Specifications

feature to turn off the LED that tells you if it is drawing power or if it is using power. This

will save energy for our system.

Figure 35 - LED to display fault codes

Permission Pending

Programming the LED bulbs will come from the microcontroller. We will have functions

that will be running in real time to light the bulb. The bulbs will have a label under them

letting the user know what the meaning of each bulb is.

4.2.4 Microcontrollers

The MSP430 microcontroller is what we will be programming to perform all of the

operations that our power generator requires. It will be programmed in the C language,

as it is the most convenient and most familiar language for our group. Once

programmed correctly, the MSP430 will be able to act as a heat sensor, it will be able to

perform all of our power consumption calculations, and it will be able to control the LCD

display. Since we will be using an MSP430 that is reprogrammable, we will be able to

overwrite the software and perform as many experiments with our code during the

testing phase as we desire.

Since MSP430‟s come at such a low cost and take up virtually no design space, our

group has an option when it comes to designing our power generator. Overall, we could

decide to use one microcontroller that would be programmed to perform all of our

operations needed by itself. On the other hand, we could add multiple microcontrollers,

each having a specific task that would need to be programmed to it. The pros and cons

of each solution must be looked at.

With one microcontroller, the design would obviously be made simpler in the fact that

we would only need to worry about wiring one microcontroller to the system. All of our

operations can be programmed to perform on the one microcontroller. The con of

using only one microcontroller, however, is that it would make diagnosing a problem

during the testing phase harder to do. The code we would need to program would be

much more complicated, and we would have to search through hundreds of lines to pin

point specific issues.