Portable electrophysiologic monitoring based on the OMAP-family processor from a beginners' prospective

We present here the experiences made on taking some first steps into the world of dual-core embedded processor technology. The processors we consider here consist of one DSP core and one general-purpose ARM core as are commonly used today by large mobile phone manufacturers. We describe some beginner's problems we encountered with Texas Instruments' OMAP platform and suggest some ways to avoid these common pitfalls for others. As an example application, we also introduce a new portable biosignal monitoring device that was the motivation for using a dual-core embedded processor in the first place.