ELEC 332
Goals
Last week's lab was a self contained exercise.
The wideband amplifier was a vehicle for learning SMD assembly
and RF signal generator operation,
but we won't make any further use of it.
From now on we will be getting more reusability out of our time in the lab.
In particular,
the central character in this week's exercise will form the core
of a number of future exercises.
That character is the MSP430 microcontroller,
which you should already be familiar with from ELEC 220.
Although we will be using the same development environment
and USB debug interface you used in 220, we will be building
our own CPU modules rather than using the one that comes
with the eZ430 kit.
A few of our specific goals are:
-
Practice assembling PCBs that have been milled on the T-Tech Quick Circuit
machine.
The boards for last week's amplifier circuit were commercially fabricated
and have a few features (e.g. pre-tinned pads, thru-plated holes) which
make them a bit easier to work with.
Since most of our boards will be make on the T-Tech machine,
we need to be able to assemble them quickly and reliably.
-
Get reacquainted with MSP430 architecture and programming.
Although you have seen it before, it's been a while, so we'll start
gently this week.
-
Start developing the real time programming skills we will need
to incorporate the MSP430 into our systems as an electronic component.
In particular, we will utilize it as a flexible
analog signal processing element.