It is that time again! There is a new batch of Cornell University ECE 5760 Advanced Microcontrollers Final Projects. If you have done any PID work in the past the FPGA controlled Magnetic Levitation by Gautham Ponnu, Ryan Land, Nathan Spallone should be of interest. They are using a Altera DE2-115 FPGA board to monitor and control a steel ball about 1mm above the position sensor with great accuracy.
“The LDC1000 inductive sensor from Texas Instruments. This device acts as a mini “metal detector” and tells us, albeit in a nonlinear fashion, the height of the ball. The output is nonlinear because it is measuring the presence of metal through inductance, not the direct elevation of the ball from the sensor.”
