The Primula is a flowers in my region which announces the spring time. Captured that beautiful one today with a bug on it 🙂
Primula with Bug
Primula Bug
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Author Archives: Erich Styger
NXP Kinetis Design Studio v3.2.0
For my classes I had so far asked the students to install the Kinetis Design Studio (KDS) v3.0.0 and then apply several updates and upgrades available. NXP has now released the v3.2.0 of their KDS (Kinetis Design Studio):
Kinetis Design Studio v3.2.0
The v3.2.0 is including all the 3.x.x updates in a single installation which makes things easier to start with. And it now works for Mac OS X “El Capitan” and the latest GNU ARM Eclipse plugins :-).
Flashing many ARM Boards without a Host PC
So here I have 50 new NXP Kinetis K22 Robot boards (see “Zumo Robot with Magnetic Encoders“), and they all need to be programmed with the first firmware on the bench:
Programming Robot Boards
The challenge is: how to do this in a fast an efficient way, without the need for an IDE or even host PC machine?
3D Printed Gameboy and Remote Controller with tinyK20 Board
As a remote controller for the Sumo robot (see “Zumo Robot with Magnetic Encoders“) we have used so far a combination of NXP FRDM-KL25Z board and a Joystick Shield (see “Joystick Shield with nRF24L01 driving a Zumo Robot“). That solution was not ideal, so this weekend I created a 3D printed prototype:
tinyK20 Remote Controller
Zumo Robot with Magnetic Encoders
We are using robots to teach advanced embedded system programming at the Lucerne University (see “Sumo Robot Competition“). Students can buy the kit, and we are running out of available hardware. Time to produce a new series of robots :-). It took us a while to get to the next revision of the Zumo Robot, but finally the first one has been produced and assembled, and I think it is looking good :-).
Intro_Zumo_Robot
First of Spring: Crokus
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It has been extremely busy weeks, and I’m my technical blog article output currently is very low. So I thought I could post two pictures of blooming Crocus in my backyard instead. I admit: that takes less time than writing up a 2000 words geeky technology article. And I know that some of you might say “Flower pictures do not count!”. But hey, I say that the Crocus is a very beautiful flower, and in many aspects nature is ahead of technology:
Crocus
nRF24L01+ 2.4 GHz Wireless Connectivity with the tinyK20 Board
I’m using the tiny and inexpensive Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ transceiver (see “Tutorial: Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board“) in many projects: it costs less than $3 and allows me to communicate with a proprietary 2.4GHz protocol in a low power way (see “IoT: FreeRTOS Down to the Micro Amps“). I have that transceiver now running with the tinyK20 board too:
nRF24L01+ Transceiver with tinyK20
Tutorial: Blinky with the FRDM-KL27Z and Kinetis SDK v2
I’m using the FRDM-KL25Z in my classes, and that board is very popular: low price (<$15), reasonable features (48 MHz ARM Cortex M0+, 128 KByte of FLASH, 16 KByte of RAM), and many tutorials elsewhere and on McuOnEclipse :-).
For the next (Fall) semester I’m looking for alternative boards, and one is the Freescale (now NXP) FRDM-KL27Z:
FRDM-KL27Z with Box
Solving “Launching: Configuring GDB Aborting Configuring GDB”
In case you are running into this problem that launching GDB hangs with this message in Eclipse:
Launching Configuring GDB Aborting configuring GDB
Dealing with Code Size in Kinetis SDK v2.x Projects
I’m exploring the Kinetis SDK v2.0 (see “First NXP Kinetis SDK Release: SDK V2.0 with Online On-Demand Package Builder“). For this, I’m using the ‘standard’ way: blinking the LED on the board 🙂
Blinky on FRDM-K64F Board
MCU on Eclipse 