Electronics Projects of Tom Ahola

Sensor Platforms

Here is a compilation of sensor platforms I have been developing or working with.

Nokia Motionband

2005 A simple wireless sensor for motion tracking Used in various collaboration projects with Nokia Sensors: 3x Accelerometer, 3x Magnetometer, 3x Gyro Bluetooth connectivity Low power MSP430 CPU Applications: 6DOF 9DOF orientation tracking, motion sensing, gaming. A virtual reality snow boarding game was developed where postures of the player were tracked by two motionbands. Another application was head tracking for 3D audio rendering. I used this platform extensively when developing sensor algorithms

Nokia Wrist-Attached Sensor Platform (NWSP)

2007 An open source R&D platform for sports, wellness, interaction and other research Used in various collaboration projects with Nokia It was available for purchase Sensors: 3x Accelerometer, 3x Magnetometer, 3x Gyro, Barometer, Humidity, Temperature, Microphone, Light Colour display, RGB LED, touch pad, buzzer, vibra Bluetooth connectivity Support for external Bluetooth GPS receiver Support for inductive heart-rate strap Powerful and flexible FPGA based, Nios II soft-core processor Applications: heart rate monitor, step counter, sports tracking, compass, altimeter, navigation, audio analyzer, augmented reality, games, 6DOF 9DOF 10DOF 11DOF orientation tracking, dead reconing I developed half of the electronics (sensor and user-interface board), most of the VHDL design for the FPGA and almost all of the embedded software, including architecture, sensor algorithms, wireless interface protocols and demo applications www.tomahola.com/NWSP

Nokia Ariane

2009 A small sensor subsystem used in reserach of motion tracking Used in various collaboration projects with Nokia An open library for interfacing to the sensor was publicly available Powerful ARM7 processor allowed real-time on-device signal processing Sensors: 3x Accelerometer, 3x Magnetometer, 3x Gyro, Barometer, Temperature In a snowboarding event in Helsinki the movements of the snowboarders were tracked using Ariane. My sensor algorithms (compass calibration and 6DOF orientation) were used in this platform. I used Ariane as motion sensor for our interactive performance called RAJA, which combined indoor positioning and motion sensing of dancers to synthesize visuals and sound.

OpenPilot / LibrePilot - CC3D / CC3D Revo

2013 Open-source hardware and software platforms for flight control and stabilization of fixed wing and multirotor aircraft Sensors: 3x Accelerometer, 3x Gyro, 3x Magnetometer, Barometer, external GPS receiver I used this platform on my quadcopter drone I have built myself to experiment with high performance and low latency sensor fusion for flight stabilization https://librepilot.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LPDOC/overview?mode=global

Silicon Labs Thunderboard Sense

2016 ARM Cortex M4 core with 32 kB RAM and 256 kB Flash Bluetooth Smart support using multi-protocol Sub-GHz to 2.4 GHz wireless radio SoC Low Energy Consumption Sensors: 6-axis Inertial Sensor ICM-20648, Relative Humidity and Temperature Sensor Si7021, UV and Ambient Light Sensor Si1133, Pressure Sensor BMP280, Indoor Air Quality and Gas Sensor CCS811, MEMS Microphone SPV1840 I used this platform to investigate new IoT possibilities and developed a sleep quality sensing system https://www.silabs.com/products/development-tools/wireless/bluetooth/thunderboard-sense-kit

Suunto Movesense

2017 A OEM module for quick and easy development of products requiring motion and heart-rate sensing Modules and development kits available for purchase Bluetooth Smart Sensors: Can be directly snapped to a heart rate belt. Also, includes motion sensors. This was an odd project for me. I was asked to help with the development, but nothing with sensor processing, which I'm an outstanding expert on. I made a proprietary bootloder, not my cup of tea, which they eventually did not use. There already existed a standard compliant bootloader provided by the chip vendor. www.movesense.com

© 2017 Tom Ahola