Video Highlights of 2012 Competition Photographs from the Freescale Cup Japan 2012 competition.

For those of you wanting to move to 32-bit but miss the ability to whip out that protoboard for a little late night wiring session check out the Teensy 3.0 board from PJRC. http://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy3.html I should also note that this project was featured on kickstarter with a $5K goal and recieved over $70K in backing!!!  Nice.

Recommend accessories or post your own designs.  For the community by the community! Add your contributions in the comments section below.  As I filter through them I will move them up into this main document, so it is easier to browse. TFC Camera Mounts Designed by Wave Number Print these on demand via Shapeways.com Base Board Hinge Two Position Tower Elevator TWR-ELEV-2 — Wavenumber LLC - Link to the Store

Congratulations to the Winning Teams!! First Place Second Place Third Place Team Chrysler Team Ford Team Panasonic 23.91 seconds 26.80 seconds 27.34 seconds Team Members: Tom Pruett Sandhya Etikala Manjiri Joshi Team Members: Saumil Patwari Jim Weinfurther Kevin Hille Team Members: Vince Li Jeffery Kuo Adeel Yusuf The complete times are listed below.

The Freescale Cup competition was new to Convergence this year. College-age and young professionals' teams are challenged to achieve the fastest time around a designed track with a battery operated kit RC car. All parts for the car are provided along with information on how to build and code the car. The teams must design their own algorithms that drive the car over the black line on the white track as quickly as possible. SAE Convergence 2012 Freescale Cup Winners! More photos from the event: This pretty much sums it up! Qualification Track Team TRW in the foreground working on the car. Team Freescale's show car, er..van. Cutting the corner. Team "Success" Continental car.  This car was unique in that they utilized two cameras.

Added by Joe Grand on June 21, 2012

Added by Richard Balogh on April 3, 2012 Teams from the Slovak University of Technology at the EMEA 2012 Finals in Prague The cars for the finals.... ready to compete. The race track is built....training can start.

Added by John Mc on April 25, 2012 Practice Time First Place (TE Connectivity Challenge) - Pennsylvania State University Second Place (TE Connectivity Challenge) - Pennsylvania College of Technology First Place (Speed) - Clarkson University Second Place (Speed) - Pennsylvania College of Technology Third Place (Speed) - Pennsylvania State University Group Photo

Added by Gil Ernesto Rieke Aguirre on July 25, 2012 Universidad de Guadalajara test setup of Freescale Cup car. 

Which Platform to use?  Qorivva or Kinetis? Both are 32-bit devices. The Qorivva products, a Power architecture, are used widely in the automotive industry.  It has specialized peripherals such as CAN and LIN.  Automotive products are built tough, to high industry standards. The Kinetis products, ARM M4 architecture, are widely used.  You will find it in lots of everyday devices and industrial automation (such as robotics). It can support a lot of consumer peripherals such as USB, WiFi, and Graphical Displays. Which platform is more powerful or easy to use? Both supported processors are powerful 32 bit microcontrollers with similar software peripherals. Take an hour or two to research the evaluation boards on the Freescale sites and their underlying technologies. Think through the design and implementation process of connecting various components like the motor, battery and servo, to the evaluation board. The Tower System provides a modular prototyping platform, and the TRK evaluation board has many features. What level of support does a technology have? For the Cup Challenge, you may use any Freescale microcontroller. There are reference designs here on the wiki and TONS of code and examples on the Freescale site. Students should speak with their professor, and check out their respective documentation and software examples to make a choice. Having on campus support is invaluable in this case. There are online communities for the respective technologies as well. Research which technologies are have more active user communities which best complement the teams design approach? Obviously the Freescale Cup Wiki itself is a resource, and provides details on how to use two different microcontrollers - so it might be best to limit choices to one of these two supported platforms.

Features General Tower card Form Factor Connections to allow use with a TRK-MPC5604B Board Camera Interfaces 1. 5-pin header to connect directly to Freescale Line Scan Camera 2. Header for 2nd linescan camera (optional) 3. RCA Camera Interface. Includes an LMH1981 Sync Extraction chip and connectors to MCU to allow for low resolution (32x32) decoding of signals Servo Outputs 3-pin Header to connector directly to steering Servo 1 Extra Servo header. Power Accepts direct Battery Power – Onboard Switching regulator 5-18v Tower Card will source power to other tower modules. All circuitry except for motor controller can be optionally powered over USB Connector Battery Input and motor Outputs will be a Tyco (TE Connectivity) TE Connectivity Screw Terminal http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/1776275-2/A98036-ND/1826899 Motor Driver 2x MC33887APVW : Dual, Independent 5A Motor Driving Circuit Supports forward, reverse and braking. Current Feedback to MCU ADC to allow for closed loop torque control Programming Integrated Kinetis MK20DN512ZVLL10MCU with OSJTAG Can be used stand-alone or be used as a peripheral in the tower system. Additional I/O Extra signals from K40 routed to tower edge card connector. Signals for H-bridge, camera and servo can be routed to Tower Edge connector to be driven by another MCU card. Each can be disconnected via jumper. - We will need to crosscheck the signals to all other CPU modules. Would it be easier to just have a version that doesn't have the K40 populated and OSJTAG populated? Also, we may not need jumpers. Simply configure the Kinets I/O to inputs. Some basic I/O for debugging. 4-poistion DIP Switch + 4 LEDs. Inputs for Tach Signal/Speed Sensor Design Files Rev Alpha Schematics (Sent to MyRO on 4.4.2012) - Includes 3d view Assembly Prints (For Reference) PCB Fabrication Notes Bill of Materials Rev A Errata: Pins 4 & 5 for the camera (Gnd and +3.3v) got swapped on the PCB. You will need to swap the wires in the cable. You can pop the contacts out of the connector housing with tweezers. POT0 has a jumper wire to pin 26 (ADC1_SE18 . This was done to put all signals *except* the NTSC video onto ADC1 to simplify software. Future versions will have this change in the artwork Some components interfere with the tower connector. It can be mated to about 95%. Will work fine. Future versions will fix this issue Rev Beta Schematics, Assembly Prints, BOM, etc. - Includes 3d view Rev B Errata: None known! Google Code repository for the Example Code: https://code.google.com/p/tfc-twr/ This code works with Rev B of the board (and Rev A). All major interfaces & peripherals have been tested. At some point we will make a video going through the code. By default the Linescan camera code is enabled. The code in Main.c is pretty easy to follow. There is also code for the NTSC camera but must enabled in the TFC_Config.h file via a pre-processor directive. There is also code used for teh OSTAG interface, Labview demo applications and drivers for the USB Pictures Just verified the OSJTAG. Test Project to blink the battery LED's was downloaded into the K20 Videos Testing the Servo circuits….. Testing the pots, servos, H-bridges and K20 USB port Linescan Camera Bringup with Labview NTSC Camera Bringup with Labview 1.) This is a basic demo of an NTSC camera being brought in using the a Combo of the ADC, port interrupts and DMA transfers. 2.) I *ahem* overclock the ADC to 24MHz to get some extra resolution for a 64x64 pixel image (the first 6 columns are junk as they contain color burst data*) 3.) I decimate the images to a few frames per second to send over the WIFI (the booster pack card I made) to a Labview program. The Kinetis can bring the data in a the same frame rate of the camera, I just need to send much slower as there is some overhead in my communications scheme (ASCII text) and the WIFI is driven via a UART. 4.) In reality, I can get a 64 x 480 pixel image in memory as I pull in all the lines. I just decimate the rows to get a 64x64 result on the labview display. 5.) DMA does most of the work freeing up the CPU to do algorithms in the foreground.

Further Reading MCU 101: How does a DC Motor work? MCU 101: Pulse Width Modulation for DC Motors Specifications of Included DC Motor Conditions of Standard Operation Driving Voltage: 7.2V Direction of Rotation: CW viewing from metal housing Position of Motor: Horizontal Operating Temperature: 10 to 30 (Celsius) Operating Humidity: 30%RH to 95%RH Electrical Characteristics No Load Speed: 16000+/- 3200 rpm No Load Current 220mA (max) Mechanical Noise (Distance from housing side A=10cm Background Noise =30dB (max) 75 dB Stall Current: (two points method 1.2&3.9mNm) 3800mA (max) Stall Torque (two points method 1.2&3.9mNm) 80g.cm min End Play of Shaft 0.05~0.60 mm

Some typical variations: Report Requirements Specific Components Usage Additional Tiers of Competition 2017 Rules per Region EMEA University Challenge 2016-2017 2016 Rules per Region Americas, Malaysia and Taiwan.​ EMEA University Program Challenge EMEA High School Challenge 2015 Rules per Region Worldwide Challenge Rules EMEA 2014 Rules per Region EMEA Worldwide Challenge Rules USA [ARCHIVE] 2013 Rules per Region Malaysia Latin America Latin America - Advanced USA Global Championship

What is a microcontroller (MCU)? A microcontroller includes a microprocessor (CPU) as well as a number of other components like RAM, flash and EEPROM to store your programs and constants. While a microprocessor requires external devices to control things like input/output, or timers to implement periodic tasks, and digital to analog converters, a microcontroller is all inclusive. Contrast this all-in-one approach with a typical personal computer which contains an INTEL or AMD CPU, as well as separate chips for RAM, a separate video card, a dedicated hard drive, silicon chips or PCI circuit boards to enable the processor to access USB, serial and video card signals Microcontroller pins are general purpose, whereas CPU pins are specific. This means that each pin is tied to a multiplexer which you must set to choose the particular use for the pin. For example, in a microcontroller, one pin pin might be re-purposed for the following tasks 1. The output of a timer 2. Send a signal to a motor 3. Receive an input from a sensor or analog device