The same old, same old can get boring after a while. Useful applications are our bread and butter, which often means straightforward solutions to common problems. The innovativeness of those applications can be exciting from an engineering perspective, but the projects themselves aren’t always thrilling. So, we keep an eye out for projects that will remind you why you found engineering fun to begin with. We have a couple articles this month about entertaining projects that look particularly fun to build.

First we have a project for sports enthusiasts who wouldn’t mind using their engineering expertise to liven up games held at their local playing fields. Peter Gibbs explains how he created a scoreboard sized for a stadium, but priced for a small town budget (p. 16). A laptop is used to send commands to update the score, the inning, who’s at bat, and more. A Parallax BASIC Stamp 2 microcontroller serves as the brain of the system. Peter designed the scoreboard for scoring cricket matches, but you can modify it to score other sports games. Or you can adapt it for any other application that requires a large electronic display.

For people who prefer indoor games, we also have an interesting article about a virtual billiards project (p. 36). Danny Chow and Anthony Tay’s interactive game is simulated on a Seiko G321D LCD. Other main components include an Atmel ATmega32 microcontroller and an Analog Devices ADXL210 accelerometer. The system fits in a small, lightweight box, making it easily portable. Danny and Anthony explain what makes their system so much more exciting than current online pool games.

You’ll also want to read “Automatic Microcontroller Task Scheduling,” which is about an unconventional application for Microsoft Project (p. 26). Michael Smith and James Miller used Project, which is a tool for managing business projects, to optimize the code for a FIR filter algoritm. Project enabled them to maximize the performance of their Analog Devices ADSP-TS201 TigerSHARC processor-based system. Michael and James, who are professors at the University of Calgary and University of Alberta, respectively, provide a thorough analysis of their work and ready you to optimize your own code with Project.

This issue also features an article by Mitchell Levinn, who won Grand Honor in the Freescale Wireless Design Challenge earlier this year (p. 20). Mitchell takes us step-by-step through his design process for building the NozzleMon, a ZigBee-based water pressure sensor system that aids firefighters. Designed around a 131192-EVB and an MC13192 SARD board, the NozzleMon measures the water pressure at a water hose’s nozzle as well as the movement of the nozzle. Armed with this information, the pump operator back at the fire truck can more effectively regulate the water flow. For example, if kinks in the hose have caused a drop in pressure at the nozzle, the pump operator would know to increase the flow. Or if the data shows that the nozzle is moving around too much, the pump operator would realize that the hose may have been dropped and he should lessen the water pressure so that the firefighters can regain control of it. This well-designed project showcases the practicality of ZigBee technology.

Well, that’s all I have room to highlight. Have fun building your own versions of these projects!

jennifer.huber@circuitcellar.com