done with KiCad. If anyone is interested in the design files I can post them here.
Also it is completly untested PCB's are expensive so I have to wait for some other PCB's before I can send them to the manufacturer. Sadly I'm completly unsure about the buffer - I have no idea if it will work this way - I think it will but I know me I'm thinking about replacing it with four simple jumpers - then it will work .
I got it two days ago and used it already successfully. Today I thought I should run an update of the firmware and first checked for the version: v0.2 . So I ran the firmware update for firmware 2.1 and pushed the 2.12 bitstream. It all worked fine, the trig LED goes on after the ACT LED finishes flashing, I can update the firmware and push other bitstreams.
The only thing not working: Connecting to the device in the client application - I tried both, the SUMP and the SUMP fork, I tried all speed configurations an sample depths but I cant get it to work.
When I click on "capture" it just says "device not found". The selected COM port is the correct one. In the stdout it says: Attaching to: /dev/ttyS9 (115200bps) Run started Device ID: 0x0 Run aborted java.io.IOException: Device not found.
All is tested under Windows 7 x86_64 and Ubuntu Linux x86_64.
The ols-loader self test returns no errors and PUMP loader says: Opening serial port '/dev/ttyS9' @ 921600 ... OK Found PUMP HW: 1, FW: 2.1, Boot: 1 Found flash: ATMEL AT45DB041D
As I said, before the update it all worked fine.
Any hints on this? I would like to proceed analyzing a pcb this evening
Thanks Nils
[Edit] Ah, before I forget it: I also raised the RXTX timeout from 100ms to all up to 1000ms. No effect.
.
PCB's are expensive so I have to wait for some other PCB's before I can send them to the manufacturer.
.