Many times it is very useful to debug multiple boards at the same time. For example if I’m debugging a communication stack between two boards: that way I can debug the protocol on both sides. Eclipse is a great framework which allows that. This post shows how to debug multiple boards (e.g. the NXP Freedom boards) in parallel from the same Eclipse IDE using GDB and the Segger J-Link:
Two NXP Freedom Boards debugged at the same time
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
With the start of the new year 2016 I have published a new McuOnEclipse component release with the following major updates:
256 NeoPixel Matrix with FRDM-KL25Z
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)
The tinyK20 boards are now used in several projects. Initially I was considering a commercial USB thumb drive enclosure for it. But this needed some tweaking of the enclosure so at the end it was not ideal. 3D printing is probably that hot topic for 2016. So why 3D printing an enclosure for that board?
3D Printed Enclosure for the tinyK20 board
In many of my embedded projects I’m using successfully the Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ (see “Tutorial: Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board“) and the HC-06 Bluetooth transceivers (see “Getting Bluetooth Working with JY-MCU BT_BOARD V1.06“) for wireless communication. However, the nRF24L01+ is using a proprietary protocol, and the HC-06 does not work with Apple products (it does very well with Android devices). To close that gap I decided to add Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE, or Bluetooth 4.x). So this post is about how to add Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to NXP (formerly Freescale) Kinetis devices:
BLE Enabled Kinetis
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
But what if I change my mind later on and want to use a different name? How to rename the project?
For my home automation project with openHAB I want to attach Freescale (now NXP) FRDM (Freedom) boards so they can take care about the realtime aspects and to act as gateways to my other systems. One way is to use USB CDC (Serial over USB) as communication channel. USB has the advantage that it powers the board, plus I can attach multiple devices: up to four on the Raspberry Pi 2 and even more with using a USB hub. In a standard configuration with a USB WiFi and a USB HID (mouse plus keyboard) dongle I still can attach two Freescale (ahem, NXP) Freedom boards to the Raspberry Pi:
FRDM-K22F and FRDM-K64F attached to Raspberry Pi 2
In my earlier post I showed how I have installed the open source openHAB home automation system (see “Installing openHAB Home Automation on Raspberry Pi“). In this post I show how to control a local LED on the Raspberry Pi with openHAB home automation system: how to control any GPIO pin on the Raspberry Pi from remote:
Controlling the LED with openHAB
In “Installing openHAB Home Automation on Raspberry Pi” I have set up openHAB on a Raspberry Pi 2. But when I reboot it, I need to start openHAB manually. This post is about how to start openHAB automatically after a reboot.
openHAB running
MCU on Eclipse 