This week I started and finished the slides for the proposal presentation and practiced for and gave the presentation. I also researched and planned out the physical design of our Enigma machine and used CAD to plan out where our various components — PCB, Arduino, power supply, and FPGA — would be positioned on the board and how they would be connected. The custom PCB will be mounted above the FPGA. The Arduino will be mounted below the PCB using header pins. The power supply will be connected to the Arduino and mounted on the bottom plate of the Enigma machine. I also designed an acrylic cover to be mounted above the PCB. Half of my time this week was spent refreshing myself on how to use SolidWorks.
As for the project schedule, I was meant to CAD the design at the very end of the semester, however, we realized that we needed to CAD our design much earlier in order to visualize how the components would fit together. This required rescheduling my tasks, but I believe I am still on schedule. Next week I will start planning out and writing the RTL. I will design our UART protocol and start implementing it. I’ll also start working on our design report and design presentation slides.
