Yearly Archives: 2018

Recovering OpenSDA Boards with Windows 10

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Windows 8 and 10 have added a ‘feature’ to scan and index devices attached to the host machine. This means that bootloaders or MSD (Mass Storage Device) programming implementations on evaluation boards developed in the Windows 7 age might not be prepared for that. Up to the point that it can impact the bootloader as outlined in “Bricking and Recovering OpenSDA Boards in Windows 8 and 10“. So far one of the easiest way to get out that situation was to use a Windows 7 machine. But if you only have a Windows 10 machine available, this article describes the needed steps to update the bootloader with Windows 10 host machines.

OpenSDA LED

OpenSDA LED

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Winter Wonderland Melchseefrutt

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Winter is coming to an end, but there is still lots of snow up in the higher mountains. This weekend we spent in Melchsee-Frutt, a mountain resort village at 1920 m above sea level in the Swiss Alps, still covered by 3-4 meters of snow. Technically the Winter season closed this weekend, but it is still ‘Winter Wonderland’ up there. The lakes are covered by snow and ice, and it is beautiful to stroll around in this wonderland. Enjoy!

Melchsee-Frutt

Melchsee-Frutt

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Listing Code and Data Size with GNU nm in Eclipse

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The map file produced by the GNU linker includes lots of information, however it is very cryptic to read. In “Listing Code and Data Size for each Source File with GNU and Eclipse” I showed how the GNU size utility can be used to report the code and data size for each object file. The Eclipse based MCUXpresso IDE comes with another nice view which shows detailed information about code and data allocation:

Symbol Viewer in MCUXpresso IDE

Symbol Viewer in MCUXpresso IDE

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McuOnEclipse Components: 1-Apr-2018 Release

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It’s April Fool’s Day, but be assured this is not a joke ;-): I’m pleased to announce that a new release of the McuOnEclipse components is available in SourceForge. This release includes several smaller bug fixes and components have been upgraded for FreeRTOS V10.0.1.

SourceForge

SourceForge

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3D Printed SMT Cut Tape Holder

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If you follow me on Twitter, then you are aware that I’m working on a larger project building an SMT pick and place machine :-). The fun with this project is that it includes electronics, mechanics and all kind of 3D printing and laser cutting. That machine picks SMD components and places them on a PCB. One sub-project is to build a SMD cut tape holder:

SMD Tape Holder

SMD Tape Holder

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Using a 50 Watt Laser Cutter with tesa Laser-Labels

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Laser cutter and engraver are the kind of cool thing after 3D printers which get more and more common. One interesting thing to use a laser engraver (or cutter) is to use it with tesa Laser Labels.

Tesa Laser Label

Tesa Laser Label (Source: http://www.tesa.com)

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Converting Binary Files to Intel Hex Format with the SRecord Tool

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I’m dealing a lot with bootloaders recently (see “Flash-Resident USB-HID Bootloader with the NXP Kinetis K22 Microcontroller“), and bootloaders are sometimes very picky about what file format they are able to consume. So what if I have a binary (see “S-Record, Intel Hex and Binary Files“) file and I need to convert it into the Intel Hex format?

converted binary to intel hex

converted binary to intel hex

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