EEE8068 - Notes, Documents and Links

I am in charge of the practicals on this course.

Practicals

Dr. Bystrov's download area for this course is here . You need to download everything there. In addition, my download area for this course is here . You will find the Komodo program there, as well as an example program to get you started. You need to copy the kmd.exe program to the D: drive on your computer. From within the Cygwin shell, you can access it as /cygdrive/d/kmd.exe (or you can set an alias to do this).

If you are not familiar with a Unix command line or with Cygwin, please have a quick look at Familiarisation exercises. Pts 1-5 and Familiarisation exercises. Pts 6-9 (these are used on a first year programming course, please ignore the marking scheme!)

To set up your software environment, follow this procedure.

After logging in, you need to start the X server first. Select All Programs, then Communications and Internet, then Xming, then Xming-Mesa, and finally Xming-Mesa (you might want to put a shortcut on your desktop!). After 5 seconds or so, the X server is up and running. There is also another X server called 'XWin' which will also do the job.

Now start the Bash Shell by selecting All Programs, then EEE, then Cygwin, and finally Cygwin Bash Shell. This opens a terminal window on your screen. You can configure the font size and various other parameters if you wish. Some people prefer to use the 'rxvt-x' program instead of the Bash shell.

Setup access to the X Windows screen by typing the following command:
DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0.0;export DISPLAY

You now need to find out which COM port the ARM board is connected to. Open the Control Panel, Click on Device Manager, expand the Ports section. Locate the one which is called the USB-to-Serial Converter, and note the COM Port number, e.g. COM4. The Cygwin name for COM4 is /dev/ttyS3, i.e. the last digit is one lower than the Windows version. The same applies to the other COM port numbers.

You now need to run the Komodo software (kmd.exe) to talk to the ARM board. The very first time (only) type the command
./kmd.exe -c
This creates the configuration file, and needs to be done once.

To talk to the board, type the command
./kmd.exe -s /dev/ttyS3
or whatever the correct COM port number is on your computer. You should see a window appear, and you can then download your program into the board. The program is created by typing the 'make' command, and the resulting executable file has the extension .elf. Before downloading, press the RESET button on the board. After downloading, click the RESET button on the Komodo window, and then click RUN to run the program.

A manual for the Komodo software is available at Manchester University

Starting the practicals

Write a C program that lights a particular LED or set of LEDs on the board.

Create a timer delay loop of 256 msec, i.e. about a quarter of a second. Flash a LED or set of LEDs after every loop.

Now create a timer interrupt routine and flash a led whenever the interrupt occurs.

Submission

You will have to submit a single report towards the end of the course. This should contain two parts: the interrupt program developed above, and a program based on a scheduling algorithm. The project specification will be made available in due course.