ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE MICROCONTROLLERS SPONSORED TUTORIAL

Simpler
lation engineers to customise individual sen-
sors quickly. Costly DIP switches and LEDs
are clearly no longer suitable to accommodate
all possible requirements, especially with com-
petitive pricing in mind. Storage requirements
for all audio possibilities also mean it is simply
not cost effective to store all messages all of the
time. Thus, some way of configuring the
perform ADPCM decompression on the sound
data stored in RAM. A second DMA channel
can be set up to trigger a steady feed of sound
samples to the D/A converter, under regular
timer control. Both DMA transfers take place
transparently in the background. This optional
addition of software ADPCM compression
takes only a few kbytes of code space and

“This helps the sounder and downloading new messages

becomes mandatory.
The obvious choice is to add a standard PC
interface to benefit from the availability of soft-
designer to move
enables either four times the storage duration
or a quarter of the flash cost. Either way, the
DMA (.wav file) data format or the ADPCM
format files can be conveniently played and

security
ware for recording and modifying audio sam-
ples. There are also numerous PC software
applications for performing text to speech, with
the microcontroller configurable male and female voices and differ-
ent languages. These requirements impose two
cost overhead problems that need to be min-
selection criteria imised: the data storage requirements for audio
playback; and the fixed cost overheads of having
a PC interface in every sensor.
edited using Microsoft Sound recorder, before
being stored natively in the voice sounder.
Traditional thinking might have tempted the
designer to create a self contained PC utility to
manage the proprietary import and data transfer
of the audio sample to the sounder. But the
Plug’n’play COM port driver for Windows
described here means anyone can copy and paste
The MSP430F155 has plenty of on chip flash
for code storage, three DMA channels and a
PC audio files directly to embedded flash mem- 12bit D/A converter.

away from devices The MPEG file format commonly used for
digital music requires more embedded process-
ing power (in terms of playback MIPS as well as
ory, without having to write any special PC
software. The user GUI works in the same man-
ner you would write to a USB memory stick or applied from the host PC, keeping network

with large amounts code and data storage) than the cost of a fire
security sensor would normally allow. The recent
drop in prices of SPI data flash means the 90cent
cost of adding 1Mbyte of DMA data and an
of (relatively more How flash microcontroller based fire security sounders can be designed integral d/a converter is far cheaper than
attempting any form of Mpeg decoding.
at lower system cost than ever before. By Colin Garlick. All we need is enough flash to hold
expensive) on chip a minute’s worth of DMA
audio, played at 8bit
16ksample/s. Obviously,
flash to those with you can not execute
floppy disk, but without any of the hardware or
software costs normally associated with USB.
The data is transferred ‘magically’ to the voice
sounder without having to apply any proprietary
file conversion or file transfer process. This pro-
vides the ultimate convenience for anyone need-
ing to customise the voice sounder using
standard PC software utilities.
Having an embedded filing
system is a ‘door opener’
for new features to
administrators happy that the only embedded
equipment is controlled via standard PC setup.
Firmware updates can be implemented
remotely across any corporate network or via
the internet, if network administration allows.
All these facilities combined could save up
to 80kbyte of flash based code – and the cost
of an 8kbyte microcontroller is always cheaper
than a 128kbyte device.
This Windows software (and correspond-
ing microcontroller flash filing system) means:

A
recent trend in fire security sounders is level 1 alert” – or for staff to be clearly code directly from SPI evolve. It means an • No MSP430 flash device is too small to ben-
to move away from the traditional two informed when it is deemed safe to return to data flash, but it can infinite number of efit from Windows Plug’n’play facilities
as little as 8kbyte tone warble towards voice sounders with
clearer verbal alerts, such as: “Attention! Fire has
the building – “The emergency is now cleared.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
be used most cost
effectively to store
data logging pos-
sibilities become
• No MSP430 device is dependent upon USB
hardware for Plug’n’play
been detected in the building.” This also brings It’s not inconceivable that new types of audio data. feasible. CCTVs • No MSP430 device has insufficient flash

on chip.” the ability to provide additional instructions

unique to each sensor location, such as: “Please
warning messages and instructions might need
to evolve and be configured dynamically some-
This helps the
designer to move the
are common-
place, so why not
• End user firmware updates are now feasible
• Any coms mechanism can be hot swapped by
leave the building via the nearest available exit time after the initial building installation: microcontroller selec- have alarm sen- end users, without changing the embedded code
on the left and gather in the car park at zone A.” “Warning; an incident has been reported. tion criteria away from sors data and time • Internet access and remote control is possi-
In some cases, it may be important for Please await further instructions.” devices with large stamp events? The ble without an embedded TCP/IP stack.
building security staff to distinguish between This level of intelligent sensor challenges amounts of (relatively more MSP430 can synthe- The flash filing system referred to here is
genuine hazards and a fire drill – “This is a the design engineer to make it easier for instal- expensive) on chip flash to sise a real time clock, so also available (in a cut down form) for the new
those with as little as 8kbyte on chip. it can keep track of alarm 2xx 14pin devices even with only 1k or 2k of
Texas Instruments’ MSP430F155 is an ideal history, communications faults on chip flash. The critical pc software compo-
Figure 1: Block diagram for a voice sounder choice, with ultra low standby current, plenty or battery failures, primarily for service engi- nent (uCDrive) and embedded flash manage-
of on chip flash for code storage, DMA and a neering diagnostic purposes. Meanwhile, an ment (EFFS-TINY) for this design are
MSP430F155 3·3V
external flash 12bit D/A converter. So it’s possible to trade engineer can edit and append an internal text file available from HCC-Embedded (www.hcc-
3·3V the 8 or 12bit software quality option against stored on the device, stating when and where a embedded.com) and can be retrofitted to
Vcc P3·1 SI ~WP
P3·2 SO ~hold sampling speed. In most cases, an 8bit output repair was undertaken and by whom. Supple- existing MSP430 designs within one hour.
P3·3 CLK ~CE quality sampled at 16ksample/s is excellent mentary service information such as schematics Texas Instruments’ MSP430 flash based
Sponsored Tutorial and has more dependency on the speaker and and firmware release notes can also be stored in microcontrollers continue to evolve, taking the
RST/NMI
P5·4 drive circuit. the device, as can short PDF user manuals or an technological lead with a fire security voice
For more information, go to MAX3221 or XT2IN The three channel DMA facilities on the HTML front end. sounder that shows how industry standard PC
www.ti.com/europe/msp430 TUSB3410 MSP430F155 free CPU bandwidth to focus on The JTAG connector – normally used for sound files (wav format) can be copied and
XT2OUT amplifier deterministic audio decompression, in order to production programming and diagnostics – edited directly from an MSP430 with no spe-
RS232
TX TXIN P3·6 P6·6/DAC0 –IN VO1 reduce the data flash storage requirement costs. can now be used more productively like an ISA cial software, hardware, user skills or learning
RX RXO P3·7 +IN This keeps the D/A converter fed without slot for network card expansion. Provided there experience.
USB VSS P1·4 SHTD VO2 need of high cpu bandwidth demanding inter- is a PC bridge, the flash filing system on any
rupts. The first of two DMA channels can be device can be accessed as a Microsoft shared Author profile:
used to transfer raw storage data from the SPI network resource without need for a TCP/IP Colin Garlick is an MSP430 field applications
interface to a ram buffer. The CPU can then stack. Standard network access rights can be engineer with Texas Instruments UK.

38 New Electronics 13 September 2005 New Electronics 13 September 2005 39