TI Instruments Analog Design Contest

Just wanted to let you know, I represent Wentworth Institute of Technology (www.wit.edu), and a very similar project was not only already done using RF2500T's, but a paper was published on it for an ASEE conference last october. And then a second paper was published using that hardware along with the chronos watch and CC1110 hardware, and it will be presented at an ASEE conference in June. None the less, no one answered your question, so I will do so (even if it is a late reply). Melexis makes spectacular and original products, and so does TI. I have used products from both of them for over three years now. TI sometimes has questionable support, but Melexis is excellent. While that project would most likely infringe on previously published work, I do recomend finding another way to make that work.

Hi rkaplan27....

Have you ever used the TI E2E Community to get support for TI products?

The TI engineer-to-engineer (E2E)  Community, which launched in 2008, is an open network of more than  50,000 engineers and TI experts who collaborate by asking and answering  technical questions, sharing knowledge, exploring new ideas and solving  problems. The TI engineering community is comprised of technical support  forums for nearly all Texas Instruments products, industry focused  blogs written by TI experts and thousands of product and application  videos. http://e2e.ti.com/

Here is the link to the TI ADC...  www.ti.com/adc

Texas Instruments Analog Design Contest is an initiative to encourage  system-level design within Universities. This is an opportunity for  students to work on a design project using TI’s broad range of  high-performance analog Integrated Circuits (IC’s) to win a cash prize! www.ti.com/adc

Regards,

Shawn

Yes I absolutly have, and I have found it useful in the past. And I am a member of TI university as well.

To be more clear, my reference to infringing on published work was simply stating that submiting a design to a contest when a similar one has already been published could result in infringment.

My reference to TI support being questionable at times was based on many experiences myself and others have had, and I can give some examples that others may find helpful.

I have found that they are often undependable with supplying new products, and that is as specially found on the estore. An example of a product I had issues obtaining was the Chronos watch. The estore claimed to have it in stock, and so I made an order. I recieved no warnings of any issue with the stock, and after a few days went online to see the status of my order. The order was delayed for a month and a half since they actually didn't have any in stock, and I waited to see if they intended to notify me by email or phone. After a week, I called, notified them of my concerns, and canceled the order. At least for that product, Digi-Key did have them in stock and I recieved it withing two days. If a product has been out for a while, then there are usually no problems, and I will say the customer sample system is great.

The hours of the customer support hotline are awful, and they almost always have to divert issues to engineers and get back to you at a later time. Sometimes they do get back to you, and other times they don't.

TI has had many issues in the past with supporting x64 based Windows, and they take far too long to migrate x86 drivers. If I am not mistaken, the E2E forums show that TI took over 6 months to deliver x64 CC Debugger drivers. Another example to consider is the MSP430 debuggers based off of the TUSB3410 serial to USB converter. The TUSB chip had generic signed x64 drivers, but TI took over a year to make an INF that would work with MSP430 debuggers. That's all that was done in the end. Even worse, is that myself and others tipped them off, but they repeatedly claimed "further testing was needed". We were all using the same x64 driver with a modified INF for that entire period of time. The e2e community is great, but it seems to me that TI's response to issue could be better at times.

I have other examples if you wish, but I think this should give some idea where I was coming from. It sometime appears to me that the different departments just have poor communication with eachother, and that disconnect is where the issues come from, but I don't know for sure. As I said, TI has excellent original products, so I still use them, but I'd be lying if I said the support was dependable.

hi rkaplan,

Thanks for the information you have given. Please, make me clear why i infringe using that concept in my project for the contest. I have never heard that of you say. according to you, if someone else uses a concept, no oneelse can use it any more.

I am OK with my project and never see it as infringing. Shawn, please tell me if we can still attend to contest with our project. Otherwise, we will think of choosing another one for the contest.

Kind regards,

firat

I can't be sure you are without seeing your project and code, and thats would be why I said could in the previous post. As well I don't know the rules for the contest, but I suspect originality is important. For instance, the RF2500T's don't have SMBUS hardware. How was it you overcome that? Software or a mix of hardware and software? I'm glad your ok with your project, but I susepect you have not seen the published papers. Don't get me wrong, I am all for promoting an educational project, but I'm just trying to be certain you aren't entering something into a contest that has already been published.

hi Ross,

I have not started to code yet. But, it will not take so much time. testing may be an issue, though.

The first RF2500T reads the IR sensor data via available ports, checks it with the predefined threshold value, and sends it to the secondary one which is connect to the controller board (which is Launchpad in our case ). the second one will send the received data to the Launchpad board via serial connection. So, the result data will be displayed on an LED display with alarm function.

Accoring to the link below, RF2500T board contains MSP430F2274 – 32KB Flash, 1KB RAM, USCI (UART, 2xSPI, I2C, IrDA), 10-bit 200 ksps ADC, 2 Op Amps. So, it has SMBUS. Could you be more specific while saying RF2500T has no SMBUs.

( link is http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/ez430-rf2500t.html )

Kind regards,

firat

Hi Ross,

Sory for the late reply. I was out of the city and my internet connection was limited. No i am back home. Ross, I used I2C protocol so many times. So, i am aware of this protocol. I used Sensirion Temperature and Humidity sensor which has I2C like SMBus protocol. So , i am aware of software implementation of SMBus. I will use MLX90615 sensor. I havent started to code yet.

Ross, i dont want to discuss this issue any more. I understand your concern about my project. I am not stealing any code from your project. Neither have i read your paper, nor i have heard about it. To prevent any misunderstandings, for your convenience, i will send all my code before sending it to the contest comitee when i finished it. After reviewing my code, if you still think of it as fringling, i will ask comitee and reject my project, if necessary.

Kind regards,

Firat Kocak