DIY Split-Flap Display

Split-flap displays are electromechanical display devices, which were common in airports or railway stations a few years ago.Unfortunately, most of them are gone and replaced by LED displays. Why not create a DIY version of it?

2×10 Split-Flap Display
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McuOnEclipse Components: 26-Dec-2021 Release

I’m pleased to announce a new release of the McuOnEclipse components, available on SourceForge. This release includes several bug fixes, support for more devices, and updated components like FreeRTOS, MinINI, Percepio Tracealyzer and SEGGER SystemView.

SourceForge

SourceForge

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Key-Value pairs in FLASH Memory: file-system-less minINI

Many embedded systems application need to store some kind of data in a persistent way: calibration values, settings or log information. For a smaller amount of data, using an external memory or file system is an overkill. In many system I’m using minINI to store key-value pars in in a ‘ini-file’ way, but it requires the use of a file system of some kind. minINI is great and efficient, and makes getting and storing data really easy. But for simple cases, a single FLASH memory page or sector is just all what I need. Instead managing that page directly, why not using minINI without a file system?

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Visual Studio Code for C/C++ with ARM Cortex-M: Part 10 – Assembly Stepping

The Microsoft Visual Studio Code is a great IDE, but does not (yet?) implement features for true embedded usage. Or things are there to some level, but hard to use. One of these things is how to step in the assembly code. This article shows how to do this.

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Visual Studio Code for C/C++ with ARM Cortex-M: Part 9 – RTT

For me the Cortex-Debug Visual Studio extension by marus25 is the standard way to use VSC for embedded development. Another ‘standard’ piece I’m using in many of my projects is the SEGGER RTT.

SEGGER RTT Output with Visual Studio Code
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Visual Studio Code for C/C++ with ARM Cortex-M: Part 8 – xPack C/C++ Managed Build Tools

This is a new article in my series about using Microsoft Visual Studio Code: After installation, project setup, building, debugging, setting up a kit, IntelliSense and FreeRTOS. This one is about setting up and using the xPack Extension to build cross-platform-multi-tool project with a project manager.

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MCUXpresso IDE 11.4.0

University exam grading are all done now and results are in the system, and it is already time to prepare for the fall semester. I always try to use the latest and greatest tools in my courses, and the NXP MCUXpresso IDE 11.4.0 just came out. So time to have a look and explore the changes and features.

Debugging with NXP MCUXpresso IDE 11.4.0
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Standalone SWO

SWO (Single Wire Output) in ARM cores is probably one of the most under-used features. Which is surprising, because SWO can be very useful. In a nut shell: SWO is a single wire output pin/signal channel which can provide lots of different data, like PC sampling for coverage information, interrupt tracing data or ‘uart-like’ text packets.

SWO output from application
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Position-Independent Code with GCC for ARM Cortex-M

Welcome to ‘Alice in Wonderland‘! For a university research project using an ARM Cortex-M33 we are evaluating position-independent code as way to load applications or part of it with a bootloader. It sounds simple: just add -fPIC to the compiler settings and you are done.

Unfortunately, it is not that simple. That option opened up a ‘rabbit hole’ with lots of wonderful, powerful and strange things. Something you might not have been aware of what could be possible with the tools you have at hand today. Leading to the central question: how is position-independent code going to work with an embedded application on an ARM Cortex-M?

Let’s find out! Let’s start a journey through the wonderland…

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Visual Studio Code for C/C++ with ARM Cortex-M: Part 7 – FreeRTOS

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:

Microsoft Visual Studio Code with Debugging FreeRTOS application on ARM Cortex-M
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