Product category:
Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: Luminary Micro
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 09 April 2007
Design contest US $10,000 winner
announced
The US $3000 first prize in the DesignStellaris2006 design contest went to Zhang's Handheld Multifunction Scope project based on the Stellaris EKK-LM3S811 evaluation board.
Luminary Micro, Keil and Circuit Cellar magazine have named Jingxi Zhang as the winner of the US $10,000 DesignStellaris2006 design contest for the Stellaris family of microcontrollers, the world's first silicon implementation of the ARM Cortex-M3 processor The US $3000 first prize went to Zhang's Handheld Multifunction Scope project based on the Stellaris EKK-LM3S811 evaluation board
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 25 May 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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Evaluation kit functions as both an evaluation platform for the Stellaris LM3S811 microcontroller and a serial in-circuit debug interface for any Stellaris MCU-based target board.
The Handheld Multifunction Scope can be operated in stand-alone mode with three AAA batteries.
It can also be powered through a PC USB port, and in this mode, the PC screen is used to show the oscilloscope display and the measurement values.
Zhang's flexible tool functions as a dual-channel trace oscilloscope; an AC/DC voltmeter, ohm meter, capacitance, and inductance meters; a frequency counter; a logic probe; and a pulse generator.
Further reading
Cortex-M3-based MCUs major on motion control
Five new Stellaris microcontrollers and corresponding development kits offer increased functionality for sophisticated motion-oriented applications.
Prototyping/debugging kit for ARM controllers
Luminary Micro's Stellaris LM3S811 Evaluation Kit comes with a 30-day evaluation version of CodeSourcery's Sourcery G++ software-development environment.
The future of the MCU market
Jean Anne Booth, Chief Marketing Officer of Luminary Micro, discusses the fragmentation and impending consolidation of the MCU market.
"I enjoyed using Luminary Micro's wonderful Stellaris chip for the Circuit Cellar DesignStellaris2006 contest", said Jingxi Zhang, Senior System Architect of Jupiter Systems.
"The rich on-chip peripherals and plentiful GPIO pins of the LM3S811 make it possible to build this multifunction tool with few external components".
Second place went to Thomas Alldread's RF NimbleSig, an RF signal generator and power meter, which is a compact direct digital synthesiser (DDS) generator / RF power meter module that provides a frequency agile RF output signal source and a low-level RF power measurement.
Jake Gunderson captured the third prize for his Squawk Box, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) user instrument that interfaces the widely accepted Asterisk open source soft telephone switch.
Honourable mentions were awarded to: Ilya Mamontov (Stroboscopic Pocket Tuner), Alexandre Guimaraes (Not Just Another SMD Reflow Controller), James Koehler (Audio Noise Figure Meter), Lindsay Meek (Uninterruptible Solar Power Supply), Naubert Aparicio (ArmExe: an RTOS for Luminary Micro Stellaris Cortex-M3 microcontrollers), Jeffrey Berezin (Bicycle Simulator), Fabian de la Fuente (Timecode generator), Henry Pfister (Multitone Music Keyboard), Peter Baston (AIS Decoder), Alex Wolfing (PGKey), Benjamin Wolpoff (Shock-N-Awe), Andrew Sterian (Coil Gun Controller), Hoa Phan (Automatic Antenna Positioner), Fernando Jordan (Swissjazz), Robert Papp (StellarisGfx), and Sylvain Davaine (Large LCD Screen Driver).
To win the top prize, Zhang competed against top embedded engineers worldwide for more than US $10,000 in cash prises using Luminary Micro's Stellaris family of ARM Cortex-M3 processor-based controllers with the ARM RealView Microcontroller Development Kit.
To enable designers to develop applications for the contest even more quickly, Luminary Micro and Keil specifically developed the Stellaris LM3S811 Evaluation Kit with RealView Microcontroller Development Kit evaluation software.
Thousands of engineers worldwide responded to the call and obtained evaluation kits for the contest.
"We are very impressed with the diverse and creative designs that poured in from around the world", said Jean Anne Booth, Chief Marketing Office of Luminary Micro.
"These inventive applications certainly demonstrate that Stellaris is indeed the performance product for serious microcontroller applications".
"The response to the DesignStellaris2006 design contest was phenomenal", said Steve Ciarcia, Editorial Director and Circuit Cellar founder.
"So many design engineers around the globe were excited about working with Luminary Micro MCUs and Keil tools that I knew right away this contest would be a hit".
"ARM has been very impressed with the number and quality of entrants for the DesignStellaris2006 competition", said Alistair Greenhill, Director of Mass Market Tools, ARM.
"We believe that this illustrates the strong momentum within the marketplace to move to next-generation ARM 32-bit microcontrollers based on the ARM Cortex-M3 processor, with devices that deliver outstanding performance and ease of use at competitive pricing points".
The Stellaris LM3S811 Evaluation Kit used for DesignStellaris2006 is both an evaluation platform for the Stellaris LM3S811 and a serial in-circuit debug interface for any Stellaris microcontroller-based target board, spanning the design spectrum from evaluation to prototyping to application-specific design.
The kit also includes an evaluation copy of the RealView Microcontroller Development Kit software tools on a CD packed with datasheets, schematics, applications notes, and programming examples.
The board is powered over USB (cable included), and also contains silk-screened through-hole-mount pin headers that can be user populated with pin stake headers for use in hardware prototyping.
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