Laboratory Assignment

General Information

To achieve practical experience of the construction of a real-time system, a compulsory laboratory assignment is included in the course. The purpose of the assignment is to control a simulated train system with the aid of concurrent tasks on a microprocessor. The software tasks should be able to handle switches, sensors and speed control of two train sets. The assignment encompasses control of external units using interrupt handling. The software is programmed using Ada 95.

The laboratory sessions are administrated in the following way. First, you register for a group (link to group registration) and will thereby be assigned a group name. Then, you book time slots in the laboratory using the assigned group name (link to booking of laboratory sessions). Please note that you must be logged on to the portal in order to be able to use these services. If you do not have access to the registration service, you contact the laboratory assistant to get a group name and time slots.  While you should use your normal CID account name to login to the laboratory computer system, the name of your group is used to identify a protected (non-readable to other groups) area on the file system where you can store your source code files for the laboratory exercise. The path to the group area is (where 'rt_xxx' is your six-character group name):

    /chalmers/groups/cab_ce_edu_2011_eda222_rt_xxx_-

Approval of the laboratory assignment is done in the following way. The students demonstrates a functioning program for the course assistant. At the same time, the students should explain how the software is constructed, using access graphs and program listings. Finally, a laboratory report should be written and electronically submitted via the Student Portal (link to report submission) or via email to the laboratory assistant (if you do not have access to the submission service).

Rules - IMPORTANT

Please read these early and carefully!
  1. Deadlines are hard. If you for some reason cannot make the deadline, contact us before the laboratory report deadline, and tell us what your reason is, together with a realistic proposal of a new personal deadline for you. You may then get an extension of the deadline.
  2. You have a total number of 2 attempts to fix your submission if necessary (so: 1st submission - feedback - 2nd and final submission). If there are still issues left after your 2nd and final submission, your submission will be rejected. So please read feedback carefully! Of course, you are allowed to ask questions if issues are unclear.
  3. The assignment will be graded as Pass or Fail.
  4. Your last attempt has to be submitted before the final approval deadline. If you fail to do this, your submission will be rejected.
  5. Cheating is taken very seriously. Before you start working on the assignment, please read the note on cheating.

Laboratory sessions

The laboratory sessions are done in groups of at most two students, and take place in the course laboratories of the Division of Computer Engineering (southern part of the EDIT building, floor 4) during study weeks 2 through 7.

The following time slots are available for the laboratory sessions (at most 12 groups per time slot):

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Tue   17.00 - 21.00  
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Wed   08.00 - 12.00  
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Thu   08.00 - 12.00  
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Fri   08.00 - 12.00  

To avoid a shortage of laboratory session time slots at the end of the course, every group must book (and attend) one time slot per week during study weeks 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Since the number of time slots per week are limited, not all groups will be able to book more than time slot per week. Therefore, it is not allowed to book more than one time slot in advance. Booking of additional time slots may be done on the day before the current time slot at the earliest. Booked time slots that are not being used will not be compensated for.

Deadlines

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Laboratory report     Mar 11    
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Final approval     Apr 1    

Resources