Abstraction

This application note provides details on how to achieve human-computer

interaction (HCI) with Android device and Terasic A-Cute Car via Bluetooth
using a module, Terasic BTS-TMD. The following instructions will help users
easily learn more about UI design on device and the co-design of software and
hardware on Terasic A-Cute Car. This enables users to develop customized
system. Users can get started by scanning the QR code from any Android
device and download Terasic A-Cute Car application.

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 Content

Reference Design Overview .. 2

UART...................................... 5
LTC2308 VOLTAGE METER .... 6
PWM Controller .................... 7
ANDROID APPLICATION......... 8
Demo Setup ........................... 9
Rebuild Project .................... 11
Import Android Project ....... 11
Update Demo File................ 13

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 Reference Design Overview
Figure 1 shows the Terasic A-Cute Car. It consists of three components, DE0-
Nano mainboard, SCD (Smart Car Daughter card), and sensor daughter card
and optional BTS-TMD. The SCD includes a pair of lamps, buzzer, motor driver
DRV8833, IR receiver, ADC chip LT2308, and TMD (Terasic Mini Digital)
expansion header. The sensor daughter card includes seven photo interrupters
used to track dark line(s) on a white background.

Figure 1 Terasic A-Cute Car

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 Figure 2 shows the hardware block diagram of Terasic A-Cute car
remotely controlled via Bluetooth. The Android device remote program is
written in C++ and the operation is executed on SDRAM by Nios II processor.
The pair of Lamps is controlled via PIO. The 1K waveform IP generates 1M
frequency to drive the buzzer and the associated GPIO controls the beep
sound. This demo also monitors the battery power left on A-Cute car in real
time from Android device. Users can read the battery voltage via the LTC2308
ADC chip onboard and the data can be transferred to display on the Android
device.

Figure 2 System block diagram of remote control program on

Terasic A-Cute car via Bluetooth
The optional BTS-TMD is connected to the system via TMD0. The data
transmission interface is UART. The movement of A-Cute car is controlled by
the motor through PWM mechanism. Commands can be sent constantly from
Android device to change the direction and speed of A-Cute car instantly. For
more information about the remote control from Android device, please refer
to the following chapters.

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 Figure 3 shows the software block diagram of the demonstration. The
section on the top is C++ Structure Diagram, which interfaces with the QSYS IP
via Altera Avalon Memory-Mapped (AVMM) bus. Both IORD and IOWR are
used to communicate with the QSYS IP.

Figure 3 Software block diagram of remote control program on

Terasic A-Cute car via Bluetooth

The Main. cpp includes the PIO control for LED, KEY, Lamp, Buzzer, and battery
power detection. The battery power detection uses hardware circuit to
convert voltage measured from analog to 12-bit data. Users can read the data
via PIO and send the UART package the BTS-TMD through UART object to
Android device. The CCar object includes two CDcMotor sub-objects which
control the two DC motors on the A-Cute car. The CDcMotor objects control
the PWM IP to control the speed and rotation direction of DC motors.

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 UART
When the Bluetooth paring is complete, the A-Cute car will stay in standby
mode and wait for commands. Table 1 shows the command set of all
commands available. The Nios II processor will analyze the command after
receive it through UART object.

Command Description

ATSP Speed setting

ATOF Set the offset value of two motors for turning the direction
ATOFA Adjust the sensibility of turning the direction
ATSP Stop the car
ATLON Turn on the lamps
ATLOFF Turn off the lamps
ATSPKER Honk
ATAB Show battery level
Table 1 Command set

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 LTC2308 Voltage Meter
LTC2308 is a low noise, 500Ksps, 8-channel, 12-bit ADC chip. Its last channel is
used to monitor the input power voltage of A-Cute car. The ADC is configured
as single-ended and the output value 0~4095 represents voltage 0~4.095V i.e.
1LSB represents 1mV. Table 2 show the ADC index.

The last channel of the ADC chip can monitor larger range of input voltage by
dividing input voltage connected to the ADC chip. The digitized value must be
multiplied equally back to get the actual input voltage in mV.

In this demonstration, SPI bus is used to communicate between the FPGA and
the LTC2308. The SPI clock of LTC2308 can be 40MHz at maximal. Considering
the reliability of GPIO cable, 20MHz is used in this demonstration. The source
code of LTC2308 IP is located under the “ M_METER” folder in the system CD.
The register file of the IP is defined below.

Register Register Description Read/Write

Index Name
0 CH0 Not use R
1 CH1 Not use R
2 CH2 Not use R
3 CH3 Not use R
4 CH4 Not use R
5 CH5 Not use R
6 CH6 Not use R
7 CH7 12-bit battery voltage level detection R
Table 2 Read ADC index

The member functions “IORD(CAR_VOLTAGE_DATA_BASE,0) * 4”

can report the input power voltage individually.

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 PWM Controller
The PWM controller generates required duty cycle to control the speed of
motor rotation. The source code of this IP is located under the folder
“ip\TERASIC_DC_MOTOR_PWM” in the system CD. The IP is encrypted as a
QSYS compliant IP. The Table 3 show register file of the IP is defined below.

Register Register Description Read/Write

Index Name
0 TOTAL_DUR 32-bit integer, which represents the tick RW
number of one PWM cycle.
1 HIGH_DUR 32-bit integer, which represents the tick RW
number of high level in one PWM cycle
2 CS Control Register RW
Bit0: Start bit
1 : Start
0: Stop
Bit1: direction bit
1: forward
0:backward

Table 3 PWM control register table

The CDCMotorC++ class defined in Motor.cpp/h communicates with the PWM

hardware controller. The member function SetSpeed with an input parameter
fSpeed controls the motor speed and direction. The value range of fSpeed
value range -100.0~100.0. The positive and negative values presents forward
rotary and backward rotary, respectively. The values 100 and -100 represents
maximal speed for forward rotary and backward rotary, respectively. The
SetSpeed function translates the input parameter fSpeed to required PMW
parameters for the PWM controller. The translation formula depends on the
input voltage level, which drives the DC motor. The member function
SetInputPower is designed for users to input the current input voltage level.
After setting the motor speed and calling the member function Start, the
motor rotation can get started. Users can stop the motor rotation by calling
the member function Stop. The CCar C++ class defined in Car.cpp/h control the
movement of A-Cute car by controlling the two DC motors on the A-Cute car.
The member function SetSpeed setups car movement speed and direction.
The member function Start is designed to start the car moving and the
member function Stop is designed to stop the car moving.

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 Android Application
The development environment for the A-Cute car is Eclipse and the
corresponding software block diagram of Android application is shown in
Figure 4.

Figure 4 Software block diagram of Android application

An object created to interact with users is known as an Activity. It can be

defined as stop, finish, kill, pause, resume, and restart etc. According to the
illustration, there is a .java file and a corresponding UI .xml file in each Activity.

When the application is executed, it starts from Activity(Boot) and enters the
boot screen for about 4 seconds before the object is switched from there to
Activity(SmartCar).

If the A-Cute car is connected to a device such as Android device via Bluetooth,
the Activity(SmartCar) will be paused and the Activity(Bluetooth) will be
executed. After the connection is established, it will switch back to
Activity(SmartCar). The Service(SmartCar) is running at the background of
Android device and cannot be found on the UI. It is responsible for the
transmission of all commands between the A-Cute car and Android device. The

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 Service(Battery) sends command to the A-Cute car for battery power
detection in every 3 seconds via Bluetooth.

Demo Setup
The steps to setup the demonstration are:

1. Insert a BTS-TMD module to the TMD header of SCD card, as shown in

Figure 5.
2. Set the power switch of SDC card to OFF position Install four AA batteries
to the battery holder
3. Set the power switch of SDC card to ON position
4. The demonstration will be executed upon power up. If the default code is
erased, please execute test.bat from the folder below to configure the
FPGA on DE0-Nano:

A-Cute Car CD/DE0_NANO_Remote_Car/demo_batch

 Prepare for remote function:

 Scan the QR code shown in Figure 6 from Android device to install the
SmartCar application.
 Launch the SmartCar application installed
 Remote control from Android device via Bluetooth, as shown in Figure 7.
 Click “connect a Device” on the right-top corner. Search for Bluetooth
device named RNBT-xxx and connect to it. The status of Bluetooth
connection is shown on the top-left corner.
 Click the yellow power button located on the right-top corner to ignite
the car. Click the button again will power off the smart car.
 The car movement can be controlled in four directions with the G-
sensor on Android device.
 Click the LAMP button on the left to turn on/off the lamps.
 Click the center area of the wheel to make the beep sound.
 There is a scrollbar under the wheel. It is used to adjust the sensitivity
of car turning.
 The orange curve bar on the left-bottom corner shows the estimated
car speed.

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 Figure 5 Insert BTS module

Figure 6 QR-code for A-Cute car Android

application

Figure 7 GUI of Smart Car application on Android device

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 Rebuild Project
The project is built in Quartus II v15.1. The source code is located under the
folder:

A-Cut Car System CD/DE0_NANO_Remote_Car

Users can open the Quartus project file DE0_NANO_Remote_CAR.qpf and click
the menu item “ProcessingStart Compilation” to initiate the rebulid process.
When the compilation is complete, an output file named DE0_NANO_Remote
_CAR.sof will be generated under the output_files folder.

The Nios II project is created by Nios II v15.1 Software Build Tools for Eclipse.
The source code is located under the folder:

A-Cut Car System CD/DE0_NANO_Remote_Car/software

Launch Nios II v15.1 Software Build Tools for Eclipse and set the above folder
as workspace. In the Project Explore Window, right click
“RemoteCar_bsp[nios_system” and select “NIOS II Generate BSP” to build the
BSP. Right click “RemoteCar” and select “Build Project” to generate binary file.
When the rebuild is complete, an output file named RemoteCar.elf will be
generated under the folder:

A-Cut Car CD/DE0_NANO_Remote_Car/software/RemoteCar

Import Android Project

Both Android SDK and Eclipse ADT Plugin must be installed to complete the
installation for this project prior to the development of Android application.
For more settings about the API 17 used in this demo, please refer to

Figure 8

Figure 8 Edit Device

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 There are many Android SDK versions to be chosen from and the version 4.2.2
(API 17) must be installed. For more details about the installation, please refer
to:

http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/installing-adt.html

The project folder needs to be imported prior to the start of building the
project. Choose FileImportAndroidExisting Android Code Into
Workspace from the menu, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9 Import existing Android code into workspace

Press Next and browse to the project folder under the root directory. Click the
Finish button, as shown in

Figure 10

Figure 10 Import project to finish

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 Update Demo File
Before the demo file can be downloaded to Android device through Eclipse
tool, the Debug mode must be enabled to allow the installation from an
unknown source. The corresponding driver also needs to be installed on the
host PC. Right-click on the project folder and select Run AS -> Android
Application to download the demo file to Android device, as shown in

Figure 11

Figure 11 Update demo file

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