Low-Power Optimization Techniques for ARM Cortex-M Microcontrollers

Europe is currently facing an ‘Energy Crisis,’ and ‘Sustainability’ is a popular topic among companies. However, embedded engineers go beyond talking—they take action and make tangible changes in the world. With the increasing use of electronic devices, minimizing their energy and power consumption is crucial. Optimizing systems for deep low power or deep low energy is a challenging task. Nonetheless, as I will demonstrate in this article, it is possible to reduce energy consumption by a factor of 100 or more. This article provides a brief overview of the foundational concepts and then applies them step-by-step to an ARM Cortex microcontroller.

Measuring on-board LPC804 with MCU-Link Pro
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MCU-Link-MR v0.2 Drone and Robot Debug Probe with UART-2-USB Bridge

This week I have received the new PCBs for the MCU-Link MR for drones and robots and have populated the parts on the PCB, and it works fine as UART bridge and debug probe for the PixHawk i.MX RT:

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Updating MCU-Link CMSIS-DAP Debug Probe Firmware, Jumper-less

The MCU-Link debug probes are versatile and very useful debug probes from NXP. This article describes how to update the firmware on it, both the ‘traditional’ way with using the ISP jumper, and the new way using a command line script without the need to use a jumper.

MCU-Link Pro Debug Probe ISP Jumper
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NXP MCU-Link for Rust with probe-rs

The Rust programming language is making its way into the embedded world, and getting more and more popular and not only at the Lucerne University. With Rust, the probe-rs is one of the popular debug choices, as it nicely comes with cargo. On the hardware side, the NXP MCU-Link is $15 debug probe hardware I use for many targets. Why not using the MCU-Link with probe-rs and Rust?

MCU-Link Board Top Side
MCU-Link Board Top Side
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CNC + Laser = Personalized Cutting Board

This blog usually features Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs), but my other passion are Personalized Cutting Boards :-).

It has been a while since my last CNC or laser cutter post, so I thought I showcase just quickly one of the recent designs.

Personalized Cutting Board
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Versatile OSHW Mini MCU-Link Debug Probe: External, On-Board, or Embedded

Who needs a debug probe, if you have printf()? If doing serious development, you most likely want a hardware debug probe. We at the HSLU IET use different hardware, boards and kits, and for many of the classroom equipment it is very useful to have the debug probe embedded on the target board: less cables, easier to use. For this we have developed a new Open Source Hardware (OSHW) debug probe in KiCad which can used in different ways: as external debug probe, integrated and soldered on top of the target board, or fully integrated and embedded into a custom design.

OSHW Mini MCU-Link Debug Probe
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‘Experience Energy’ at the Verkehrshaus: The ‘House of Energy’ Construction Kit

The ‘Verkehrshaus der Schweiz‘, the ‘Swiss Museum of Transport’ is Switzerland’s most popular museum.

In April 2023, it opened up a new building and the ‘Experience Energy!’ exhibition. For the opening event we created a unique construction kit to explore energy: from harvesting to storing and up to distributing and using energy.

“House of Energy” at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne
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Power Measurement with INA260 Sensor

For a research project and demonstrator at HSLU university I have to measure voltage a DC voltage and current. For this I’m planning to use the Texas Instrument Texas Instruments INA260, so I had to quickly develop a software driver for it.

TI INA260 Power Sensor Breakout Board
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Multi-Core Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) with FreeRTOS

Maybe you are using a multi-core device in your projects, but have not tapped into multi-core usage yet? FreeRTOS V11.0 is out, and the big news is that it has finally Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) integrated into the mainline. This greatly simplifies FreeRTOS usage, as I finally can use the same RTOS for my SMP targets and boards, and I can easily switch between single-core and multi-core applications.

Dual-Core Boards running with FreeRTOS
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