MSP430 Project

1
MSP430 Project

• Chris Pendley, George Fournadjiev, Howell
  Peebles, Brad Lackie (with an assist from Muwafa
  Albaraqi)

2
Initial Considerations

• Knowing that we had a group member (George) who
  had already done something similar made the
  process easier
• Finding out Muwafa was leaving the group was a
  bit of a hardship

3
Getting the Board Done

• Completed processor chip soldering in one night
• Soldered rest of components onto board shortly
  after
• (At this time, Muwafa left the group for Iraq)

4
What about the Sensor?

• After some discussion among the group, we decided
  on a temperature sensor
• The sensor was a National Semiconductor LM35DT
• This sensor had a standard temperature range of
  2ºC to 150ºC (and a maximum range of -55ºC to
  150ºC, but this was dependant on the input
  voltage)

5
More Sensor Stuff

• Standard 10 mV/ºC scale factor (i.e., 0 V -gt
  0.1 V is a 1ºC temperature increase)
• Output voltage from -1 V to 6 V

6
Coding the Sensor

• After playing around with the software for
  awhile, we finally figured out how to get the
  voltage output converted to a temperature output
• This was successful
• But.

7
Problems Begin

• The output wasnt consistent!
• Temperature output would read correctly, then die
  out (reset). This process would repeat
  indefinitely, no matter how many burnings took
  place
• After some discussion, we decided it was due to
  some faulty connections on the chip (the
  soldering failed)

8
The Last Gasp

• After doing some more work on it (fiddling around
  with the connections, etc.), we determined that
  anything we did there wasnt doing anything
• Switching to playing with the power supply, BOOM!
  Controller starts to smoke
• Started to smoke after the parallel/series
  connections were switched

9
The Learning Process

• Soldering, by its nature, is a intricate and
  delicate process its easy to mess up!
• Programming a chip in its entirety is also an
  incredibly complicated process use whats come
  before you
• Dont play around with a power supply too much.
  Bad things can happen.