Cypress and BITS Pilani - K.K. Birla Goa Campus team up on new PSoC 3 lab

BANGALORE, INDIA: Cypress Semiconductor Corp. and the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani - K.K. Birla Goa Campus (BPKKBGC) signed a memorandum of understanding for collaborative research and funded lab development based on the PSoC 3 programmable system-on-chip. The MoU was signed by Prof. K.E. Raman, Director, BPKKBGC and Patrick Kane, Director of Cypress University Alliance.

Patrick Kane visited the campus where he inaugurated a state-of-the-art PSoC 3 lab—the first of its kind in India. The lab will expose students to the PSoC platform, a flexible family of devices with programmable analog and digital blocks integrated with a microcontroller. With its unique architecture, PSoC provides an unrivaled learning platform for embedded design students and will enable them to create projects and solutions for embedded systems.

“Our focus is to excite students about new technologies and hence grow the pool of budding, talented engineers from India. The PSoC lab will allow students to innovate and work on high-tech projects,” said Patrick Kane. He and his team interacted extensively with both students and faculty at BPKKBGC. They also conducted a workshop for the Electrical, Electronics and Instrumentation Group.

“The lab has added an extra dimension to the student learning experience and has resulted in a unique learning platform where students now receive real-world, hands-on experience in developing applications,” said Prof. Raman.

Students from BPKKBGC have implemented a number of projects using PSoC 1 technology. Some of these include a BLDC motor driver, a pH meter, an accelerometer based tilt sensor, a PWM driven hexapod etc. These projects are currently being developed using the new PSoC 3 platform, which uses an 8051 core as well a programmable analog and digital modules.

Students have also been involved in research based projects such as study of battery charging algorithms using the PSoC. They have also assisted Cypress in development of the Power Line Communication solution. A PSoC 3 manual by BITS Goa is also in the pipeline.