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Project Report Guide

Project Presentation Guide

 

CSE 477: Digital Systems Design
(Spring 2002)
The Project

477 is all about the project.  Everything we do, from lectures to labs, is focussed on learning everything you need that you don't already know to do the project.  Since the class is small, we will organize ourselves as a single advanced development group that is producing a prototype of a new product for a company.  Producing this prototype product will drive our class schedule.

The Process

  • Product Definition (Marketing)  [Week 2]

  • The first task will be to define the product to be designed.  This will involve producing a marketing plan, marketing requirements and a product brochure.  This definition describes what the product does and how much it costs but does not define how this functionality is achieved.
     
  • Product Architecture (System Architect) [Week 3]

  • Given the product definition, a high-level specification of the product is next.  This specifies how the product functionality and marketing requirements will be achieved using a combination of software and hardware components.  This specification describes the high-level interfaces between these components.
     
  • Detailed Design Specification (Engineering) [Week 4]

  • The components defined in the Product Specification are designed in detail.  This includes a detailed interface description and functional description for each component.
     
  • Detailed Design (Engineering)  [Week 8]

  • All components are designed, tested and validated independently to meet the detailed design spec.
     
  • System Integration (Engineering) [Week 10]

  • The product is composed from the components and final testing is done.
     
  • Product Demonstation and Documentation (Sales) [Week 11]

  • The finished product prototype is demonstrated to potential customers and documentation is written to allow these customers to test and evaluate the product.

Documents and Presentations

  • Product Definition  [due April 12]

  • Marketing plan/requirements, product brochure.
     
  • Product Architecture [due April 19]

  • Block diagram, Block functionality, Interface description
     
  • Detailed Design Specifications [due April 26]

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  • Design Reviews [ongoing May 3-24]

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  • Product Documentation [June 7]

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  • Product Demonstration [June 12]

Project Meetings

We will use some of the class time for formal project meetings.  These meetings will be used to discuss ideas, co-ordinate groups, present status reports, make plans and schedules, and present design reviews.  Individual students will take turns as VP/Engineering and will be required to set the agenda for and lead these meetings.

Project Ideas

We will spend the first couple weeks of the quarter deciding on a project and defining it in some detail in a Product Definition.  Here are some ideas that have surfaced in the past:

  • Real-time image processing, e.g. shrink/zoom/warp/sharpen/... applied to a video camera input
  • LaserMouse: camera-based "mouse" interface for white board interaction
  • Multi-modal user interfaces: camera, accelerometer, range- finder, audio, speech-recognition, ...
  • Simple graphics card
  • Shaded polygon drawing, texture mapping
  • Motion capture
  • Net speakers: ethernet interface to MP3 streams
  • Image to sound
  • Audio signal-processing, e.g. equalizer
Links to Interesting Ideas/Resources
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 Last Updated:
3/24/2002

Contact the instructor at: cse477-webmaster@u.washington.edu