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Coldfire Processor Modeling

Description

This project was centered around designing a processor model (using the C programming language) based on the Coldfire computer architecture that will run on third party software known as Open Virtual Platforms. The end goal is to have a fully functional processor that can run Coldfire instructions and utilize peripheral…

This project was centered around designing a processor model (using the C programming language) based on the Coldfire computer architecture that will run on third party software known as Open Virtual Platforms. The end goal is to have a fully functional processor that can run Coldfire instructions and utilize peripheral devices in the same way as the hardware used in the embedded systems lab at ASU. This project would cut down the substantial amount of time students spend commuting to the lab. Having the processor directly at their disposal would also encourage them to spend more time outside of class learning the hardware and familiarizing themselves with development on an embedded micro-controller. The model will be accurate, fast and reliable. These aspects will be achieved through rigorous unit testing and use of the OVP platform which provides instruction accurate simulations at hundreds of MIPS (million instructions per second) for the specified model. The end product was able to accurately simulate a subset of the Coldfire instructions at very high rates.

ContributorsDunning, David Connor (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Meuth, Ryan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)

Created2014-12

Raspberry Pi Radio: Programming a Multiple Source Music Player

Description

The purpose of this project was to program a Raspberry Pi to be able to play music from both local storage on the Pi and from internet radio stations such as Pandora. The Pi also needs to be able to play various types of file formats, such as mp3 and…

The purpose of this project was to program a Raspberry Pi to be able to play music from both local storage on the Pi and from internet radio stations such as Pandora. The Pi also needs to be able to play various types of file formats, such as mp3 and FLAC. Finally, the project is also to be driven by a mobile app running on a smartphone or tablet. To achieve this, a client server design was employed where the Raspberry Pi acts as the server and the mobile app is the client. The server functionality was achieved using a Python script that listens on a socket and calls various executables that handle the different formats of music being played. The client functionality was achieved by programming an Android app in Java that sends encoded commands to the server, which the server decodes and begins playing the music that command dictates. The designs for both the client and server are easily extensible and allow for any future modifications to the project to be easily made.

ContributorsStorto, Michael Olson (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Meuth, Ryan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)

Created2015-05

The Coffee Hutch

Description

The Coffee Hutch project is derived from the field of Computer Science and consists of a website, a database, and a mobile application for Android devices. This three-tiered scheme is designed to support a point-of-sale payment system to be integrated with a standalone product dispensing machine. The website contains landing…

The Coffee Hutch project is derived from the field of Computer Science and consists of a website, a database, and a mobile application for Android devices. This three-tiered scheme is designed to support a point-of-sale payment system to be integrated with a standalone product dispensing machine. The website contains landing pages which provide navigation and functional capabilities for users. The site also features a variety of PHP web services which communicate with the database using SQL commands. The application, programmed in the Java language, makes use of these services in a simple, utilitarian design aimed at modification of user data stored in the database. This database, developed with MySQL and managed with the phpMyAdmin application, contains limited information in order to maximize speed of read and write accesses from the website and Android app. Together, these three components comprise an effective payment management system model with mobile capabilities. All of the components of this project were built at no cost. The website hosting service is free and the third-party services required (such as Paypal payment services) are simulated. These simulations allowed me to demonstrate the functionality of the three-tiered product without the necessity for monetary supplication. This thesis features every aspect of the development and testing of The Coffee Hutch software components. Requirements for each function of the software are specified in one section, and they are aligned with various pieces of the code in the source documentation. Test cases which address each requirement are outlined in another section of the thesis.

ContributorsHutchison, Caleb Ryan (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Zhao, Ming (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)

Created2016-12

Enhancing Student Learning Through Adaptive Sentence Generation

Description

Education of any skill based subject, such as mathematics or language, involves a significant amount of repetition and pratice. According to the National Survey of Student Engagements, students spend on average 17 hours per week reviewing and practicing material previously learned in a classroom, with higher performing students showing a…

Education of any skill based subject, such as mathematics or language, involves a significant amount of repetition and pratice. According to the National Survey of Student Engagements, students spend on average 17 hours per week reviewing and practicing material previously learned in a classroom, with higher performing students showing a tendency to spend more time practicing. As such, learning software has emerged in the past several decades focusing on providing a wide range of examples, practice problems, and situations for users to exercise their skills. Notably, math students have benefited from software that procedurally generates a virtually infinite number of practice problems and their corresponding solutions. This allows for instantaneous feedback and automatic generation of tests and quizzes. Of course, this is only possible because software is capable of generating and verifying a virtually endless supply of sample problems across a wide range of topics within mathematics. While English learning software has progressed in a similar manner, it faces a series of hurdles distinctly different from those of mathematics. In particular, there is a wide range of exception cases present in English grammar. Some words have unique spellings for their plural forms, some words have identical spelling for plural forms, and some words are conjugated differently for only one particular tense or person-of-speech. These issues combined make the problem of generating grammatically correct sentences complicated. To compound to this problem, the grammar rules in English are vast, and often depend on the context in which they are used. Verb-tense agreement (e.g. "I eat" vs "he eats"), and conjugation of irregular verbs (e.g. swim -> swam) are common examples. This thesis presents an algorithm designed to randomly generate a virtually infinite number of practice problems for students of English as a second language. This approach differs from other generation approaches by generating based on a context set by educators, so that problems can be generated in the context of what students are currently learning. The algorithm is validated through a study in which over 35 000 sentences generated by the algorithm are verified by multiple grammar checking algorithms, and a subset of the sentences are validated against 3 education standards by a subject matter expert in the field. The study found that this approach has a significantly reduced grammar error ratio compared to other generation algorithms, and shows potential where context specification is concerned.

ContributorsMoore, Zachary Christian (Author) / Amresh, Ashish (Thesis director) / Nelson, Brian (Committee member) / Software Engineering (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)

Created2016-05

A Web Applet for Finite-State Automata Visualization

Description

Among classes in the Computer Science curriculum at Arizona State University, Automata Theory is widely considered to be one of the most difficult. Many Computer Science concepts have strong visual components that make them easier to understand. Binary trees, Dijkstra's algorithm, pointers, and even more basic concepts such as arrays…

Among classes in the Computer Science curriculum at Arizona State University, Automata Theory is widely considered to be one of the most difficult. Many Computer Science concepts have strong visual components that make them easier to understand. Binary trees, Dijkstra's algorithm, pointers, and even more basic concepts such as arrays all have very strong visual components. Not only that, but resources for them are abundantly available online. Automata Theory, on the other hand, is the first Computer Science course students encounter that has a significant focus on deep theory. Many of the concepts can be difficult to visualize, or at least take a lot of effort to do so. Furthermore, visualizers for finite state machines are hard to come by. Because I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Automata Theory and parsers, I wanted to create a program that involved the two. Additionally, I thought creating a program for visualizing automata would help students who struggle with Automata Theory develop a stronger understanding of it.

ContributorsSmith, Andrew (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Meuth, Ryan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)

Created2021-12

A Quantitative Assessment of Visual Cognition Versus Constructivism in Computer Science

Description

Alongside the many challenges of Covid-19, the pandemic also disrupted the normal structure of education for students. As classes were being transferred to online formats, computer science students started learning more through constructivism principles rather than the traditionally taught, in-person lectures. This quantitative assessment hopes to determine whether constructivist principles…

Alongside the many challenges of Covid-19, the pandemic also disrupted the normal structure of education for students. As classes were being transferred to online formats, computer science students started learning more through constructivism principles rather than the traditionally taught, in-person lectures. This quantitative assessment hopes to determine whether constructivist principles or traditional/visual cognition principles are better for teaching computer science topics. Determinations will be made through a social behavioral experiment teaching pointers to participants. Participants were split into three groups: a control group, a constructivist group, and a visual cognition group. Each group took part in an assessment testing their knowledge retention about pointers after having a lecture based around each teaching method. The assessment evaluated retries per assessment, time per correct answer, time per question, and the average time taken in total. The results of the experiment led to a conclusion that, according to the resulting data, constructivism teaching principles benefited participant scores, and visual cognition teaching principles worsened participant scores. However, a definitive answer of which teaching method is better for computer science could not be made due to insufficient sample size. When reflecting on the first iteration of this experiment, it is clear that future iterations of this experiment would benefit from a higher sample size, an easier assignment for the constructivist group, a feedback survey, and a longer period to experiment.

ContributorsTiruchinapalli, Sai Santosh (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Hartwell, Leland (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)

Created2023-05

Smith Thesis Project

Description

Among classes in the Computer Science curriculum at Arizona State University, Automata Theory is widely considered to be one of the most difficult. Many Computer Science concepts have strong visual components that make them easier to understand. Binary trees, Dijkstra's algorithm, pointers, and even more basic concepts such as arrays…

Among classes in the Computer Science curriculum at Arizona State University, Automata Theory is widely considered to be one of the most difficult. Many Computer Science concepts have strong visual components that make them easier to understand. Binary trees, Dijkstra's algorithm, pointers, and even more basic concepts such as arrays all have very strong visual components. Not only that, but resources for them are abundantly available online. Automata Theory, on the other hand, is the first Computer Science course students encounter that has a significant focus on deep theory. Many
of the concepts can be difficult to visualize, or at least take a lot of effort to do so. Furthermore, visualizers for finite state machines are hard to come by. Because I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Automata Theory and parsers, I wanted to create a program that involved the two. Additionally, I thought creating a program for visualizing automata would help students who struggle with Automata Theory develop a stronger understanding of it.

ContributorsSmith, Andrew (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Meuth, Ryan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor)

Created2021-12

Website Example DFA

Description

Among classes in the Computer Science curriculum at Arizona State University, Automata Theory is widely considered to be one of the most difficult. Many Computer Science concepts have strong visual components that make them easier to understand. Binary trees, Dijkstra's algorithm, pointers, and even more basic concepts such as arrays…

Among classes in the Computer Science curriculum at Arizona State University, Automata Theory is widely considered to be one of the most difficult. Many Computer Science concepts have strong visual components that make them easier to understand. Binary trees, Dijkstra's algorithm, pointers, and even more basic concepts such as arrays all have very strong visual components. Not only that, but resources for them are abundantly available online. Automata Theory, on the other hand, is the first Computer Science course students encounter that has a significant focus on deep theory. Many
of the concepts can be difficult to visualize, or at least take a lot of effort to do so. Furthermore, visualizers for finite state machines are hard to come by. Because I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Automata Theory and parsers, I wanted to create a program that involved the two. Additionally, I thought creating a program for visualizing automata would help students who struggle with Automata Theory develop a stronger understanding of it.

ContributorsSmith, Andrew (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Meuth, Ryan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor)

Created2021-12

Website Example NFA

Description

Among classes in the Computer Science curriculum at Arizona State University, Automata Theory is widely considered to be one of the most difficult. Many Computer Science concepts have strong visual components that make them easier to understand. Binary trees, Dijkstra's algorithm, pointers, and even more basic concepts such as arrays…

Among classes in the Computer Science curriculum at Arizona State University, Automata Theory is widely considered to be one of the most difficult. Many Computer Science concepts have strong visual components that make them easier to understand. Binary trees, Dijkstra's algorithm, pointers, and even more basic concepts such as arrays all have very strong visual components. Not only that, but resources for them are abundantly available online. Automata Theory, on the other hand, is the first Computer Science course students encounter that has a significant focus on deep theory. Many
of the concepts can be difficult to visualize, or at least take a lot of effort to do so. Furthermore, visualizers for finite state machines are hard to come by. Because I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Automata Theory and parsers, I wanted to create a program that involved the two. Additionally, I thought creating a program for visualizing automata would help students who struggle with Automata Theory develop a stronger understanding of it.

ContributorsSmith, Andrew (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Meuth, Ryan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor)

Created2021-12

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