Plug-n-Play Simulator

Bringing the hidden world of a microprocessor to real life

Upgrading from handmade prototypes to manufactured units using customised PCBs.

Seven segment displays and LCDs => RGB Oled color displays
Programmable LEDs and buttons
All bricks are identical
Any brick can be installed in any free motherboard location
No cables

Explore an innovative tool for learning microprocessors:

Hardware-Oriented
Microcomputer Simulator Development KIT (HOMSDK), based on HOMS

At-a-Glance

Plug-n-Play bricks
Identical bricks
Special motherboards for installing bricks
Based on Arduino platform
Easy reproduction
Custom educational scenarios
Suitable for academic teachers and researchers in the field of engineering education

View License

Every internal component of the microprocessor
is implemented as a single identical brick

General & Special Purpose Registers
Arithmetic & Logic Unit (ALU) / SR and Control Unit
Memory - I/O System

Easy installation

The motherboard has embedded communication buses and power lines
A brick can be installed in any available location on the motherboard
Two or more motherboards can be connected using circuit bridges
Each motherboard has four free locations for brick installation
All connected bricks can be powered via any USB connection or through an external power supply using the barrel jack

Unique features

Customizable architecture

The teacher or student can use any number or type of blocks for building the preferred microprocessor architecture.

Block reusability

The microprocessor units are based on the same board and the embedded software determines the block functionality.

Programmable functionality

Based on the embedded software, a block operates like a register or control unit or ALU or special register, etc.

Experimental architecture

Based on the number and type of blocks, a teacher or student can test a prototype architecture or to expand an operation to smaller steps by using more blocks.

Assembly instructions development

Programmer/user, Software/hardware developer, Watching/studying

Hardware point of view

The HOMS tool, emphasizes the hardware layer which is hidden in the existing simulation tools. Thus the “connection” of instruction, operation and hardware implementation is more clear in the student’s minds

Multiple points of view

The HOMS user is free to build any assembly instruction which is supported by the software inside control unit.

Educational scenarios

Using the default HOMS tool architecture, teachers can develop the desired assembly instructions for building different educational scenarios.

Standalone tool

The proposed HOMS tool does not need a PC and can be operated autonomously. Thus, constitutes a mobile laboratory system unit

Easy reproduction

The hardware components of the HOMS tool can be found easily in any market. On the other hand, the multiple identical blocks support easily the reproduction procedure

Open features

The main advantage of the implemented HOMS tool is the object-oriented approach and the open-source hardware which gives the freedom to any developer not only to reproduce the same tool but also to implement the whole simulator using different blocks (with or without an LCD, buttons, etc). Note that the embedded software makes the difference.

VIDEO: Programming the bricks

VIDEO: Executing instructions

View/Download files

HOMS Quick user guide

System map, Memory unit operation, Data entry, Code preload. View (PDF)

View/Download files on Github

Github project

License

This is an open-source project under a CC license. View license in TXT file or View license online

IEEE EDUCON 2024 Presentation

Version 1 was presented at the IEEE EDUCON2024 conference in May 2024.View file (PDF) || EDUCON 2024 on web

Selected publication (Prev. Work)

P.M.Papazoglou, A Hybrid Simulation Platform for Learning Microprocessors, Computer Applications in Engineering Education, 10.1002/cae.21921, (pp 655-674) WILEY, 2018 online

Previous work

A hybrid simulation platform for learning microprocessors

The proposed hybrid simulation platform (HSP) consists of hardware components which represent the uP architectural units and software components for system operation and administration.

Abstract

Modern engineering applications are based on microprocessors and microcontrollers. Thus, the microprocessor (uP) architecture constitutes a core course component in engineering education. Many technologies have been used by the Universities in the past 30 years for learning uPs. In the 1980s, hardware platforms have been used (e.g., MPF-I) for learning assembly programming in hexadecimal mode of popular microprocessor models. The above platforms have been replaced by software simulators where the uP components are represented by visual objects. The software based approaches have lack of uP architecture customization and are limited only in assembly programming. On the other hand, the existing hardware based tools are low level and very complicated. Thus, the students do not work on uP design and assembly language development. In this paper, a novel hybrid simulator platform which changes the educational point of view regarding the uP learning methodology is presented. The proposed hybrid simulation platform (HSP) consists of hardware components which represent the uP architectural units and software components for system operation and administration. Using the HSP, students freely select the uP hardware based components and build their own architecture. On the other hand, professors can create educational scenarios with customizable experimental architectures.

Publication