Sponsored By
Efika 5200B Project
Flexible Platform for the [Neuro]Sciencesin category Hardware
proposed by skaiser2 on 2nd May 2006 (accepted on 7th October 2006)
Project Summary
We propose to build a flexible tool for scientific research.The EFIKA will run a linux kernel with hard real-time extensions, and support 2 channels of general purpose 1MHz Digital-to-Analog and 100kHz Analog-to-Digital conversion, and 16 bits of 1MHz general purpose digital I/O. Portable software on WinXP/MacOSX/Linux host, written to the Qt API, will support higher-level software analysis and control of the EFIKA.
The EFIKA-based tool can then operate as a very intelligent slave, capable of 1) interfacing with the real world, 2) generating and processing analog signals in floating point, and 3) communicating remotely with it\'s host from anywhere. This tool will be all open source, and if we execute this project correctly, form a flexible and powerful well-loved companion platform for grad students and PhD researchers as they evolve through their endless investigations of myriad physical phenomena. It will be their hammer. The power of the MPC5200 and its floating point hardware, conveniently packaged with user-friendly IDEs and some well-designed APIs, make it a more attractive technology for the budding scientist with hard real-time needs and some technical savvy to stake his/her learning curve and future fortunes than LABView or other limiting technologies.
Already a personality application has been requested and funded: auditory neuroscience research. With the addition of a simple discriminator memory-mapped somewhere in EFIKA space, the EFIKA-based tool can generate 2 audio signals for complex left & right audio stimulii, record microphone signals for accurate calibration of SPL, and time stamp neuronal events to 1us accuracy. Qt software on the host can correlate neuronal events with the generated stimulii for studying physiology of auditory brain neurons.
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