Eagle in a Rack

[Background]

This project was my entry into the local science fair, the Bay Area Science and Engineering Fair (BASEF). The overall idea was to perform object tracking in normal analog video signals. The "Eagle in a Rack" was the first design, which took up a normal 19" rack unit. Then the design was made "slightly" smaller, or a 10cm by 10cm circuit board. This was called the "Eagle in a Board". There is now an "Eagle in a Board V2.0" comming soon - watch this site for updates!

Front panel of the 19 inch rack

[Overview]
Imagine having the ability to perform true real-time object tracking in a small package for low cost. It would be possible to use object tracking in a host of new applications - security cameras that move themselves to targets or cheap robots that can follow objects of interest (such as a car or animal) just to name two. Currently, there is much work done in the field of object tracking, and in fact entire businesses have been built around products that perform object tracking. However most current solutions rely on two things - a fast microprocessor and a lot of RAM.

These systems work by running so fast that it appears to be running in real-time. They can use many different algorithms to do the object tracking, as they have enough time and memory to spare to perform these. What happens when the system needs to be implemented on a small or low-cost platform, where there is no room for a high-speed microprocessor with a considerable amount of RAM as it is too expensive, physically large, or complex to design with?

Enter the Eagle in a Rack / Eagle in a Board. There is no microprocessor, and there is no external RAM chip anywhere in the system. The entire system is implemented in hardware - specifically on a XC2S200E Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) from Xilinx with a chip from Texas Instrument used to digitize the video signal. Most of the on-chip RAM in the system is used to create a list of colours in the image, and no frame is ever held in RAM. Since only a small amount of RAM is needed, it can be easily implemented on the FPGA.

Suddenly it becomes possible to actually make an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) that performs the object tracking - this means the entire object tracking system can be done on one chip! Instead of the microprocessor, the RAM, the support logic, and the FLASH to store the program you can now just have it done on one chip (if a ASIC is made), or three chips (the FPGA, configuration memory for FPGA, and video digitizer) if normal off the shelf parts are used. In this project a small ten centimetre square board was made to prove this small version is physically possible.

The system does not need the high frequencies that typically plague these normal object trackers. In truth, the system is designed to be actually running at the speed that pixels are scanned in from the video signal (around 30 MHz). The system is running in true real-time, responding to information as it receives it.


[A Huge Thanks]
This project has really been intersting so far, and I have learnt a lot from it. However there have been a few people I would like to thank greatly, they are:

Xilinx - Provided me with the ISE BaseX software that runs on Linux and was key to this project. As well provided samples of the XCF04S device that allowed me to not have to resort to expensive PROMs when I wanted to be able to have configuration data that would be kept in a non-volatile memory:
Chris Sepulveda - Xilinx University Program Coordinator
Peter Alfke Director, Applications Engineering

Agilent - Discount on a HP34401A that was used in early analog design:
Otto Lee - Online Sales Engineer
Barnie Floto - Inside Field Engineer

Advanced Circuits - Discount on Video Digitizer printed circuit board being fabricated:
Forrest J. Arndt - Regional Sales Manager

New (April 2004):
Microsoft Canada - Copy of Windows XP Professional that was needed to run my EDA Software (AutoTRAX EDA) to be used in Canada Wide Science Fair:
Daniel Shapiro - Academic Program Manager

New (May 2004):
Advanced Circuits - Large discount on having my 4-layer "Eagle in a Board" circuit board fabricated as well as technical support on fixing errors in my Gerber files. Without this help I doubt my "Eagle in a Board" would be in existance!
Tony Breglio - Research and Development Manager
Lydia Arriaga - Regional Sales Manager



As well I used a SchmartBoard for the XCF04S from Xilinx. This was used to adapt the 20-pin SMD package to the 8-pin socket in the development board fot the FPGA. At $5 it sure beats the $50 that lots of other people seem to want for just a cheap adapter board! See http://www.engineeringlab.com/circuitboards.html for more info. SchmartBoard holding the XCF04S


[Results]
At BASEF which ran from March 31 - April 3, 2004 I won the following awards:


See http://basef.mcmaster.ca/2004/results/gallery/display_project.cgi?project_id=A19 for more detail on my project there (has picture).

At the Canada Wide Science Fair May 15th - 23rd of 2004 at Memorial University in Newfoundland I had an updated project, and won the following:

See http://www.cwsf2004.ca/.

[Files]
CWSF Cache
You can download my report below as appeared at CWSF:
CWSF_eag.pdf [1.1 MB]
You can download my project files as appeared at CWSF:
CWSF_eag.zip [16.2 MB]

BASEF Cache
You can download my report below as appeared at BASEF - not finished yet:
BASEF_eag.pdf [1.1 MB]

Virtual Science Fair Website
I also entered this into the Virtual Science Fair, see http://www.alumni.ca/~ofly4c0/index.html.

[Photos]

The small version ("Eagle in a Board") on a 4-layer PCB:


The rack-sized original version ("Eagle in a Rack"):