Pet Activity Monitor

2018-11-12 | By Renesas Maker

License: See Original Project

Courtesy of Renesas

The Renesas Pet Activity Monitor is a practical reference design created in celebration of the Year of the Dog. This device can track your dog’s barking and activity, and data can be viewed and downloaded from your PC.

Description

The Pet Activity Monitor is a self-contained PCB board inside a plastic casing to make it easy to attach to your pet's collar or use the included collar. This activity monitor features a Renesas Synergy™ Platform S3-series MCU, and multiple Renesas power and analog components.

The device monitors activity and sound from your pet. It attaches to the pet's collar and can count steps taken by the pet throughout the day. It can also detect barking in dogs.

Pet activity data is logged into the MCU data flash memory making it easy for you to read this data from the monitor to see what times of the day that you pet is most active. The data collected can be downloaded to a PC via a USB port on the device. Collected data and settings can be viewed and managed through the Pet Monitor PC application.

The Pet Activity Monitor is delivered preloaded with a demonstration program. The demonstration program shows several features of the Pet Activity Monitor and source code is available as a programming example for developers.

While this design has been created specifically as a pet monitor, with some modifications to code and/or additional hardware using the non-populated PMOD connector, it could be used as a remote sensor/logger for a variety of applications.

Pet Activity Monitor Case

Key Features

Accelerometer detects movement/steps
MEMS microphone with the ISL28133 op amp for audio detection (barking)
Utilizes low power consumption
Low continuous active current with on/off switch
Powered with one LIR2032 coin cell battery rechargeable by USB or +5V wall plug
Quickly designed utilizing Synergy SSP API
PC Application using Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition to create a VB.NET application to interface to the device from Microsoft Windows.
Expandable with the Serial PMOD port

Software and Tools

Evaluation board installation application (pet-monitor-setup.exe) includes the following items:

User Manual for the ISL devices
User Manual for the Synergy S3A3
Pre-built PC Application
Solution Source Project PC application
S3A3 Embedded e2 studio Project
Hardware Design Files
SynergyCDC drivers for Windows OS
User Guide for the Pet Activity Monitor Hardware

Related Products

R7FS3A37A3A01CFM

Synergy™ S3A3 Series MCU

ISL9120

Buck-Boost Regulator

ISL9230

Battery Charger

ISL28133

Operational Amplifier

Microcontrollers

The Synergy S3A3 is powered at 3.3V and the internal oscillator is utilized to minimize component count. This is the heart of the design as it communicates over I2C to the accelerometer and uses its 14-bit ADC for both audio detection and low battery detection. The S3A3 micro is also set as a USB device for communication using the Renesas CDC driver for Windows.

The C-code for the S3A7 was written using the e2 studio IDE with the Synergy Software Package (SSP). The SSP offers an abundance of time-saving features to make designing with the S3 Synergy platform quick and easy.The Renesas Synergy Platform (SSP) allows the RTOS, middleware, communication stacks, user interface, and detailed MCU functions to be accessed entirely through the application programming interface (API). Developers can immediately start developing end-product application code at the API level, thus eliminating the learning curve for software and MCU operation below the API. In this design, the following hardware features were utilized using simple API calls:

Express Logic RTOS Kernel, included in the Synergy SSP
Timers - The abundance of timers in the S3A3 MCU are used for timing certain operations
Real-Time Clock for time keeping
A/D converter for Audio detection and Low Battery Detection
Data Flash of the S3A3 MCU for storing user parameters and logging activity
USB Communication Stack for interfacing to the PC
Use of the HOCO built-in OSC to clock the device as well as clock the USB high-speed interface without the use of an external crystal

Debugging from within e2 studio is simple and intuitive. With the addition of the low-cost Synergy J-LINK Lite hardware debugger, the code in the Pet Activity Monitor can be modified or additional functionality added.

DC/DC Switching Regulators

The ISL9120 buck-boost switcher produces the 3.3V rail that is used by the rest of the active components on the board, with a better than 90% efficiency. Even though the ISL9120 can deliver up to 800mA of power the actual power requirement for this design will draw an average of 3.4mA as it switches to different power level run modes to help keep down the power requirements. The forced bypass power saving mode can be chosen if voltage regulation is not required. The device consumes less than 3.5μA of current over the operating temperature range in forced bypass mode.

Charging / Battery Management

ISL9230 is a fully integrated high input voltage single-cell Li-ion battery charger with power path management function. This charger performs the CC/CV charge function required by Li-ion batteries. The charger can withstand an input voltage up to 26V but is disabled when the input voltage exceeds 6.6V OVP threshold. The input current limit and charge current are programmable with external resistors.

Related Software

e2 studio

Synergy Software Package (SSP)

Documents

Synergy MCUs

Synergy S3A3 Product Documentation

User Guides

Pet Activity Monitor Users Guide

Renesas Pet Activity Monitor Reference Design Demo Kit

Datasheets

ISL28133 Datasheet

Single Micropower, Chopper Stabilized, RRIO Operational Amplifier