The latest addition to my set of Arduino shields is a true fun thing: The ElecFreaks.com JoyStick Shield 🙂
ElecFreaks.com Joystick Board with FRDM-KL25Z and nRF24L01+
JoyStick Shield with the FRDM Board
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Category Archives: Boards
FRDM with Arduino Ethernet Shield R3, Part 4: MinIni
I admit: my Ethernet Shield project got stuck because of too many urgent other priorities. I was not happy with the way the project was using configuration data from FLASH memory: I have now multiple ethernet shields in use, and configuring the IP address for each shield is a pain. I have not got DHCP working (yet), so why not using the SD card on the shield for configuration data? And right on time I received a tip from Marc about MinIni: perfect, exactly what I need!
Ethernet Shield with SD card
Binary (and S19) Files for the mbed Bootloader with Eclipse and GNU ARM Eclipse Plugins
The existing OpenSDAv1 (see “OpenSDA on the Freedom KL25Z Board“) bootloader is using the industry standard Motorola S-Record (S19) Files. However, new FRDM-K64F board (see “FTF: FRDM-K64F, Kinetis Design Studio and Kinetis SDK“) has OpenSDAv2 on it, which is an mbed bootloader. So how to create files with an IDE other than mbed for that bootloader which is present on the FRDM-K64F board by default? Well, creating binary files is one thing, but to have it working with the mbed bootloader is another challenge :-(.
FRDM-K64F with mbed MSD bootloader
Using the FRDM-K64F with CodeWarrior
The new flagship of FRDM boards is the FRDM-K64F board. After FTF I have explored different ways debugging the board, and received many comments and questions about it (thanks!). Freescale announced the supports with the new Eclipse based Kinetis Design Studio (KDS). But until KDS is out, how can I use the FRDM-K64F board with CodeWarrior?
Debugging FRDM-K64F Board with CodeWarrior for MCU v10.6
Recovering FRDM-K64F mbed Board
The mbed for FRDM-K64F firmware (http://mbed.org/handbook/Firmware-FRDM-K64F) has great potential. Unfortunately it seems that edges are still very rough: It happens very often that my FRDM-K64F board gets locked up :-(. I can see that the target CPU is constantly resetting: the red reset LED is always on:
FRDM-K64F Red Reset LED always on
The Zumo Bots at FTF 2014
I should have known it better, and I always teach my students that they should take the environment into account. And you know what? This time it was me who missed following that rule.
But from the beginning: For the Freescale Technology Forum (FTF) I brought 4 different Zumo Robots to show developing with the Freedom board and Processor Expert. Clark (thanks again, Clark!) has built and brought the Sumo Dojo, and I brought the bots:
Four Zumo Bots at FTF
FTF: FRDM-K64F, Kinetis Design Studio and Kinetis SDK
I’m attending the Freescale Technology Forum (FTF) in Dallas this year: As they say here: “everything is bigger in Texas”, that’s the motto of this conference ;-). The conference is packed, and I have a hard time to keep up with all the things going on. My focus is obviously everything around Eclipse and ARM microcontroller. The conference started yesterday afternoon with hands-on labs, and I was in the one were Freescale presented the new ‘Kinetis Design Studio’: a free of charge/unlimited Eclipse tool chain based on Eclipse Kepler, GCC and GDB. Freescale presented their new software library ‘Kinetis SDK’. And: There is a new Freedom board which gets handed out to the attendees: the FRDM-K64F :-).
Texas Style Glass Coverage
Zumo Robots in Bucharest
Freescale opened its doors for students in Bucharest on March 28th. At the event there were more than 80 students and professors from Bucharest and across Romania with participation of the universities from Cluj, Constanta, Craiova, Iasi and Pitesti.
Two Sumo Bots
Getting Bluetooth Working with JY-MCU BT_BOARD V1.06
For my embedded course at the University of Lucerne of Applied Sciences and Arts I needed more Bluetooth modules for the Zumo/Sumo robots. I run out of stock as the modules are getting popular and are used in many student projects. So I ordered a handful more from DX/DealExtreme of the same HC-06 type/part number I already ordered a while back. I expected that they will work as the modules I had ordered from DX half a year ago. Was that naïve? Probably. Because they did *not* work, and caused me to reverse engineer the modules and to apply a hardware fix to get them working….
Set of JY-MCU Bluetooth Modules
RNet Stack as Component, nRF24L01+ with Software SPI
The great thing with Processor Expert is: it writes the code for me :-). I’m using now the RNet wireless stack in more than 10 different projects, and keeping the projects up-to-date with the RNet stack sources in a traditional way gets harder and harder: IÂ need to make sure the paths are pointing to the right place, and if I pass the project to somebody else, I have to make sure all the sources are packaged with that project. Processor Expert makes things simpler: it can generate the source files into my project, and I can easily configure it.
So instead to copy and support files by hand, I decided to package the RNet stack files into a Processor Expert component: all still normal C files, but easier to configure and distribute.
RNet Component
MCU on Eclipse 