ECE319K Introduction to Embedded Systems, Fall 2023 (Aug. 31, 2023 version)
Email all professors and TAs (f23_ee319k@utlists.utexas.edu)

Course Catalog Description
Embedded systems; machine language execution; assembly and C language programming; local variables and subroutines; input/output synchronization; analog to digital conversion and digital to analog conversion; debugging; and interrupts.

Overview
ECE319K will continue the bottom-up educational approach, started in ECE302 and ECE306. The overall educational objective is to allow students to discover how the computer interacts with its environment. It will provide hands-on experiences of how an embedded system could be used to solve EE problems. The focus will be understanding and analysis rather than design. The analog to digital converter (ADC) and digital to analog converter (DAC) are the chosen mechanism to bridge the software, computer, and electrical engineering worlds. Electrical engineering concepts include Ohms Law, LED voltage/current, resistance measurement, and stepper motor control. Software engineering concepts include debugging, pointers, local variables, and data structures (stacks, queues, linked lists). Computer engineering concepts include I/O device drivers, real-time execution using interrupts. The hardware construction is performed on a breadboard and debugged using a multimeter (students learn to measure voltage and resistance). Software is developed in ARM Cortex-M0+ assembly and C; all labs will run on the real MSPM0G3507 board. Software and hardware debugging occur concurrently. Labs 1, and 2 are written in ARM assembly language. Labs 6 and 7 are written in a combination of assembly and C.  Labs 3, 4, 5, 8 and 9 are written in C.

ECE319K is team-taught. The course materials PowerPoint lectures, Canvas quizzes, lab assignments, Exam 1, Exam 2, and Final Exam) have been developed collaboratively by all instructors (Erez, Cuevas, Telang, Tiwari, Valvano, Holt, and Yerraballi).

This UT Box folder contains PowerPoint slides, worksheets, and example programs associated with ECE319K lectures Fall 2023.

Lecture:  ETC 2.136  TTh 12:30-2:00pm
Lab:  17585  Tue 3-4pm
Lab:  17590  Tue 4-5pm
Lab:  17595  Wed 4:30-5:30pm
Lab:  17600  Tue 5-6pm
Lab:  17605  Thur 5-6pm
You can only switch lab sections using official add/drop procedures.

Lectures will be not be streamed on zoom or recorded. TA office hours and lab checkouts will be performed in person. 

Instructors:
Jonathan Valvano, EER 5.820  valvano@mail.utexas.edu 

Zoom office hours (see Canvas page for zoom links): Monday 7-8, Wednesday 7-8, and Friday 7-8
Face-to-face office hour EER5.820: Tuesday 11-12, Thursday 2-3, Friday 2-3

Teaching Philosophy The ECE319K staff strongly encourage students to take an active role in this class.  Questions are welcome before, during and after class. Please feel free to email, visit or call us if you have questions.

Grading
   5% Lecture attendance (UT Instapoll, 3-min 1-question quizzes during each class)
   15% Weekly Quizzes, Online on Canvas, one due each Friday
   30% Laboratory Assignments, Due at lab times (Tue/Wed/Thu)
   15% Exam 1 Thur 9/28 12:30-1:45pm, in class on paper
   15% Exam 2 Thur 10/26 12:30-1:45pm, in class on your laptop
   20% Final Exam, Friday, December 8, 8-10am, ECJ 1.202, Regularly scheduled, on paper

There will be no re-tests, make-ups, or incompletes.

Cutoff scores for the letter grades will not be determined until after the final exam.

Lab lectures Each week we will provide one optional Lab lecture. The times for the lectures are Friday 4:30-5:30. Lab lectures will be given by the TAs. There will be lab lectures only when a lab is due the next week. E.g., the first lab lecture will be Friday September 1.

TAs (Photos of TAs): The office hours and locations will be posted on Canvas. About 36 students will be assigned to each 20-hour TA, and 18 students to each 10-hour TA.
   Grad TA:   Elise Johnson
   UG TAs:     Jason Kacines, Prithvi Senthilkumar, Frank Collebrusco

Lecture notes, Canvas quizzes, data sheets, reference materials, and lab assignments) see http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~valvano/mspm0 

Required Text: Introduction to Embedded Systems Using the MSPM0+, ISBN: 979-8852536594. This book is printed on demand and can be purchased from Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Embedded-Systems-Using-MSPM0/dp/B0C9SB2QQ9

Equipment to buy: see Canvas announcement for buying details
   - A personal laptop. The laptop will need a USB port and run the Windows application Keil uVision 5.
   - A MSPM0 LP-MSPM0G3507 LaunchPad
   - A 160 by 128 pixel color graphics LCD, ST7735R
   - A solderless breadboard and wires
   - A digital multimeter

Safety warning: There should be no solder with lead on campus. Nevertheless, please wash your hands after soldering, before eating or drinking. If you drop the soldering iron, let it fall to the ground. Do not try and catch it. If you are pregnant or think you might be pregnant, have someone else do the soldering.

Course Outcomes
After the successful conclusion of ECE319K students should be able to understand the basic components of a computer, write assembly and C language programs that perform I/O functions and implement simple data structures, manipulate numbers in multiple formats, and understand how software uses global memory to store permanent information and the stack to store temporary information.

  Detailed Objectives of ECE319K:

  1. Understanding how the computer stores and manipulates data (characters, integers, and fixed-point numbers), the basic arithmetic and logical operations performed by the computer.
  2. The understanding of embedded systems (a system with the computer hidden inside) using modular design and abstraction.
  3. Assembly language and C programming: considering both function and style.
  4. The use of a microcontroller (strategic use of RAM ROM and I/O) Microcontrollers typically have a little RAM and a lot of ROM. Globals, locals and the heap go in RAM. Constants and programs go in ROM.
  5. Debugging and verification using a simulator and on the microcontroller (embedded systems typically do not have a print function). Debugging techniques, such as breakpoints, scanpoints, profiles, monitors, voltmeters, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers.
  6. How input/output actually happens from both a software and hardware perspective. The students wire up analog and digital signals to the MSPM0 and measure them with a voltmeter, synchronization, includingswitches, LEDs, LCDs, DACs, ADCs, and serial ports.
  7. The implementation of an I/O driver (a set of programs that perform input/output).
  8. Understanding, from an architecture standpoint, how local variables and parameters work (e.g., space on the stack is dynamically created, the local variable is accessed using stack-pointer relative addressing, then the space is deallocated).
  9. Analog to digital conversion (ADC), e.g., the students interface a slide potentiometer to the ADC and write software that measures the position of the slide, creating a display like “1.234 cm”.
  10. Interrupt synchronization, real-time ADC sampling (periodic timer interrupts), introduction to multithreaded programming.
  11. Digital to analog conversion (DAC), used to make simple sounds.
  12. Design and implementation of elementary data structures, such as linked lists, stacks and queues.

Prerequisites: EE306, ECE306 or BME306 with a grade of at least C-. You should recall:

  1. Bits
    1. Numbers - Unsigned and Signed Integer representation in 2’s Complement
    2. True/False - Logical Operations
    3. Characters - ASCII representation
  2. Gates
    1. AND, NAND, OR, NOR, NOT, XOR
    2. DeMorgan’s Laws
  3. Computer Components
    1. Central Processing Unit: Arithmetic Logic Unit, Control Unit, Registers
    2. Memory – ROM and RAM, Address Space and Addressability
    3. I/O
  4. LC3 Assembly Language
    1. Instruction Set (ISA)
    2. Pseudo-ops
    3. Op-codes and Operands
    4. Memory operations
    5. Arithmetic and Logic operations
    6. Control operations – Branches/Jumps
    7. Addressing Modes
  5. Programming
    1. Algorithms, Flow-Charts
    2. Data Types – numbers and pointers
    3. Arrays
    4. Interrupts
    5. Debugging

Attendance: Students are expected to attend lectures. The book covers more information than the class, and we will use lectures to map our way through the class. If you miss class you may find it difficult to catch up.  

Exams: All students in ECE319K will take Exam 1, Exam 2 and the Final Exam at the same time and place. Exam 2 is practical programming exam during which you will design, implement, and debug a software system in assembly and C. You will be writing software using CCS on the real microcontroller for Exam 2. 

Lab Computer Usage

You need to bring your laptops to lab. TAs in the laboratory are checking off programs and supervising while on duty, thus you can expect to have only brief consultations with them. You should learn to develop software while on the computer. This course involves some projects that require extended periods of time to complete and a project cannot be done just overnight. Get started on an assignment early so you can get help if you need it. There are not enough machine hours to give everyone more than enough time to complete each program. We expect students to have a laptop or have access to a machine to run at home. Unfortunately, expect the laboratory to be crowded and machine time to be scarce if you attempt to work in the lab a day or two before an assignment is due. You will be competing with students in other courses for computer time. We need your assistance in the laboratory. Please report any equipment problems to the TA if they are present. If a TA is not present, use the form provided in the lab. If you do this, we can rapidly get repair service. Please help to keep the lab clean. 

ECE319K Lab kit A list of components handed out to students. These parts need not be returned.

Legal Notes The 12th class day is 9/7. The drop policy is extremely complicated. See your academic advisor or the Dean of Students for more information. Course evaluation is conducted on the last class day in accordance with the Measurement and Evaluation Center form. 10/25 is the last day an undergraduate student may, with the Dean’s approval, withdraw from the University or drop a class except for urgent and substantiated, nonacademic reasons.

Students with disabilities: The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic adjustments for qualified students with disabilities. Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. For more information, contact Services for Students with Disabilities, 471-6259, https://diversity.utexas.edu/ and https://diversity.utexas.edu/disability/.
Religious Holy Days: By UT Austin policy, you must notify the instructor of your pending absence at least fourteen days prior to the date of observance of a religious holy day. If you must miss a class, an examination, a work assignment, or a project in order to observe a religious holy day, we will give you an opportunity to complete the missed work within a reasonable time after the absence.

Electronic mail notification policy: In this course, e-mail will be used as a means of communication with students. You will be responsible for checking your e-mail regularly for class work and announcements. The complete text of the University electronic mail notification policy and instructions for updating your e-mail address are available at https://it.utexas.edu/policies/university-electronic-mail-student-notification-policy.

Use of Canvas and class web site: This course uses the class web page and Canvas to distribute course materials, to communicate and collaborate online, to submit assignments and to post solutions and grades. You will be responsible for checking the class web page and the Canvas course site regularly for class work and announcements. As with all computer systems, there are occasional scheduled downtimes as well as unanticipated disruptions. Notification of disruptions will be posted on the Canvas login page. Scheduled downtimes are not an excuse for late work. However, if there is an unscheduled downtime for a significant period of time, we will make an adjustment if it occurs close to the due date.

 

Scholastic Dishonesty

"Faculty in the ECE Department are committed to detecting and responding to all instances of scholastic dishonesty and will pursue cases of scholastic dishonesty in accordance with university policy. Scholastic dishonesty, in all its forms, is a blight on our entire academic community. All parties in our community -- faculty, staff, and students -- are responsible for creating an environment that educates outstanding engineers, and this goal entails excellence in technical skills, self-giving citizenry, an ethical integrity. Industry wants engineers who are competent and fully trustworthy, and both qualities must be developed day by day throughout an entire lifetime. Scholastic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, cheating, plagiarism, collusion, falsifying academic records, or any act designed to give an unfair academic advantage to the student. The fact that you are in this class as an engineering student is testament to your abilities. Penalties for scholastic dishonesty are severe and can include, but are not limited to, a written reprimand, a zero on the assignment/exam, re-taking the exam in question, an F in the course, or expulsion from the University. Don't jeopardize your career by an act of scholastic dishonesty. Details about academic integrity and what constitutes scholastic dishonesty can be found at the website for the UT Dean of Students Office and the General Information Catalog, Section 11-802." 

You are encouraged to study together and to discuss information and concepts with other students. You can give "consulting" help to or receive "consulting" help from such students in oral form. However, this permissible cooperation should never involve one student having possession of a copy of all or part of work done by someone else, in the form of an email, an email attachment file, a portable storage device, or a hard copy. Copying of any part of a program is cheating without explicit reference to its source. We do enter lab assignments turned in by ECE319K students through a plagiarism checker, comparing them to assignments of this and previous semesters. If we find two programs that are copied, there will be a substantial penalty to both students, e.g., failure in the course. Students who cheat on tests or in lab will fail. Prosecution of cases is very traumatic to both the student and instructor. It is appropriate to use software out of the book, class website as long as all copy-pasted software is explicitly referenced. Copy-pasting software from current or past ECE319K students is scholastic dishonesty. Policies concerning the use of other people's software in this class:

 

A practical guide to ethics involving software development for ECE319K labs

Activities you can and should do

  1. You are supposed to share everything with your partner. If you form a Lab 9 team with a different student from your partner in labs 4-8, then you can share your lab 1-8 code with the new partner. Make sure the code contains the proper names of who actually helped develop it.
  2. You can and should discuss strategy, theory, approach, and debugging tips with past, present, and future students in this class. This includes flowcharts, data flow graphs, call graphs, pictures and descriptions of data structures.
  3. You can and should read books and search the internet for existing software similar to the problem you have been asked to solve. You may copy-paste that software into your lab as long as you include a full reference of its source. In fact, we all stand on the shoulders of giants and in (large) software development projects, code reuse and building on top of rich libraries is often a key strategy to success. However, proper credit needs to be given and permission to (re)use code from others needs to be obtained. Anything else is cheating and stealing. You are of course also responsible for understanding all software used in your lab solution.
  4. You can look at up to 3 or 4 lines of code from another ECE319K student as part of the discussion described in 1), as long as you are not observing the entire function.

Activities you cannot and should not do

  1. If you form a Lab 9 team with a different student than your partner in Labs 4-8, then you cannot share any newly written lab 9 code with the old partners.
  2. You cannot copy any software either electronically or optically (look at it and type it) from any past, present or future ECE319K students. This includes lab solutions that another student has inappropriately posted on the internet. You are not allowed to look at another student’s lab solution and reproduce it with different formatting or variable names. This can be simply stated “do not look at Lab solutions of another student”, with the 3-4 line exception listed above.
  3. You may not copy-paste old lab solutions to another student. For example, you may not share your LCD driver from Lab 5 to another group while working on Labs 6-9. You cannot give your lab solutions you develop this semester to a student taking the course in the future.
  4. When copy-pasting code from a book or the internet, you should never remove the author’s name. See rule 2) above.
  5. When copy-pasting code from a book or the internet, you should not expect the code to work (most likely it won't work as expected anyway); it is your responsibility to understand and debug all code used in your lab solutions.

 

University Honor Code: "The core values of the University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility. Each member of the University is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community."  https://www.utexas.edu/about/mission-and-values

 

Abet material
Three lecture hours and one laboratory hour a week for one semester.  
Design Assignments: Labs 4, 7, 8, 9 (1 week each)
Laboratory Projects: Labs 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6
SCH Engineering Topics 3 (Including: 1 SCH of Engineering Design)


Relationship of the Course to ABET EC2000 Program Outcomes:

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ABET EC2000 Program Outcomes

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a.      An ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering

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b.   An ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data

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c.   an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability

 

d.   An ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams

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e.   An ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems

 

f.    An understanding of professional and ethical responsibility

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g.   An ability to communicate effectively

 

h.   The broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context

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i.    A recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning

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j.    A knowledge of contemporary issues

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k.   An ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice

 

ABET Criterion 9:  Program Criteria for Electrical Engineering Curriculum Achieved:

 

ELECTRICAL  ENGINEERING PROGRAM CRITERIA

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 Programs must demonstrate that graduates have a knowledge of:

 

1.   Probability and statistics, including applications appropriate to the program name and objectives;

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2.   Mathematics through differential and integral calculus, basic sciences, computer science, and engineering sciences necessary to analyze and design complex electrical and electronic devices, software, and systems containing hardware and software components, as appropriate to program objectives.

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3.   (Electrical) Advanced mathematics, typically including differential equations, linear algebra, complex variables, and discrete mathematics.

 

 

 

COVID-19 Guidance

To help preserve our in-person learning environment, UT Austin recommends the following:

Safety Information

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Land Acknowledgment

I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting on the Indigenous lands of Turtle Island, the ancestral name for what now is called North America. Moreover, I would like to acknowledge the Alabama-Coushatta, Caddo, Carrizo/Comecrudo, Coahuiltecan, Comanche, Kickapoo, Lipan Apache, Tonkawa and Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo, and all the American Indian and Indigenous Peoples and communities who have been or have become a part of these lands and territories in Texas. (Land acknowledgement) 

Emergency Preparedness and Emergency Plan Instructions
Please review EmergencyTerms.pdf
    Every member of the university community must take appropriate and deliberate action when an emergency
strikes a building, a portion of the campus, or entire campus community. Emergency preparedness means we
are all ready to act for our own safety and the safety of others during a crisis. It takes an effort by all of us to
create and sustain an effective emergency preparedness system. Your support is important to achieving the
best possible outcomes during a crisis event.
    As a University faculty member, you are responsible for pointing out your classrooms' building emergency
evacuation routes and for reviewing emergency procedures with students at the beginning of each semester.
This review should include a mention of the monthly emergency communications test (every first Wednesday
at 11:50 a.m.) and the list of communications channels the university uses during emergencies. It should also
include a review of the attached document outlining emergency terms (e.g., the difference between “shelter-inplace”
and “lockdown”) and instructions for faculty and students to follow during emergencies. As a matter of
convenience, we recommend including this information in your syllabus along with the phone number for the
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