4.7.

4 External
hardware
devices
Notes
External Hardware Devices A LEVEL COMPUTER SCIENCE

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Input and Output Devices

Barcode reader

1. A light source / laser is shone at bar code so that it is illuminated. A moving mirror/prism
moves light beam across bar code.

2. The light is reflected back but the black and white bands reflect different amounts of light.

3. A light sensor/photodiode/CCD measures amount of reflected light and converts into an

electrical signal.

4. The signal is interpreted and converted to binary

5. The computer then calculates the Check Digit by passing the data through a function

6. The result is compared against the check digit read in

7. If they do not match an error is indicated

8. If they match the bar code is accepted and processed

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Digital camera

1. Light enters through and is focussed by the lens onto an array of sensors on the sensor
chip called a Charge-Couple Device (CCD) or a CMOS image sensor.

2. Each sensor produces an electrical signal which represents a pixel

3. An Analogue/Digital Converter (ADC) converts the measurement of light intensity into

binary data

4. A Colour filter is applied to generate separate data values for red, green and blue colour
components

5. The pixels are recorded as an array and stored to the SD card.

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Laser printer
This is a good video showing how a HP 2600 works: https://youtu.be/WB0HnXcW8qQ

1. The print drum is coated in

(positive static) charge

2. An electronic circuit inside the

printer generates a bitmap of the
page from the data that is sent to it
from the computer.

3. The electronic circuit activates a

Laser beam which draws the image
onto the print drum surface via a
rotating (octagonal) mirror.

4. This is done by the laser beam hitting the drum, erasing the existing charge in spots and
creating the opposite charge in those same spots where toner will eventually cling.
Areas on the drum meant to remain white on the paper keep their initial charge. The
laser is modulated (turned on & off) during this process.

5. The toner (powdered ink) is given (positive) charge and then an ink roller that is in
contact with the drum, coats the drum with toner. The toner holds a charge that is
opposite to the charge of the image on the drum; therefore, the toner clings to the areas
on the drum altered by the laser beam. This results in a toner image created on the
drum.

6. For colour lasers this is done for each colour (cyan etc).

7. When a sheet of paper passes near the drum, the charge on the paper attracts the toner
particles clinging to the drum. (Again, opposite charges attract.) The image is
transferred from the drum to the paper, but the toner merely clings or ‘rests’ on the page
at this point.

8. Lastly, the page passes through a fuser unit, a pair of very hot rollers. Heat and pressure
from these rollers fuse the toner image permanently onto the page.

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RFID
RFID stands for Radio Frequency IDentification and it’s a non-contact technology that’s broadly
used in many industries for tasks such as personnel tracking, access control, supply chain
management, books tracking in libraries, tollgate systems and so on.

https://howtomechatronics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RFID-applications-and-uses.jpg

How RFID Works

An RFID system consists of two main components, a transponder or a tag which is located on
the object that we want to be identified, and a transceiver or a reader.

The RFID reader consist of a radio frequency module, a control unit and an antenna coil which
generates high frequency electromagnetic field. On the other hand, the tag is usually a passive
component, which consist of just an antenna and an electronic microchip, so when it gets near
the electromagnetic field of the transceiver, due to induction, a voltage is generated in its
antenna coil and this voltage serves as power for the microchip.

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Now as the tag is powered it can extract the transmitted message from the reader, and for
sending message back to the reader, it uses a technique called load manipulation. Switching on
and off a load at the antenna of the tag will affect the power consumption of the reader’s
antenna which can be measured as voltage drop. This changes in the voltage will be captured
as ones and zeros and that’s the way the data is transferred from the tag to the reader.

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Comparisons for usage of the Input Devices

Example Scenario
The organisers of a marathon race have installed checkpoints at regular intervals along the
course. The time at which each competitor passes a checkpoint is recorded.

Three input devices that could be used at each checkpoint to capture data automatically as
competitors pass by are:

• barcode reader

• digital camera

• RFID reader.

The race organisers decide to use RFID readers. Evaluate the suitability of all three devices and
explain why RFID is the most appropriate choice.

Suitability of the Digital camera

Advantages Disadvantages

There is no tag/barcode that can be lost or There may be difficulties with taking a clear
damaged picture caused by blocked line of sight due to
other competitors

There are high data storage requirements for

the number of photos that will be needed in a
large event

Face recognition may not work due to

costumed runners

Face recognition software not always reliable

With a lot of competitors a lot of

operators/camerasmight be needed

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Suitability of a Barcode reader

Advantages Disadvantages

Barcodes are very cheap A barcode could be obscured e.g. by clothing

Barcodes are often smaller and lighter than It is difficult to scan a code that is being
an RFID tag so they are less of a burden to moved around and is not on a flat surface
competitors

Some codes might be missed if a large

number of competitors pass a checkpoint at
roughly the same time

With a lot of competitors a lot of

operators/barcode readers might be needed

A scanner needs to be quite close to code so

the runners may need to stop to have their
barcode scanned

A barcode more likely to be damaged than

RFID tag – when it is damaged it is
unreadable

Suitability of a RFID reader

Advantages Disadvantages

RFID can be read faster than the other potential for RFID dead spots
devices and competitors may be going past
the checkpoint quickly

tags potentially reusable – saving money in

future years of the event

no line-of-sight issues

no need for runner to stop at checkpoint

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Secondary Storage Devices

Hard disk
A hard drive has only a few basic
parts. There are one or more shiny
silver platters where information is
stored magnetically, there's an arm
mechanism that moves a tiny
magnet called a read-write head
back and forth over the platters to
record or store information, and
there's an electronic circuit to control
everything and act as a link between
the hard drive and the rest of your
computer.

The medium and drive is in a sealed enclosure.

A hard disk drive is a random access device.

This is a good video showing how they work: https://youtu.be/NtPc0jI21i0

In order to increase the amount of information

the drive can store, most hard disks have
multiple platters. This drive has three platters
and six read/write heads.

The mechanism that moves the arms on a hard

disk has to be incredibly fast and precise. It can
be constructed using a high-speed linear motor.

Drive head can move in/out and moves to the

required track/cylinder. It moves radially.

While in operation, the disk is continuously

spinning at high speed.

The data is read/written as correct sector passes

under the read/write head

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Data is stored on the surface of a platter in

sectors and tracks. Tracks are concentric
circles, and sectors are pie-shaped wedges on a
track.

A typical track is shown in yellow; a typical sector

is shown in blue. A sector contains a fixed
number of bytes -- for example, 256 or 512.
Either at the drive or the operating system level,
sectors are often grouped together into clusters.

Tracks are organised into cylinders through the

platters (i.e. the same track on each platter is
grouped as a cylinder)

Binary digits are represented by magnetising

spots on the disk i.e. by changing its magnetic
properties.

When read/written to, the data transferred in

sectors.

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Optical disk
Compact discs (CDs) have been around for more than 30 years, and they are still one of the
most popular ways of storing music and computer data. In the mid-1990s, CDs evolved into
digital video/versatile discs (DVDs), which look and work in a similar way but can store about
seven times more. And now we have Blu-ray™, which can store six times more than a DVD—or
about 40 times more a than CD!

This is a video that describes how the media is organised (it’s a little cray but it make the right
points!) https://youtu.be/SJWFoTp0H9k

The basic operation of an optical disc is the same.

How data is represented

Optical disks are made from an original "master" disc. The master is "burned" with a laser beam
that etches bumps (called pits) into its surface. A bump represents the number zero, so every
time the laser burns a bump into the disc, a zero is stored there. The lack of a bump (which is a
flat, unburned area on the disc, called a land) represents the number one.

1. Data is stored on one spiral track

2. The continuation of a pit reflects light whereas

the transition between land and a pit scatters
light

3. The transition between land and pit indicates a

1 and continuation of land/pit represents 0

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Reading mechanism
1. The disc spins at constant linear velocity and a
low power laser beam is shone and is focussed
onto a spot on the track.

2. Some light is reflected back from disk and is

detected by the light sensor.

3. Every time the light reflects back, the light sensor

detects it, realises that it has seen a land, and
sends a burst of electric current to an electronic
circuit that generates the number one. When the
light fails to reflect back, the light sensor realises
that there is no land there and doesn't register
anything, so the electronic circuit generates the
number zero.

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Solid-state disk (SSD)

A Solid State Drive is a storage device which
emulates a rotating hard disk drive but is made
from semiconductor components. Typically SSD
are made using NAND flash memory.

Since a SSD has no moving parts, it handles shock and vibration much better that a rotating
disk drive. Without the spindle motor needed to rotate platters and an actuator to move the
heads to the correct location, a SSD generally uses much less power than its mechanical HDD
counterpart.

How does it work?

A Solid State Drive emulates a hard disk drive in a host computer or embedded system. It does
this with a specially designed controller which has the same electrical interface as a rotating
hard disk drive. In many cases it has the exact same connector and physical form factor as the
hard drive as well.

Other circuitry of the controller manages the NAND flash memory which stores the data of the
SSD. While the controller function appears relatively straight forward, there are many behind the
scenes issues with NAND flash management and it requires a great deal of planning to create a
reliable SSD controller.

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This diagram shows a simple flash cell

design.

Electrons are stored (trapped) in the

floating gate, which then reads as charged
“0” or not-charged “1”.

NAND flash is organised in a grid. The

entire grid layout is referred to as a block,
while the individual rows that make up the
grid are called a page. Common page
sizes are 2K, 4K, 8K, or 16K, with 128 to
256 pages per block.

Block size therefore typically varies between 256KB and 4MB.

Reads, Writes, and Erasure

One of the functional limitations of SSDs is while they can read and write data very quickly to an
empty drive, overwriting data is much slower.

This is because while SSDs read data at the page level (meaning from individual rows within
the NAND memory grid) and can write at the page level, assuming surrounding cells are empty,
they can only erase data at the block level. This is because the act of erasing NAND flash
requires a high amount of voltage. While you can theoretically erase NAND at the page level,
the amount of voltage required stresses the individual cells around the cells that are being re-
written. Erasing data at the block level helps mitigate this problem.

The only way for an SSD to update an existing page is to copy the contents of the entire block
into memory, erase the block, and then write the contents of the old block + the updated page. If
the drive is full and there are no empty pages available, the SSD must first scan for blocks that
are marked for deletion but that haven’t been deleted yet, erase them, and then write the data to
the now-erased page. This is why SSDs can become slower as they age — a mostly-empty
drive is full of blocks that can be written immediately, a mostly-full drive is more likely to be
forced through the entire program/erase sequence.

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Garbage collection is a background process that allows a drive to mitigate the performance
impact of the program/erase cycle by performing certain tasks in the background. The following
image steps through the garbage collection process.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Note in this example, the drive has taken advantage of the fact that it can write very quickly to
empty pages by writing new values for the first four blocks (A’-D’). It’s also written two new
blocks, E and H. Blocks A-D are now marked as stale, meaning they contain information the
drive has marked as out-of-date. During an idle period, the SSD will move the fresh pages over
to a new block, erase the old block, and mark it as free space. This means the next time the
SSD needs to perform a write, it can write directly to the now-empty Block X, rather than
performing the program/erase cycle.

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Comparisons
Flash Drives and CDs
Flash Drive CD/DVD

high (storage) capacity Limited storage capacity

fast access/read/write times Relatively slow speeds

No drive is required to use a flash drive since Loading drive is required

flash drive and medium are integrated

compact All same size

Very robust damaged by scratches

SSD and HDD

SSD HDD

Lower Power consumption Lower cost per MB/GB

Faster read/write times

Faster booting of OS

Lower latency Delay whilst disk spins – more latency

Less heat / no additional cooling fan required Generates lots of heat

Noiseless operation

Less vulnerable to physical damage e.g.

dropping

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HDD and Optical

HDD Optical

uses magnetic media optical media

uses magnetic fields uses pits (and lands);

uses magnetic induction (to read data), uses a laser (and sensor);

split into sectors/tracks follows a spiral track

multiple platters and read/write heads Can be multiple layered

spins at a fast constant rotation speed keeps a constant linear velocity/speeds

rotation up and down

Hard disk drive and disk are integrated requires an optical drive

can be damaged by exposure to magnetic Cannot be damaged by magnetic field

field

Cannot be scratched can be scratched

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