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Welcome to my ECE222 advanced digital logic design final design project webpage. I've made this webpage because, well frankly, I have spent way too much time on this project (more than 40 hours) and feel a need to display the high tech and just plain complicated stuff for to show off to my parents and to my friends and whoever else would like to see why I have been going crazy these past few weeks. Sometimes my roommate would find me laughing (kind of a maniac laugh) in the middle of the night because I had got the circuit to work or hear occasional noises and think, firealarm?, when no, it was a boat and train crossing! Yippie for buzzers, I love to make noise. I also love the flashy lights, and would get so excited when the lights would change correctly depending on the whether there was a car on the road or a train coming. Hehehe. That amused me very much. And it still does, =) Well, by the time you have read this. hopefully the first image had been loaded below, so scroll down and see how to be a traffic God.



The first step to anything is to understand the problem. If you don't do this WELL, then you are going to mess up later in your design, or worse yet, in the implementation. How would you like to wire something up for an hour and find out that it wasn't designed to work properly. That's why you have to understand what you need to do. (BTW I did not have to rewire anything =) ) The conceptual design is one of the most important steps of designing anything.



Yeah, this is pretty artistic eh? I knew those art skills the I developed early in life would pay off. You can see that there are two two-lane highways intersecting a farm road or a street, whatever. There are also train and boat crossings on the street. Let's assume that there are sensors for the train and boat crossings, that has somewhat of a good warning time. Also, let's assume that there are sensors for the street (to see if there are any cars waiting at the stop light at this very unactive street) and that there are sensors to detect cars in the left-hand turning lanes of the separate highway directions. Lots of sensors makes and interesting traffic control.



Unless you are into computer engineering, you probably have no idea what "states" are or even yet a finite state machine. Basically it's an instruction order. If you have a set of inputs, go to a place in the program design that outputs something. Sort of like a video game. It reacts to your commands in certain situations.



Now we have gotten to the point on how to make all of this stuff. It all involves high-level programming in a language called VHDL (Very High Speed Integrated Circuits Hardware Design Language). This basically makes an interface for your hardware and software. It allows your computer to easily program your computer chips using software to make a design. First you must make the schematic for the traffic controller.





Confused yet? LOL. Anyways, this is just a very simplified version of which components I used (keyboard, computer chip, lights, etc) to make the traffic controller. I've displayed some of the VHDL programming code online available by clicking on the links. I have to edit some of these codes later to display in my report.

Program Files

KatieCo VHDL Programming File (Text Format)

Keyboard Interface Programming File (Text Format)

Keyboard Input Conversion Programming File (Text Format)





I think this slide says enough!



This is the Altera Computer chip that I used for my traffic controller. Unfortunately this is SRAM and when you turn off the power supply to the chip, all your controls in the chip go bye bye! I'm getting one of these chips in the mail to play around with this summer. I'm hoping to get an internship or co-op in the future with a company that designs/manufactures computer chips. Oh by the way, this particular cmputer chip is a pld (programmable logic device). For more information on this chip, visit http://www.altera.com/education/univ/unv-kits.html. Spiffy eh?



The amount of wire in this circuit is just WRONG. I mean, this is CRAZY. I mastered wire stripping with scissors and probably stripped maybe 40 wires or more? Not to mention having to re-strip some of the wires that were not being nice. Sometimes when I tried to stick the copper ends into the bread board, part of the wire would bend or splinter, and that is not good! I also found out that the rolls of wire that I got from radio shack were too fat to fit into the pins of my altera circuit board. One night I ended up going to the enineering lab and stealing about 30 thin wires and attached them to the thicker wires that were already attached to the bread board that had all the traffic lights. This part was very tiring.



This is the light display, and NO THESE ARE NOT CHRISTMAS LIGHTS. I just had to give my little circuit board a proper identity. These lights are supposed to resemble the highway lights from their perspectives. It might be confusing if I didn't explain to you the layout in person.



The overall circuit board (note the keboard and power supply are not hooked up in this picture)



This is my poster display with most of the slides displayed on this website.

Well, I hope you enjoyed seeing my design project, and would like to take a minute to advertise the fictitious company responsible for employing me (aka president hehe) and making this design safe and a good representation of a traffic control: