COURSE Projects @ ESRC, HUST

Hardware design for Energy Saving in Data Centers (Bachelor thesis): One solution to save energy in data center is to intelligently control the power consumption of switches used in data centers. In our proposed data center, the optimizer module is accompanied by a load balancing routing module to guarantee the availability of data center. Depending on the current data center status, switches that have no traffic is turn-off for saving energy. Our research is a sub-topic of this project, focusing on designing of power control block of OpenFlow switch (based on NetFPGA platform)

Designing a small guiding device in museums (TI Cup 2011): We design a small device instead of guider, allowing visitors to get information of exhibits in museums. When the user is close to an exhibit, the device can automatically recognize it by using RF ID tag and plays the corresponding audio file from SD card. The first prototype of this device was designed based on MSP430 of Texas Instrument and won the most motivated prize in TI Cup 2011.

Designing and implementing a Line-Tracking Robot (Panasonic Course): This project is firstly one part of Embedded course provided by Panasonic Vietnam. In this course, we focuses on Embedded C and coded a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller based on Panasonic's hardware. Therefore, after finishing this course, our team decided to design the completed hardware of autonomous robot. The designed robot features included 8 line-tracking sensors (4-left and 4-right), IC L298 (2H bridge) for 2 step-motors and MCU Pic16f877A for controlling. (video in Panasonic course)

Implementing a SD card reader on FPGA (Training Course in ESRC lab): We learned how to use ModelSim, Quatus and Nios II EDS. In this project, the Nios II is implemented in DE2 Kit to read a text file from SD card (FAT32) and display data on the LCD.

Designing a Multimeter and Digital Lock (HUST Course): We learned how to design and implement the simple embedded system: These project used software tools: CCS for coding, Proteus for simulation, Orcad Family Release for designing printed circuit board (PCB). We also tried to solder components onto a PCB and test the completed circuit.