This is a new article in my series about using Microsoft Visual Studio Code: After installation, project setup, building, debugging, setting up a kit and IntelliSense. This one is about setting up and using FreeRTOS:
I always have been fascinated by electromechanical stuff like these Flip-Dot Displays.
Dangling pointers and memory corruption problems are nasty issues for any developer, and usually hard to find and locate in the code. Luckily Google has developed an open source tool to solve such issues: the Address Sanitizer (ASAN). The tool is available for x86 and other desktop style architectures, including Android and Linux. This article describes how ASAN can be used for an embedded target, e.g. ARM Cortex-M4 or similar.
This is about one of my ‘long running projects’: I happily can report that the missing last piece has been installed after 16 months from the start of the project: the ‘3D-Printed-Supported-Driftwood-Bath-Tub-Shower-Gel-Holder’ 🙂 :
This is the ‘official finish’ of a complete bathroom renovation and remodeling. It has been a joint project with the help of friends, contractors, my family and my brother in law (who is an outstanding carpenter and cabinetmaker), plus the Ultimaker2 3D printer which contributed many ‘background and hidden’ features.
I invite you to a virtual time travel. I hope you enjoy it and get inspired….
Continue readingThe previous parts were about installation, project setup and building. This one is about debugging an ARM Cortex-M Microcontroller with Visual Studio Code:
This is the second part of series or articles how to use the Microsoft Visual Studio Code for embedded development on ARM Cortex-M. In this part I’m going to show how to create and build a project using CMake running Make or Ninja as build system.
For a few months I’m learning and using Rust. I’m still learning, but I’m very impressed by the powerful and cool programming language, the vibrant ecosystem, the advanced concepts behind it and by the tools. With learning Rust I have been using the Visual Studio Code IDE and it works great for Rust. But I was wondering: could I use it for my ‘usual’ C/C++ development on ARM Cortex-M devices too? The answer is a clear ‘yes’, and this mini series of articles should get you up and running too.
The tinyK22 board is a tiny micro controller board we use at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. It is used in many research project, used in lectures and labs and used in most student projects. Because there was no small and breadboard friendly NXP Kinetis board with a debug interface available, we developed one featuring the NXP K22FN512, named the ‘tinyK22‘. Because of the success and high demand we stated a new large production run and used this to upgrade the board to the new Rev 1.3: you might notice already the color change :-).
tinyK22
This is a follow-up article of my earlier project presented in “FatFS, MinIni, Shell and FreeRTOS for the NXP K22FN512“. I wanted to extend it with a USB MSD (memory stick) device: The USB storage device gets automatically mounted, and depending on a configuration (.ini) file on the memory device I can perform various actions, for example automatically copy data from the SD card to the USB device. For example the system logs data, and to get the data I insert the memory stick, it copies the data on it and automatically unmounts it, and I can remove the memory stick.
FRDM-K22F USB Host Mode with Memory Sticks
The NMI is a special interrupt on ARM Cortex-M architecture: as the name indicates, it cannot be ‘masked’ by the usual ‘disable interrupts’ flags (PRIMASK, BASEPRI), similar to the Reset signal.
cortex-m-vector-table (Source: adapted from arm.com)
Dealing with the reset signal is kind of obvious, and most designs and boards have it routed to a reset button or similar. The NMI is less obvious if you don’t pay attention to it: most ARM-Cortex implementations and boards have the NMI signal routed to a pin and are ‘hiding’ it in the schematics behind a normal GPIO pin or port: if you don’t pay attention to the NMI functionality, the board might not work as intended.
