Progress Report Week 1: 15-19 April Week 2: 22-26 April

What was done: 1. Getting Started with Beaglebone 2. Read in Analog Inputs & Display on Output Console, Cloud 9 IDE 3. Testing XStream Using a Loopback What was attempted: 1. Getting Beaglebone to serial transmit via UART_RT and UART_RX

1. Getting Started with Beaglebone

The following steps were done to get started with Beaglebone using Cloud9 IDE. Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Plug in Beaglebone into computer using the USB cable provided. Install drivers found in the Beaglebone. Eject Beaglebone so that it connects via Ethernet. Go to http://beagleboard.org/static/beaglebone/latest/README.htm . Scroll down to " Step #4: Explore Cloud9 IDE, Click here to launch : http://192.168.7.2:3000/ " This brings you to Cloud9 IDE, the programming platform using node.js/bonescript javascript language

1.1 Blinking USR LED:

Figure 1.0 Code for Blinking USR LEDs

Figure 1.1 Blinking USR0 and USR3

1.2 Blinking External LED

Figure 1.2 Code for blinking an external LED We used Pin3 of Port8, which corresponds do GPIO1_6 located to send a logic 1 and logic 0 to the LED to blink it.

Figure 1.3 Blinking external LED

2. Read in Analog Inputs & Display on Output Console in Cloud 9 IDE

Analog input pins can have a maximum of 1.8V only. To first test reading in analog voltages, we connected Pin32 of Port 9, VDD_ADC, which has a voltage of 1.8V. We found the following codes on the internet that allowed us to read in from all analog inputs: https://gist.github.com/omundy/2794039

Figure 2.0 Codes for reading in from all analog inputs After debugging and running, we managed to read in from all the analog pins and display the values in the "Output Log".

Figure 2.1 Values displayed on "Output Log".

The voltage that was read should display 1.8V. However, the maximum value that will displayed is 4096 according to online sources. Thus, 1.8V corresponds to 4096. We wrote another program that would translate the readings to the actual voltage. The program is shown below:

Figure 2.2 Codes and results to reading in and displaying the actual voltage.

Figure 2.3 Close-up of "Output Log" Figure 2.3 shows the readings when there the analog pins do not have any inputs. After connecting Pin32 to Pin33 of Port9, we can see the reading when1.8V is inputted to Analog Input4 ie.ADC4. It shows the following results:

Figure 2.4 Readings when ADC4 is connected to 1.8V We see that ADC4 shows a value around 4096, and the actual voltage is close to 1.8V.

3. Testing Xstream Using a Loopback

Both radios must be reset by pushing up the first 2 DIP switches of each radio and restarting each of them. One radio is connected to the computer running windows via a serial USB adapter. The driver for the adapter is then installed. The other radio is connected to a loopback adapter. A software called X-CTU (Figure 3.0) is used to test the range and signal strength in different situations at different distances. It shows many successful signals have been sent and received from the other radio, and also the signal strength of the radio.

Figure 3.0 X-CTU Software