Dhananjay V. Gadre

Application Programming Interface (API)

This chapter deals with the application programming interface (API) model of programming. This programming interface empowers the user for rapid development of applications for the Tiva microcontrollers.

ARM(R) Microcontroller Based Automatic Power Factor Monitoring and Control System

The project aims to build a simple, compact and energy-efficient system for automatic power factor monitoring and control. It incorporates Stellar is® ARM® Cortex-M3 based LM3S608 micro controller kit along with a zero crossing detector circuit and a relay driver circuit. Current transformer and potential transformer are used for gathering real time current and potential data. It is fed into the micro controller via a zero crossing detector built using TI OPA4277 High Precision Operational Amplifier. From the directly received phase data, micro controller calculates the phase difference and hence the power factor of the system. It is displayed on an HD44780 controlled 16x2 Liquid Crystal Display. According to the current power factor, capacitors are automatically switched into the circuit using relays to bring the power factor close to unity. The relay driver circuit is built using TI ULN2003A IC. The system has been tested on different loads. Power factor is accurately displayed and brought close to unity. The use of ARM® based 32-bit micro controller promises extension of the project to a complete power management unit. Apart from lower power consumption, it allows easy extension of functionalities from power data logging, remote monitoring and control, emergency alarm etc.

Road Accident Prevention Unit (R.A.P.U) (A Prototyping Approach to Mitigate an Omnipresent Threat)

Road accidents claim a staggeringly high number of lives every year. From drunk driving, rash driving and driver distraction to visual impairment, over speeding and over-crowding of vehicles, the majority of road accidents occur because of some fault or the other of the driver/occupants of the vehicle. According to the report on “Road Accidents in India, 2011” by the Ministry of Transport and Highways, Government of India, approximately every 11th person out of 100,000 died in a road accident and further, every 37th person was injured in one, making it an alarming situation for a completely unnecessary cause of death. The above survey also concluded that in 77.5 percent of the cases, the driver of the vehicle was at fault. The situation makes it a necessity to target the root cause of road accidents in order to avoid them. While car manufacturers include a system for avoiding damages to the driver and the vehicle, no real steps have been taken to actually avoid accidents. “Road Accident Prevention Unit” is a step forward in this stead. This design monitors the drivers state using multiple sensors and looks for triggers that can cause accidents, such as alcohol in the drivers breath and driver fatigue or distraction. When an alert situation is detected, the system informs the driver and tries to alert him. If the driver does not respond within a stipulated time, the system turns on a distress signal outside the vehicle to inform nearby drivers and sends a text message to the drivers next of kin about the situation. A marketable design would also shut down power to the vehicle, thus providing maximum probability for avoiding road accidents and extending a crucial window for preventive and mitigation measures to be taken.

Digital Input/Output

This chapter will focus on using the TivaWare API functions instead of the register access model discussed in the previous chapter. To get acquainted with using the TivaWare API, some of the basic experiments that were performed in Chap. 7 will be again revisited. After getting comfortable with the TivaWare API, this chapter helps in exploring some of the features present on the PadmaBoard, such as using LED as light sensor, tone generation using a buzzer, and measure distance using ultrasonic module.

GNU ARM Toolchain

This chapter will focus on the setting up of the environment for programming Tiva C Series ARM Cortex-M4 based microcontrollers using open source tools. The same methodology can be applied to program the other ARM-based microcontrollers of different families.

ARM Cortex-M4 Core and Tiva C Series Peripherals

This chapter provides overview ARM cortex M4 architecture along with its peripherals. It includes a brief description of peripherals of microcontrollers belonging to Texas Instruments Tiva C Series family.

Tiva C Series Microcontroller Breakout Board

This chapter focuses on hardware basics for the development of standalone projects using Tiva C Series microcontrollers. By standalone project, it refers to the project which does not use any evaluation board. So, this helps the developer to choose microcontroller as per their requirement and can develop their own customized system using that microcontroller.

Tiva C Series Based Standalone Projects

This chapter focuses on developing of standalone projects based on Tiva C Series of microcontrollers. As, discussed in Chap. 5 about the breakout board of Tiva C Series microcontroller, same breakout board is used in this chapter to perform experiments regarding the standalone projects. There are not much changes required in program code while using other Tiva C Series microcontrollers to perform the experiments, as the API function calls are common for all microcontrollers.

PadmaBoard—Peripheral Motherboard of Tiva C Series LaunchPad

This chapter focuses on detailed explanation of features of the PadmaBoard. PadmaBoard can be connected to the Tiva LaunchPad through the expansion headers present on Tiva LaunchPad. As Tiva LaunchPad is a evaluation board for Tiva C Series ARM Cortex-M4-based microcontroller which has various peripherals. But to implement these peripherals, there are not enough features on the Tiva LaunchPad. But PadmaBoard has various on board features which are illustrated in subsequent sections. Using these features user can develop and prototype many applications.

Serial Communication: SPI and I2C

This chapter deals with two types of serial communication Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) and Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). Already, one serial communication protocol UART is discussed earlier in Chap. 12. These two peripherals give access to control various features. The features that are covered in this chapter are Real Time Clock (RTC) which can be used for time stamping applications, digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to generate analog signal, microSD card for mass data storage, TV interfacing using composite channel for display. Lots of interesting projects can be developed by combination of these peripherals.