ECE 477

Digital Systems Senior Design Project

Rev 8/09

Homework 5: Theory of Operation and Hardware Design Narrative

Team Code Name: HULK Team Member Completing This Homework: Dhruv Lamba E-mail Address of Team Member: dlamba@ purdue.edu Evaluation: SCORE 10 DESCRIPTION Group No. 9

Excellent among the best papers submitted for this assignment. Very few corrections needed for version submitted in Final Report. Very good all requirements aptly met. Minor additions/corrections needed for 9 version submitted in Final Report. Good all requirements considered and addressed. Several noteworthy 8 additions/corrections needed for version submitted in Final Report. Average all requirements basically met, but some revisions in content should 7 be made for the version submitted in the Final Report. Marginal all requirements met at a nominal level. Significant revisions in 6 content should be made for the version submitted in the Final Report. Below the passing threshold major revisions required to meet report * requirements at a nominal level. Revise and resubmit. * Resubmissions are due within one week of the date of return, and will be awarded a score of 6 provided all report requirements have been met at a nominal level. Comments:

ECE 477 1.0 Introduction

Digital Systems Senior Design Project

8/09

The HULK (Huge Universal Language Keyboard) is designed to be a multi-language keyboard, enabling the user to type using customizable layouts, which may be changed in real time through a touch screen menu on the keyboard itself.

The external design of the HULK involves a 15 4:3 aspect ratio LCD monitor surmounted by a PCB containing a matrix of 61 switches (for the 61 keys) to receive user input. To the right of and adjacent to the keyboard matrix is a touch screen menu which is used to select the language to type in. In addition to typing in pre-programmed languages, the keyboard may be fed new languages through an SD card interface on the keyboard itself. The keyboard communicates with a host PC running suitable word processing software such as Microsoft Word/Word Pad. The communication takes place via a PS2 connector that is converted to USB through a PS2-USB adapter.

Internally, the HULK uses a PIC32MX695F512L microcontroller from Microchip [1] to control the various peripherals. The microcontroller communicates with an FPGA, the Cyclone II from Altera [2] via the microcontrollers SPI; the FPGA in turn drives the VGA output for the LCD monitor. The SD card also communicates with the micro through the SPI interface. The major subsection of the HULK circuit which is the actual keyboard consists of 61 switches [3] as described above. The switches are laid out in 5 rows on a PCB surmounting the LCD monitor, with their signal wires being read as parallel inputs into an array of 8 8-bit parallel-serial shift registers [4] (total bit width of 64 bits for the 61 keys, with 3 dont care bits). The shift registers are daisy chained to output an 8 byte serial code to the micro, also via the SPI interface (3-wire). Finally, the touch screen ELT240320ATP [5] also uses the SPI interface to convey touch input information, and in addition uses 8 bits of bus width from the microcontroller to control the TFT screen display.

Regarding power components, the HULK uses AC power at 110V to serve the LCD monitor directly. The 110V line is stepped down to 5.0 V using an AC-DC power supply, which provides a power rail for all the devices operating at this logic level, e.g., the shift registers. The other devices operating at 3.3 V, such as the microcontroller, the FPGA and the flash chip are powered using another step down DC-DC 5.0 3.3 V power supply. Linear regulators are used in addition with the power supply to keep the voltage levels constant. Inrush current limiters are also used to provide surge protection and limit the current to below the absolute maximum ratings. -1-

ECE 477 2.0 Theory of Operation

Digital Systems Senior Design Project

8/09

The circuit mainly consists of the following sub sections: 1) Power supply board 2) Microcontroller circuit board containing a. FPGA based VGA signal generator b. Touch screen module c. SD Card module d. Keyboard 1) Power Supply Circuit: The LCD Monitor is powered directly with a 110 VAC line from a wall outlet, as the LCD monitor we are using already has on board power management circuitry. For the remaining D.C. components, an AC-DC converter is used to provide the DC voltages. Based on the DC characteristics and logic levels of the microcontroller, the FPGA, the touch screen and the shift registers; two main voltage levels were identified: 3.3 V and 5.0 V; namely, 3.3V for the microcontroller, the FPGA, the control circuitry of the touch screen, the Flash I.C. as well as the S.D card, and 5.0 V for the shift registers, the Pull Up rail for the pushbuttons and the backlight on the touch screen.

The ZPSA20-5 power supply [6] is used to serve the 5.0 V rails, while a MPDTY027S [7] is used to step down to the 3.3 V level. The ZPSA20-5 power supply has a reasonable power rating of 20 W, which makes sure that a number of devices can be powered without fear of overloading/heating the power supply. Another assurance that power needs will be met is that all our devices use an extremely low amount of current less than 200 mA. Although the power supply has on board regulation, 3.3 V and 5.0 V voltage regulators, the MCP1700T-3302E/TT [8]and ADP3303ARZ-5 [8] respectively, are used in conjunction with the step down power supplies to ensure a constant voltage supply to all devices. This is because a drop below 1.8 V on storage devices such as the flash or the microcontroller memory can lead to data loss (see [1]).

Finally, inrush current limiters [10] that limit input current to 200mA are used to prevent damage to the device, since the absolute maximum current for most of the devices is 200mA.

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ECE 477 2) Microcontroller:

Digital Systems Senior Design Project

8/09

The microcontroller [1] will be communicating with the FPGA [2], the touch screen, as well as the SD card chip using 3.3 V logic. The shift register array uses 5.0 V logic, however, and thus will need to have the corresponding SPI port configured for 5.0 V operation.

(a) FPGA Microcontroller Interface

The microcontroller needs to basically communicate with FPGA on two fronts. The first is via 3 simple General Purpose I/O (GPIO) pins, two of which convey a 2 bit language code to the FPGA, and one of which acts as a multiplexer line that allows either the microntroller/FPGA exclusive control over the flash chip. The second is SPI which is used for data transfer between the flash and the microcontroller. Since the Atmel Flash Chip [11] allows a constant write mode where the chip select simply needs to be kept low to keep receiving serial data, the Chip Select of the SPI needs to be configured to stay low for duration of the data transaction. The flash chip has a selftimed program cycle of 30S which corresponds to a clock frequency of about 33.33kHz for the SPI CLK.

The 3 GPIO pins going to the FPGA are simply combinational outputs, which are basically set at startup/during language change. On startup, the microcontroller can effectively set the multiplexer line to let the micro take control over the flash chip and check if the languages stored on flash match the language codes on the SD card. If the language codes match, reprogramming the flash with already stored languages is redundant, and hence the microcontroller can hand over flash control back to the FPGA. If new languages do need to be loaded, the microcontroller can retake control of the flash chip and burn it with the new language information from the SD card via SPI.

During language change (when the user selects a new language from the touch screen menu) the 2 bit language lines convey the language code to the FPGA, thus giving it the necessary information to change the layout displayed.

When the FPGA is independently controlling the flash however, it will operate at a frequency of 25.175 MHz, since this is the standard VGA signal clock frequency. The VGA signal is output as a 5 wire signal to the LCD monitor. -3-

ECE 477

Digital Systems Senior Design Project

8/09

(b) Touch screenMicrocontroller Interface

The touch screen also uses 4 wire SPI to communicate with the microcontroller. The 4 wire SPI mainly conveys user input on the touch screen. In addition 8 data lines send display pattern bits to the TFT display underlying the touch screen. All logic on the touch screen is 3.3 V; the only 5.0 V usage being by the backlight. The typical operating frequency suggested for the touch screen is 335kHz; since there is no adequate reason to use a different frequency, considering that the touch screen will simply be a static menu, that need not change extremely fast, the default frequency will be used.

(c) SD Card Microcontroller Interface

The SD card will basically store all the language information needed by the HULK. This includes bitmap files to display on the LCD monitor, Unicode decoding scheme to send hexadecimal character code to PC, as well as the language code, which would serve as unique identifier for the languages address in memory. The file system currently intended is FAT32.

Assuming a standard display resolution of 96 dpi for our LCD monitor, and the size of the keyboard layout to be displayed as 12x5 inches, the bitmap file for the keyboard layout corresponds to pixel dimensions of 1152x480. Using a monochrome color scheme or 1 bit/pixel, this corresponds to a file size of about ~70kB (this was tested by saving a standard keyboard as a monochrome file of dimensions 1152x480 pixels).

All communication between the microcontroller and the SD Card will take place through the SPI interface, with the Data Out of the Microcontrollers SPI port going in to the MOSI pin of the SD card, Data In coming from the MISO, the CLOCK being fed from the SPI clock and the CS being controlled by the SPIs Slave Select. Since the data required on the SD card for language information is assumed to be already present on it, there will be no write operations to the SD card.

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ECE 477 (d) Keyboard

Digital Systems Senior Design Project

8/09

The keyboard as described above contains a total of 61 switches for the 61 keys on our layout. The switches are laid out in 5 rows on a PCB surmounting the LCD monitor, with their signal wires being read as parallel inputs into an array of 8 8-bit parallel-serial shift registers. The switches are pulled up to 5.0 VCC using an array of 8 resistor packs [12] and provide contact closures to ground.

By daisy chaining these together, an effective parallel to serial shift register of 64 bits is obtained. The shift register array sends the keyboard state as 8 byte serial data to the microcontroller through a 3 wire SPI interface. As mentioned earlier, the SPI port needs to be configured for 5.0 V operation to account for the logic level of the shift registers.

Also, since the keys are ultimately mechanical switches and hence prone to bouncing, the keyboard state needs to be read at a much slower frequency than the SPI typically operates at. Assuming that a key bounces for about 8 ms, after which it resumes a constant state (high/low), the keyboard needs to be read every 8ms or about 125 Hz.

Finally, the shift registers need to be selected using the chip select line of the SPI, which must stay low for the entire data transaction. Therefore considering a 125Hz clock rate to shift out 64 bits of data, the chip select line must be low for a total of 64 clock cycles of the SPI clock or 0.512 seconds. If this cannot be changed as a register setting in the microcontroller, a GPIO pins can be used instead to serve this purpose.

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ECE 477

Digital Systems Senior Design Project

8/09

3.0 Hardware Design Narrative The HULK does not require a very powerful microcontroller, as there are only a few subsystems, all of which use either the SPI interface or GPIO pins. Other modules such as a PWM, Timer, or ATD module are not required. The subsystem that will be used the most is the SPI interface. For the current design, the HULK requires four SPI ports for the following peripherals: SD card interface, the reading of the keyboard, the flash ROM chip, and the touch screen interface. Because all of these devices perform their operations serially and synchronously, SPI was a natural choice to interface all of the devices with the microcontroller. The detailed theory of operation for each SPI device is described in section 2.0 of this document. The other major utilization of the microcontroller comes mainly in the form of general purpose input/output pins. One of the interfaces for which a custom made data/clock signal is necessary is the PS2 interface; which will be used to allow the HULK to communicate with the host PC. This will require two pins including a data line and a clock. The touch screen interface also requires eight designated pins for the graphics controller on the touch screen board. This is the parallel graphics data for the bitmaps that will be displayed on the LCD screen. Also, the FPGA and the microcontroller share a handshaking protocol for control of the flash slave, that is selected by the microcontroller incase new languages need to be loaded from the SD card, or by the FPGA when it needs to access the bitmaps to display on the monitor. This handshaking is achieved by a single multiplexer select line that routes/disconnects the SPI of the microcontroller to/from the flash chip. Two additional GPIO pins are used to convey a 2 bit language code to the FPGA. The language code basically serves as an identifier to the FPGA that tells it the location of the language information in the flash memory map. The FPGA can be configured to read the GPIO pins every 1 second or so, since it is highly unlikely that a user will switch between the languages on the touch screen at a rate faster than once every second.

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ECE 477

Digital Systems Senior Design Project

8/09

4.0 Summary The HULK (Huge Universal Language Keyboard) is designed to be a multi-language keyboard that enables the user to type using customizable layouts, which may be changed in real time through an interactive touch screen menu on the keyboard itself. To achieve its purpose, the HULK uses an LCD monitor to display the dynamic keyboard layouts, surmounted by a layer of transparent keys that reveal the displayed keys below. In addition, a touch screen menu is provided that enables the user to change the language from the currently selected language to one of 4 languages supported by the keyboard. These languages may be loaded into the HULK at boot-up from an SD card, a slot for which is also provided on the keyboard itself.

Internally, the HULK uses a PIC32MX360F512L to manage the various sub-systems that include an FPGA to drive the VGA signal required by the monitor, an SD card interface, a touch screen TFT display, as well as a daisy chain of shift registers to read the keyboard state. The microcontroller uses 4 wire SPI to talk to the flash via the FPGA, 4 wire SPI to talk to the touch screen, 3 wire SPI to read the keyboard state from the shift register array, and 4 wire SPI to read from the SD card. In addition, the microcontroller uses 8 GPIO pins to send display patterns to the touch screen LCD, 2 GPIO pins for instructing the FPGA on what language to display, 1 GPIO pin to mux the SPI path from the microcontroller to the flash, and 2 GPIO pins configured as data and clock to transmit data to the host PC via SPI.

The LCD monitor uses AC power from a direct AC line, while the power and ground rails for the DC components is provided through a step down AC-DC power supply for the 5.0 V components, which is further stepped down to 3.3 V for the remaining 3.3 V logic components.

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ECE 477 List of References [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

Digital Systems Senior Design Project

8/09

Microchip PIC32MX695F512L Data Sheet USB, CAN and Ethernet 32-bit Flash Microcontrollers: https://engineering.purdue.edu/477grp9/Datasheets/micro.pdf Altera Cyclone II Device Family Datasheet: https://engineering.purdue.edu/477grp9/Datasheets/fpga.pdf Panasonic 6mm square SMD Light Touch Switches EVQ-Q2B02W http://industrial.panasonic.com/www-data/pdf/ATK0000/ATK0000CE28.pdf Asynchronous parallel in or synchronous serial in/serial out 8 - stage static shift register HCF4021B: http://www.st.com/stonline/books/pdf/docs/8216.pdf 2.8 TFT LCD with Touchscreen: ELT240320ATP https://engineering.purdue.edu/477grp9/Datasheets/touchscreen.pdf TDK-Lambda 2 x 3.5" 20W AC-DC Power Supplies ZPSA20-5 series. http://us.tdk-lambda.com/lp/ftp/Specs/zpsa.pdf Murata Electronics 5.0 V 3.3 V power supply MPDTY027S http://www.murata.com/power/short/f07e1.pdf Microchip Low Quiescent Current LDO MCP1700T-3302E/TT http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/21826b.pdf Analog Devices Inc IC REG LDO 200MA 5V 8-SOIC. ADP3303ARZ-5 http://www.analog.com/static/imported-files/Data_Sheets/ADP3303.pdf Cantherm Inrush Current Suppresor http://www.cantherm.com/products/thermistors/cantherm_mf72.pdf Atmel High Speed Small Sectored SPI Flash Memory https://engineering.purdue.edu/477grp9/Datasheets/flashic.pdf 746X101103JP RESISTOR ARRAY 10K OHM BUSSED SMD http://www.ctscorp.com/components/Datasheets/CTSChipArrayDs.pdf

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ECE 477

Digital Systems Senior Design Project

8/09

Appendix A: System Block Diagram

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