For my project I wanted to be able to programmatically decide how to "wire" certain components in series and/or parallel combinations in and out of phase. After doing some calculations this seems impossible if I want to be able to get all calculations.
For example, 1 component could be wired in or out of phase and one could accomplish this(I think this is the minimum number of switches needed too) as
*-----------------*----- Out 3/| 4/| ---- Component ---- 1/| 2/| In---*-----------------*where the /| represent switches. I.e., if I wanted the component in phase I could just open switches 2 and 3 with 1 and 4 close and out of phase would result in the opposite. With an appropriate "Device" one could control this with just 1 line. The device would have 4 internal switches but 2 pair would be alternately configured and switch together(like a spdt with alternating switches).
Now if I had two components I would be able to configure them in 8 total ways with any series and parallel in and out of phase combination...
The problem is that the number of switches required seems to grow "exponentially"(well, might as well since it seems to get large pretty quick and I was planning on using reed relays).
one can also make a "series-parallel device" that will have 5 inputs and 1 output that can configure two components in series or parallel. I was thinking that I could then use the phase and seriles-parallel devices to build up for more combinations but it just seems that it gets way out of hand really quickly.
Is there any hope of doing this project(without limiting the number of combinations)? I was thinking that one could use a matrix of switches to "route" the component's inputs into different configurations and one should be able to get all the combinations but I'm not sure if this is possible... and with just 6 components(12 leads) one has to have a 12x12 matrix which, I think, would have to have atleast 4(maybe less depending on how the switch works) switches per junction.
I'm not sure if this is doable with FPGA or not since I don't know much about them yet... I really was trying to stick with relays but it seems that it isn't going to be doable that way. I have a "prototype" that uses dip switches to do the switching but I can only do about 15 combinations or so(maybe a little more). I think the total number of combinations that one gets follows the progression 2, 8, 144, 91392, 187499658240, ... . I could be wrong though.
Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about? ;)
Thanks, AD