S.N.A.K.E.: A Dynamically Reconfigurable Artificial Sensate Skin ...

Figure 3-20: Brain
regular PCB fabrication techniques, and their mechanical properties were of no relevant
significance. Brains, as opposed by Nodes, need to have the ability of quickly and efficiently
relaying information back and forth between the Skin Patches and the PC, while allowing
other brains to do so as well.
Given that Brains are not required to do any major data processing, the processing power is
not a direct requirement, however larger and more powerful processors are generally needed
to handle large amounts of data. In the specific case of this project though, data is locally
processed at the nodes and higher-order features rather than pixelated data are transferred
to the Brain by the nodes, which allows the Brains to concentrate more on administrative
tasks of the network, rather than relaying data back and forth, and it also minimizing the
bandwidth required.
Brains are composed of a microcontroller unit, power unit and communications unit; one is
shown in Figure 3-20 The schematics and layouts of the brain, which will be briefly outlined
in the following subsections, are shown in Appendix C.
3.4.1 Processor unit
The processor unit of the brain is composed by the microcontroller, crystal, programming
header and output devices. Having a faster MCU than the one used in the nodes could in
theory, transfer data faster. This would be true if the MCU could extract information from
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