Kinetis Lava LED Light Cube

In “openHAB RGB LED Light Cube with WS2812B and NXP Kinetis” I started experimenting Kinetis boards, a LED cube diffuser and Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixel LEDs. That worked well, but I was not to very happy about the visual effect. So here is my next version: I wanted to have control over each side of the cube. For this I have built a cube inside the cube with a 3D printed structure:

Bare LED Cube

Bare LED Cube

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Tutorial: Bare-Metal Shell for Kinetis

I have been asked to provide a command line shell example for a bare-metal (no RTOS) application, so here we go!

Having a way to communicate to the firmware on a board is essential for most of my projects: it is simply, incredibly helpful and easy to do (see “A Shell for the Freedom KL25Z Board“). This tutorial shows how to add a simple command line shell to the NXP Freedom board which then can be extended as necessary.

Console Application

Console Application

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3D Printed Magical MUFG Capsule to Duplicate NXP Kinetis K20 Boards

Sometimes it is all about doing fun stuff: to carry and store the tinyK20 (NXP/Freescale Kinetis K20) boards needed for next course, I wanted to build something geeky: a MUFG capsule to store and duplicate Kinetis boards 🙂

MUFG Capsule with tinyK20

MUFG Capsule with tinyK20

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Hardware Reset for ARM Cortex-M with Segger J-Link and Kinetis Design Studio

The reset and signal line of a microcontroller is probably the most important signal to a microcontroller. And if things go wrong, then a first thing to check is the reset line. So having control over reset is an important aspect for embedded development. You would think that if you download a program to a microcontroller, the debug probe would put the device into reset at the start with a short pulse like this:

Reset Signal in Logic Analyzer

Reset Signal in Logic Analyzer

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McuOnEclipse Release 10-Jan-2016

With the start of the new year 2016 I have published a new McuOnEclipse component release with the following major updates:

  1. Updated Segger SystemView and Real Time Transfer (RTT): added terminal functions and extra interfaces
  2. Improved USB CDC with serial number handing
  3. FreeRTOS TaskList shell command
  4. USB Stack: added MSD Host support for MCF52259, added support for K24FN120 and for the 100 MHz K20 devices
  5. New NEOMatrix component for Adafruit NeoPixel Matrix displays

    256 NeoPixel Matrix with FRDM-KL25Z

    256 NeoPixel Matrix with FRDM-KL25Z

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Blaze: Miniature, Powerful, Hackable Display with Touch

I’m not much monitoring what is happening on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, only for time reasons, but maybe I should? For a while I’m looking for the next level for the tinyK20 project: better and more powerful microcontroller with touch display/graphic LCD. And when I see a Freescale/NXP Kinetis microcontroller on a crowd funding platform like this one, I hardly can resist 😉 :

Blaze Board (Source: http://kck.st/1S0HyUp)

Blaze Board (Source: http://kck.st/1S0HyUp)

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Renaming Eclipse CDT Projects

When I create a project in Eclipse (e.g. in Kinetis Design Studio with the GNU ARM Eclipse plugins), I have to specify the name of the project during creation time:

Project Name in Eclipse

Project Name in Eclipse

But what if I change my mind later on and want to use a different name? How to rename the project?

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Tutorial: FreeRTOS Projects with Kinetis SDK V1.3 and the SDK Project Generator

This tutorial describes how to create a Kinetis SDK V1.3 project using the Freescale project generator in Kinetis Design Studio.

project generator

project generator

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A Raspberry Pi for $5! What are your decision factors?

It it is obvious that a new trend from the US is swapping over to Europe and probably the rest of the world: Black Friday. That is the day yesterday following Thanksgiving day in the United States. It is a ‘shopping’ day. Consequently, the stores are battling with huge discounts. And I use that  to fill up my inventory for the Christmas-time projects 🙂 What caught my attention yesterday Friday was this: a Raspberry Pi Zero for US$5!!!!

Raspberry Pi Zero

Raspberry Pi Zero (Picture: Adafruit)

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New Gadget to Explore: Freescale FRDM-K82F Board

It’s not Christmas yet, but: For a research project I’m currently evaluating a new microcontroller where I need a bit more leg room. Right on time I saw that there is a new board available which caught my interest: The Freescale FRDM-K82F :-). Without thinking too much about it, I have ordered that board from Mouser Thursday last week and I had it in my hand today 🙂 Time to put up a quick post about it:

New Box on the table

New Box on the table

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