In “IoT: FreeRTOS Down to the Micro Amps” I’m using an application with FreeRTOS to get down in micro amps low power mode. Well, nearly all or my applications are using FreeRTOS because it makes the application scalable and extensible. Still, for anyone not used to an RTOS, that might be a hard start. So here we go: how to get into the Kinetis Low Power LLS Mode *without* an RTOS.
Power Measurement
The 40 new PCB’s for the new Pololu optical encoders arrived (see “Processing the Pololu Motor Shaft Encoders“) 🙂
40 Encoder PCBs arrived
One of my embedded projects is to measure the running time in a sports event (see “Sports Timing System in a Lunch Box“). The recorded time is stored in an EEPROM plus sent over USB or wireless connection to the host. It would be great if I could print out the time and ranking directly, so if there is no PC, the system can be small and tiny. So here is my next project and tutorial: Printing with the Freedom board!
Hello World on the Printer with FRDM-KL25Z
For the first generation of the INTRO Zumo robots, I have Pololu optical wheel encoders (see “Adding Quadrature Encoder to the Zumo Chassis“) which were available last year. It seems that Pololu heard my feedback, and are offering new encoders. Time to move things to the next level, using an optical encoder attached to the motor shaft:
Optical Motor Shaft Encoder
Naturally, I have several project ideas lingering around. No time to make them all (for now). One of it is interfacing the Raspberry Pi camera with a microcontroller. To store the images, I need plenty of RAM on the device, and so far the Kinetis microcontroller did not have that. Finally, Freescale announced the K64F120 a few months back, and my ordered TWR-K64F120M board arrived on my desk, waiting to be used: Finally I get an ARM Cortex-M4F with 1 MByte of FLASH and 256 KByte of RAM :-).
TWR-K64F120M Box
At conferences and shows like the Embedded World in Nürnberg it is not only about gathering the trends of the industry: it is as well about collecting all the goodies handed out to the attendees. I’m less interested in things like pens or the like: what I love most are microcontroller on a board I can use :-). This year STMicroelectronics, Atmel and Cypress all had boards to distribute ‘like candies’ 🙂
Goodies from Embedded World
As mentioned in Part 9: There is a new GNU ARM Eclipse plugin 2.1.1, and this one makes project creation for Freescale devices easier than ever 🙂
GNU ARM Eclipse 2.1.1
University research projects can be a lot fun, and are very challenging the same time. The good thing is that there is always someting new to learn :-).
This week-end I was working on my Internet of Things (IoT) project, based on a Freescale KL15Z and a nRF24L01+ transceiver. In essence it is a wireless data logger. For this, I only can afford a few micro amps consumed by the whole board over an extended period of time. I mean 21 micro amps for running a whole board with sensor, EEPROM, wireless transceiver, operating system and an ARM Cortex-M0+ ready to crunch numbers at 20 MHz 🙂
21 micro amps for wireless sensor node (when not sending)
This is Part 3 of an ongoing tutorial to use the Arduino Ethernet Shield R3 with a Freescale FRDM-KL25Z board (or any other board you like).
In Part 1 I worked on the SD card, in Part 2 I have added basic network connection. Now time to run a web server with my FRDM-KL25Z :-). With this, I can get access to my board through the network, and the board will host a web page where I can do pretty much everything: showing status, or adding functions to turn on things like an LED 🙂
Web Server with W5100 on FRDM-KL25Z
Finally my Freescale TWR-K21F120M board arrived 🙂
TWR-K21F120M on the bench
For the next generation of INTRO Zumo robots I’m evaluating a new ‘brain’: more processing power, more FLASH, more RAM, more of everything 😉
MCU on Eclipse 