COMPETITION TIME : Win a new xCORE-XA Dev Kit

All the latest news and announcements from XCore and XMOS.
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BBenj
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Post by BBenj »

Balancing robot

2-wheels balancing robot using IMU, two H-bridge modules, geared DC motors and Bluetooth/IR remote (and battery).

The ARM core will handle communications and movements (lots of libs available), xCore will control motors and IMU fusion.


sdizdarevic
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Post by sdizdarevic »

An Ultra-Low-Power Pulse Oximeter based on led - led configuration. (The sensing circuit uses one Light Emitting Diode (LED) for emitting light into human tissue and one LED for detecting the reflectance light from human tissue). This way, you do not need to buy expensive sensors, the advantages of this approach is in increased resolution, great sensitivity, reduced noise, low cost and low power consumption.
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BBenj
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Post by BBenj »

RGB LED display matrix

Drive a big display of tens/hundreds/thousands of WS2812 RGB LEDs.
Each xCORE should be able to drive several LED strips, so a xCORE-XA should be able to drive thousand of RGB LEDs with extremely low latency.
And with an ethernet interface the display could be controlled from almost anywhere.

Example: 10k LEDs display (with a PIC32): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzpcPrnh9LY Really cool !
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BBenj
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Post by BBenj »

Smart IR Barrier

Use xCORE to drive some IR LEDs and photodiodes at a specific frequency to make a robust IR barrier.
The ARM core is used for interfacing: buzzer, light, GSM module, ethernet... and make "statistics".
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pstnotpd
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Post by pstnotpd »

Functional task delegation prototype.

Use the ARM core to provide a REPL interface on the standard output. Compile a small interpreter which allows dynamic processes to be started on chosen Xcores. Create another interpreter on the xcores which receives commands from the ARM core, executes them and returns the result according to FP paradigm. Think mapreduce.

The idea is to facilitate an easy mechanism to offload high load processes to the Xcores for extending existing ARM codebase.

Only thing I cannot figure out if it is possible to extend the ARM core addressable memory using the existing pinout as that information is does not seem available yet.
mmsk
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Post by mmsk »

A Portable ECG Monitor and Analyzer with real-time algorithms for automated ECG signal analysis and interpretation.
mmsk
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Post by mmsk »

All-in-one measuring system
The system will be contained 7 reconfigurable devices:
* Function generator,
* Oscilloscope,
* Multimeter (voltmeter, ammeter, ohmmeter),
* Frequency response monitor,
* Spectrum analyzer,
* Logic analyzer,
* Protocol analyzer for SPI, I2C, CAN, LIN.
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imdmmp
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Post by imdmmp »

I am OS developer.
i think for More Utilization in Both XCore and ARM Cores we need to implement two OS one for ARM and one for XCore (that able to implement as Micro Kernel) . we can use peripheral of ARM Core for more utilization by manageing communication between XCore and ARM Cores we need to implement light RPC (Remote Procedure call) or RFC (Remote function call) , in both communication system we can solve busy waiting problem and Waste time of Cores .
for solve this we need to sleep (I/O or ARM Service) requested thread in XCore and switch to another thread and serve it and wake up thread when request response .
for implement light RPC or RFC we can use some solution for example
blackboard:
In this method we useing share memory for communication. we have two (for ever running) Procedure one in XCore and one in ARM Cores in this Procedures one of them write in memory another one read (must solve race condition in share memory) .
i think blackboard is a fast and easy way for communication and synchronous cores
rendezvous:
it like blackboard but it is no buffer communication, it can be good in low memory solution.

we have some another solution for communication for example Massage Passing or PIPE that can be use.
i think we didn't need to have marshaling and unmarshaling in RPC or RFC for fastes communication.
It important to know that time for context switch is very lower than busy waiting for XCore Cores
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DavidW
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Post by DavidW »

A little late, but i'm locking this topic now and will be sorting through the entries.

I've been off ill for much of this week, so my apologies.

Thanks to everyone who entered! I'll get our resident xCORE-XA guy, Pete Tasker, to take a look though the entries and pick the winner.

Expect an announcement early next week (assuming he doesn't go off sick too)
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PTBarnum
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Post by PTBarnum »

Thank you all for your entries to the xCORE-XA Core Module competition.
We are really excited about the possibilities that pairing an ARM and xCORE processors can bring and it is great to hear from you about your ideas.

And the winner is …
Ahenshaw – for your Unmanned Underwater Vehicle.
The project idea really works well with the essence of the xCORE-XA capabilities. You have identified how the xCORE is ideal for the real time needs of the sensors, communications and controls in the low level front end part of the system. You have a vision for using the ARM M3 for the higher layer autonomous processing and you have ‘solved a problem’ in that you will be able to achieve a smaller and lower cost system with fewer points of failure.
Well done, we will message you privately to arrange getting you your prize. Do come back and tell the forum how you get on with the xCORE-XA Module.

I think it is also important to give credit to some of the other ideas put forward so notable mentions go to:
Bbenj; Balancing robot, well done for identifying the use of libraries that are available for the ARM that can help with certain control aspects and seeing the spilt with xCORE doing some heavy lifting with the motor control.

mmsk:All-in-one measuring system, interesting here how the fixed function ARM peripherals could be used for some instrumentation and maybe how the xCORE side could do some DSP functions like the spectrum analyser.

The production version of the xCORE-XA module will go on sale next month so please do get your hands on one and show me what you can build with this kit that can’t be done with others, as always we love to hear from you.

Pete Tasker
XMOS Product Manager
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