ARM/FPGA/I2C Sensor Network Development and Teaching Platform

In past few years we have seen many courses offered separately for embedded systems based on various industry standard 8/16/32-bit micro-controllers; their programming languages like C/C++/assembly language; operating systems concepts and for digital system design based on FPGAs and CPLDs. Some courses were also focused on wireless networking standards like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and ZigBee; interfacing different peripherals like liquid crystal displays (LCD), analog to digital and digital to analog conversion (ADC/DAC), synchronous serial communications based devices, memories, LED controllers, switches, etc. There is a strong need for a platform to include some of the key features of these different courses to teach with a unified development environment which will give student an opportunity to learn product development in an industry-like environment. Therefore we are introducing here a new development and teaching platform around an ARM/FPGA/I2C concepts which includes key features like industry standard 32-bit ARM processor, high density Altera FPGA, debug ports for external logic analyzers, access to communication protocols like UART, SPI, I2C to interface with external components, and the ability to create wired and wireless sensor networks.