It executed it's first program. Had a wiring error but it can be fixed
with
jumpers.
The silver lever is a Aries zero insertion force socket for getting the
chip
in and
out quickly for programming purposes. There is no on board in circuit
programming
for this version. You must have a stand alone programmer.
It is not fully populated yet but all the other circuits have been
tested
on
the bench.
Paul Lamar
NICE !
Barron
I am thinking of going one step up on processors to the 80C51.
It is at least four times faster than the 8051. It has built in USB and
PWM mode for the timers.
BTW I am up in Monterey for the rotary races. Mazda owns the race
track.
We flew in to San Francisco which was a big mistake, You have to take a
train to get a rental car. The people up here are logic and reason
challenged. They could have built a big parking garage for the rental
cars
cheaper than the train. Total travel time was six hours. I could have
driven it in 4 and the cost would be much much cheaper if you need to
pay
for airline tickets even with gas at $4 in CA. We don't as Robin is a
retired UAL A&P. The Comfort Inn has lousy Internet service. I am at
Denny's.
My dad had a bad experience flying standby- he flew from Charlotte to
Chicago and was trying to get back. Took 2 days for him to get a seat.
Seems like Chicago might be a tad busy.
I have my board up and running too. I set it up with staged injectors
and
manual leaning, all of which seem to be working correctly. I read MAP,
temp
and RPM. I used a second board as a signal generator, and it worked
well
up
to 6000 rpm where the generated pulse width was short enough that it
was
having trouble reaching the threshold voltage to fire the coils. I
think
that I may have to use a second chip like the 555 as a trigger for the
coil
to make sure it works at high rpm. At low rpm the CAS will trigger the
board, but didn't reliably fire the coils. It did fine at high speed.
It will be a bit before I can test it on the engine, I still have to
fab
intake, install the radiators, etc. I did finally finish the left wing
except for installing the tip! Progress, little by little.
I will keep testing the code and the board and see how it holds up.
Paul, how many kb is your code file? Mine came in just under 10k total
uploaded to the board including the libraries for the digital temp
chip.
The executed code is around 5k, the temp sensor I used has a built in
ADC,
so it outputs the temp digitally.
Kevin Alderman
Kevin, What AT chip number are you using? ZBASIC uses the AT1280 and
the
AT1281.
A lot of the problems with the timers are the same. Are you using
software
PWM?
I am moving much faster with ZBASIC than MikroBASIC and the 80x51xx.
Mainly because the help is in my time zone and not half way around the
world :)
Paul Lamar
My board has the Atmega 2560 chip.
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardADK. Says that at 5.5 volts, it
will
execute 16 million instructions per second, 1 MIPS per Mhz, and it runs
at
16Mhz.
The preliminary run showed it worked as planned. The only issue I had at
all was the signal generator board. I tried to simulate the input from
the
CAS at 8000 RPM. I used the analog output of the Arduino Uno as the
signal,
but the analog output is in the form of a PWM. When I "fired" the signal
generator at 9 usecs or less, the resulting voltage from the uno wasn't
sufficient to fire the coil. I tried it through a transistor that would
trigger at .7 volts, and it worked but had a delay that might make it
problematic at high RPMs. Need more testing. I have a high speed lathe
that
I can stick the CAS in and turn it at 4000 RPM, and as we know the CAS
turns at half engine speed. Should simulate 8000 rpm effectively. I have
been working on my wings, avionics, etc. and trying to program an
electronic health database engine along with about a dozen other
projects,
so I haven't gotten back to it- yet.
I programmed the Mega to read temp, MAP and RPM (which doesn't calculate
right at the moment) and come up with a pulse width. This is modified by
the analog input of a POT, with 3 volts being 1.00 and adjusting up or
down
from there. I have my injectors staged with primary and secondary
depending
on the pulse width. The ADC PWM uses 255 as max, so when injector 1 gets
a
PWM over 255, injector 2 gets the remainder. That would be 100 percent
duty
cycle, so I might reduce that to 200. I'll see how it goes.
Kevin Alderman
What is that injector width in ms? I think you will have interrupt
conflicts at 7000
RPM using the built in software PWM. As I understand it the PWM soft
ware
disables
all other interrupts while it generates pulse widths. Same for RPM if
you
are using a
timer. I did those two functions in hardware to avoid the interrupt
conflict problem.
You may not notice it if you trigger the 2nd gen ignition directly from
the 2nd gen
CAS. You will need an amp for that. A CD4050 or CD4049 CMOS chip will do
a
wonderful
job if you use 3 or more gates wired in parallel.
BTW it won't work with coil on plug for those using the LS1 or RX8 coils
so don't
even think about it :) Kevin is using the 2nd gen coils which in essence
are the same
old coils from 50 years ago but have an igniter.
The 1260 chip is basically the same as the 1281 (128K flash 64 pin)
ZBASIC
uses but
the 1260 has more flash memory. 256K flash instead. I think you
mentioned
you are
only using 10K. Both run at 16 MHZ. I have the ZBASIC 1280 100 pin with
125K flash
board but the I/O is a bit overkill. I scaled back to the ZBASIC 1281
board 64 pin. A
bit cheaper at $80 rather than $100. Not including the EFI specific hard
ware.
Paul Lamar
Kevin, you might want to use a high speed buffer. F series buffers are
fast. Off my head I remember having good result with 74F245 and the swith
on ns level. Those are 5 volt parts. I assume.the coil trigers on 5V.
Henry Nee
I am considering a new strategy of using polling instead of an external
interrupt
when the CAS cames in. The trouble with the interrupt is the computer may
be in the
midst of sending some COM data to the tablet when it comes in. When the
interrupt
service routine is finished it goes back to the COM program where it left
off. That
could result in garbled characters.
If I latch the CAS pulse and sit in a back ground loop watching for the
CAS and then
do what needs to be done I needn't worry about garbled characters. The
down side is I
have only 8 milliseconds at 7000 RPM to get everything done before I need
to go back
and watch for the CAS again. Since the COM baud (bit) rate is roughly
115,000 per
second and a character is around 10 bits that is 11,500 characters per
second. 8
milli seconds is .008 seconds. That means I can only send about 90
characters max to
the tablet per engine rev. The characters would be coming in to the
tablet at the
rate of 8000 x 90 /60 or 12,000 characters per second. That assumes I do
nothing else
except send data to the tablet. In the real world my guess it would be
half that
rate. Do other things for 4 milliseconds and send characters for the last
4
milliseconds. Send only 45 at a time. Then go wait for the next CAS
pulse.
At 3500 RPM the computer would be wasting 50% of the time available to
it.
That might be OK. The ZBASIC AVR computer is very fast. I could also read
the RPM the
moment the CAS came in and do different programs that send out characters
depending
on the RPM. At 3500 RPM and below I would have 16 milliseconds or more to
work with.
This strategy is the sledge hammer approach but it is safe and you don't
have to
worry about two or more random and asynchronous interrupts coming in at
the same time
and conflicting.
Paul Lamar
Paul,
That's why I initially contemplated a dedicated MCU per rotor, and
then uses SPI or I2C to talk to a main MCU, and then the main MCU can
talk to the tablet.
From experience, I figure that I would not have enough time to do all
the things I need done at high RPM. (I am thinking support of up to
15,000 rpm, as you mentioned it as a possible limit when using light
weight rotors.)
With SPI, the data rate will be in Mega Bits, not Kilo Bits. Also
there is usually dedicated circuit for communication. (Avoid any MCU
that requires the use of software to manage asks of every single byte
to reduce interrupt collisions)
We can use a more powerful main MCU to talk to the tablet. In my mind,
everything will be interrupt driven, with priority given to CAS
capture. Lost bytes to or from the tablet can be detected and
recovered via re-transmission.
Henry
You are always way ahead of me Henry. I am not kidding or being sarcastic.
You really
are. I agree. SPI or I2C would be a lot faster than a USART.
In the mean time I'll try to get get this Zbasic 1281n board going with a
little help
from the hardware to off load as many interrupts as I can. I'll see how it
goes.
Can you come up with a cheap slave chip to do the com. Mikro has a edge
connector
card with a 100 pin AVR 1260 for $21 but they are temporarily sold out. It
is about
3.5 to 4 inches long. They do superb workmanship on the hardware. The
support is only
so so. It cost more ($25) to ship it from Zagreb in Croatia.
BTW The more I learn about the ZBasic BASIC the better I like it. Mikro
AVR BASIC Pro
is about the same but it does a better job of handling external
interrupts.
Here is a summary pdf of Zbasic.
Here are some pictures of my wire wrap proto board to try a few hardware
ideas out.
I just got the 1281n board today so the wire wrap pins are not soldered to
the mother
board yet.
Paul Lamar
Paul,
You could use the Arduino board like I have to handle the other functions
like RPM and output to another GUI. The board is cheap enough and is
already ported for serial/USB communication and output to Android via USB.
I have several of the small boards like the Teensy that could be used as
dedicated rotor ECUs and these could communicate directly back to the main
board. This would give the possibility of adding electronic flap control,
touchscreen lighting control, you name it. This main unit would simply read
the output of the Injector/ Ignition Control Boards or possibly
simultaneously read the same sensors and perform calculations at say 1/10
of the intervals of the main boards. It is also possible to use 4 of the
smaller $15.00 boards to control the injectors and ignition. It would take
2 boards per rotor. This would let us use the main board calculate RPM for
display and timing adjustments, and leave plenty of processor capability
for more mundane tasks.
As I built my radio stack last night, I could ponder several tasks that
this board could do that can all be controlled by a 7 inch touch screen.
As far as the Arduino, through the IDE we program it in C or C++, but it is
compiled in ARM for the board. Makes programming simple if you know C, and
the resulting program on the board is small and fast.
Kevin Alderman
The C is the draw back for me. I tried to learn it but my professor said I
was
hopeless and ruined by knowing Quick Basic :)
The Arduino could probably be programed in Mikro AVR BASIC with a few
hardware
conflicts. I like a system where the compiler is designed for the hardware
and that
is what you have with the Arduino and C. If somebody came out with a
powerful
compiled BASIC for the Arduino I would be more interested.
BTW how many two wire serial interfaces can the 100 pin Arduino handle.
If I went the route of the master and bunch of slaves I would use my ARM
board.
I can get Mikro compiled BASIC for that. The BASIC directly supports a
myriad
collection of hardware modules like graphic displays and GPS board. It is
144 pins.
Hardware floating point processor built in no less. Right now it is
sitting on my
shelf :) It does not fit my educationl goals for the newsletter. The
learning curve
is too steep to start out with. It would be great for and experienced
person like
yourself. You can of course get a C compiler for it.
Paul Lamar
Here is what the data sheet says about SPI:
* SPI: 50 (MISO), 51 (MOSI), 52 (SCK), 53 (SS). These pins support SPI
communication using the SPI library <http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/SPI.
The SPI pins are also broken out on the ICSP header, which is physically
compatible with the Uno, Duemilanove and Diecimila.*
The board in the photo, is this the board that you arent going to use yet?
I like the board design, plenty of room for other stuff on the board with
the additional ports already installed. I like the LCD, but where it is
mounted I cant figure where I could mount it where I could use the screen.
If the screen was accessible through the panel, it would take up a lot of
space behind it that could be used for other things. I have somewhat of a
shortage of panel real estate as it is.
What did you give for this board? I might consider buying it from you and
seeing what I can make out of it.
As far as my proficiency in C, its been a loooooong time since I was in
school for that, and I filled in the gap with 20 years of being a
contractor. However, it does come back faster than I thought it would and I
am enjoying getting into it again. My program and board did work, and I
know that when I get it installed on the engine the calculations will have
to be tweaked and the program re-written a little. Now that it worked on
the test breadboard, I can see what I need and tweak it a little more so
that it should be functional when I start her up. Or I might decide to
build an entirely different setup and compare them side by side. With me,
you never know.
I still have to send you the $35.00 for your book, it is nearing the time
when I get started on that system too.
KA
I thing your speaking of the ARM board. I am going to use that board eventually.
MikroElectronica still sells it for about $200 shipped DHL in four days from Zagreab.
I wire wrapped the RPM counter today to the ZBasic board.
All I had in stock was a 74HTC4040 and it loaded down the power supply.
I have some low power CD4040 on order.
I'll see you before you get the book. I am bringing some with me to Florida.
Speaking of books I just got a book on Arduino at Radio Shack. They sell the whole
line. It is almost BASIC :) Now if they got rid of the ; at the end of the line and
the { and the } it would be the same :) It is a computer reading the text after all
&*%#^ sheesss :) It can figure that stuff out.
In Quick Basic you did not even have to dim things. The computer was smart enough to
figure it out from the context. Not only that it would complete the command for you
and make sure your variables all had the same spelling. Apparently it was 50 years
ahead of it's time. Too bad Bill Gates was too stupid not to do a 32 bit version
with longer file names. It is lightening fast on modern hardware.
He wanted to force everybody to do use his stupid gui with VB :)
Here it is. Try it out. A REAL smart IDE.
It still runs in a sys 7 command window.
Paul Lamar
-------------------------------------------------------------
I used a stop watch to measure the rate of sending out characters on the ZBasic
AVR 1281n board running at 15 Mhz. The baud rate was 19200. It sent out 40,000
characters in 42 seconds. That's about 1000 characters per second duh! Not bad. I
think this is going to work.
Paul Lamar
----------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the simple program that reads the external RPM counter. Pulses are fed into
the counter at a 6666 per second rate. This gives near a 256 count at 1500 RPM and
about 40 at 8000 RPM.
Since I am using timed fuel injection I don't need RPM any more accurate than that.
I fire the injectors once per rev with a pulse width that is proportional to the mass
air flow sensor reading. The mass airflow reading changes with intake air temp so no
adjustment for that is necessary.
This is reading the counter over and over again where normally it would be read once
per rev and reset to zero.
Paul Lamar
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