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ECE 477 Final Report Spring 2004
hardware side of our product, while Mike and I felt we would be better off working with the
software design and implementation of the product. Through the course of this semester, my
main area of contribution was through the software on the PC end. Together with Mike, we were
in charge of all software related programs and development for the design.
The first task that Mike and I worked on was the serial transmission. We started working
with sample code written in Visual C++, but found this to be more trouble than it was worth.
Once we tried Visual Basic we found that serial communication could be handled with just a few
lines of code. After this, Mike and I developed an initial version of the server program, and
tested it by using HyperTerminal to connect to another computer that simulated the base station
in our design.
My main contribution to the team was developing a way for our memory map of the
menu to be easily edited and implemented in the server software. Initially I wrote a non-
graphical C++ program for menu editing that simulated what the final remote device would
show. This program allows the user to view the menu as well as the sub-menus and easily edit
any line within. It also has some error checking to validate user input in such a way that the
remote device will not cause any unexpected or unwanted effects.
I also worked on the server software and implemented the menu as a linked list data
structure. This program, which was written in Visual Basic, had to open the file saved by the
Menu Editor, create the linked list based on the information in the file, traverse the list based
upon the button pressed, display the correct menu based upon the location in the list, as well as
update the order count if a menu item is selected. After both of these were accomplished, our
group decided that we needed a graphical editor for the menu. I then made another Visual Basic
program that did this with the ability to open a saved menu file, save the file to disk, and limit
any individual entry to a certain character length string all while showing the entire menu
contents and being able to edit each element quickly and easily.
Along with this, it was also my job to complete the Design Constraint Analysis
homework assignment. Therefore, I was also involved in selecting the major components of our
design (display, CPU, wireless transmission, etc.). The details of this can be found in Section 3.0
of this paper. The Packaging Specifications homework was also my task. This can be found in
Section 7.0. In this homework, similar items are discussed and our first representation of the
final external design is created.
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