Team 3 Power Meter

James Aitkenhead, Nicole Ogden, Matt Quantz

The Product

Targets customers who want to monitor energy statistics with an easy-to-use graphical interface

Our widget will help you to be more aware of your energy usage, saving you time and money

Mechanical Design

Mechanical Design

Project Management

We used a combination of traditional and agile project management.

It would be very hard to manage a project that has never been done before using a strictly traditional approach (hard to estimate task durations)

Resource ScopingFPGADifferent versions of Nios IISoftwareIP BlocksInternal Power SupplyOutsourcing ConsultantsOther items considered for design

Code RepositoryUsed TortoiseSVN for Project Version ControlDirectory Structure:

C CodeC ScriptsC TestRTL CodeRTL ScriptsRTL TestDocumentation

This Directory Structure Supports Reusability

Code ReviewsWe did not implement formal code reviews

We collaborated between team members for writing and testing code

Benefits of RTL and C Coding GuidelinesMakes Code More Readable

Makes Code More Reusable

Makes Code More Portable

Increases Productivity of Code Reviews

Allows Auto-Documentation (Doxygen)

IP Design and Reuse

IP Component Reuse saves time in a project

Component Reusability should be paramount in a design

Reusability brings the product to market faster

Hardware to Software InterfaceA register map is a listing of all the memory

registers used in the project, and their address

The register map is used by everyone from design to layout to verification engineers

This makes it important to create the map early in the project

The register map can be created manually, or there is software available to automate the process

Functional Verification

Direct testing was used

Code Coverage was 100%

Cost Estimate (Break-Even Cost)

Part Price

Fpga 30

Lcd + touch 100

Pcb 30

Case 25

MCP3909 7.50

Power supply 10

Software 1,000,000

Outsourcing consultants Free

Engineering time spent Priceless

IP blocks used 100

Misc. components 200

Total ~ $500

Lessons Learned

Don’t wait until the last minute to add documentation

Read the datasheets for little “Easter eggs” which could delay

progress

Divide tasks more evenly between team members

RoadblocksWe struggled to re-create last quarter’s

touch screen interface

We struggled to learn how to use all the project tracking tools effectively

We struggled with the opto-isolator interface between the MCP3909 and the FPGA

The SPI interface was odd to work with

ConclusionsWe successfully interfaced with the MCP3909

Evaluation BoardWe successfully displayed the measured data on the

16x2 character LCDThis was a fun project with numerous practical

applicationsWith more time, we would implement a wireless data

transfer, uploading the data to the Internet, or bothAlso with more time we were going to try to

implement Ethernet to connect the device to the internet and communicate to websites like: “Google Powermeter,” and “Microsoft hohm;” to relay instant power usage for our area.