XRDS™️ Software Development

Developed and tested vibration data analysis algorithms for condition-based maintenance from an embedded OS
- Implemented the algorithms in C for utilization by an ARM cortex 335x series microcontroller. The focus of the algorithms was on time domain, frequency domain, and synchronous domain analyses
- Developed a high-level framework in C incorporated with the Yocto project for handling onboard processing
  - Designed and integrated communication functions with an embedded SQLite database for retrieving algorithm parameters, as well as loading and storing both raw and processed data
  - Interfaced with low-level routines for collecting raw data and monitoring system state via a watchdog timer
  - Established communications protocol for system-wide integration in order to perform all onboard data acquisitions and processing upon triggers either by the user or by flight regime
- Performed software verification testing by comparing results from the data analysis framework with a Python transliteration of the original MatLab scripts. The results were displayed and analyzed
Designed and tested firmware for the PIC24F08KL301 MCU using MPLAB X, Eclipse, and PICKIT3
- The microcontroller was used to emulate tachometer signals with two 8-bit timers and to translate between RS-485 and RS-232 message protocols for interfacing with a rotor blade tracking system
- The two UART peripherals were utilized for the serial communications: one dedicated to RS-485 communication with the controlling OS, and the other was dedicated to RS-232 communication with the tracking system
- Implemented a communications protocol for responding to various control bytes transmitted over RS-485
- Developed a boot loader for executing firmware updates over serial traffic: created host side in Python using minimal packages for ease of deployment on the embedded Linux system, and tested the MCU side written in C
- Phase 1 development was done on the SAMD21G18A MCU with Eclipse and the Arduino IDE for programming