Chronos

By Laura Cortés-Rico and Jaime Herrán

Chronos was our final capstone project in the undergraduate program of Electronic Engineering at the National University of Colombia. It is an open hardware and software platform that includes didactic activities with non-formal educational purposes. The hardware is based on the AT91SAM7S microcontroller. It follows a modularity principle, so it is possible to connect input (e.g. buttons or switches) or output (like LED or motors) modules according to the activities to make. It also followed a symmetry principle where the modules could only connect in the right way; it was possible to have more than one due way, and it was a matter of programming the software correctly according to the module position.

When we developed Chronos, Arduino had not penetrated widely in Colombia, and Raspberry did not even exist. Percival, a Colombian platform from Maloka, inspired us.