Specifications
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feature to turn off the LED that tells you if it is drawing power or if it is using power. This
will save energy for our system.
Figure 35 - LED to display fault codes
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Programming the LED bulbs will come from the microcontroller. We will have functions
that will be running in real time to light the bulb. The bulbs will have a label under them
letting the user know what the meaning of each bulb is.
4.2.4 Microcontrollers
The MSP430 microcontroller is what we will be programming to perform all of the
operations that our power generator requires. It will be programmed in the C language,
as it is the most convenient and most familiar language for our group. Once
programmed correctly, the MSP430 will be able to act as a heat sensor, it will be able to
perform all of our power consumption calculations, and it will be able to control the LCD
display. Since we will be using an MSP430 that is reprogrammable, we will be able to
overwrite the software and perform as many experiments with our code during the
testing phase as we desire.
Since MSP430‟s come at such a low cost and take up virtually no design space, our
group has an option when it comes to designing our power generator. Overall, we could
decide to use one microcontroller that would be programmed to perform all of our
operations needed by itself. On the other hand, we could add multiple microcontrollers,
each having a specific task that would need to be programmed to it. The pros and cons
of each solution must be looked at.
With one microcontroller, the design would obviously be made simpler in the fact that
we would only need to worry about wiring one microcontroller to the system. All of our
operations can be programmed to perform on the one microcontroller. The con of
using only one microcontroller, however, is that it would make diagnosing a problem
during the testing phase harder to do. The code we would need to program would be
much more complicated, and we would have to search through hundreds of lines to pin
point specific issues.