Added Heap Memory Monitoring and Tracking to FreeRTOS V10.5

We all should know it: dynamic memory usage can be dangerous. There can be memory fragmentation, use-after-free, out-of-memory and memory leaks. While I do prefer static memory allocation for embedded systems, using a dynamic memory allocation in some applications is not avoidable or just makes sense.

In one of my lecture modules we develop a ‘Boulder’ game, where the player has to collect underground diamonds and avoid moving monsters:

LPC845-BRK with OLED using dynamic memory allocation

I’ll show you have FreeRTOS memory usage can be tracked and monitored.

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Open Source picoLink: Raspberry Pi RP2040 CMSIS-DAP Debug Probe

One essential part of embedded development is the ability to debug the target application. The good thing with the Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 Eco-system is: One can use another RP2040 Pico board as a debug probe to debug other ARM Cortex-M devices.

But instead using a Raspberry Pi Pico board with some wires, why not building a dedicated board? The result is a small, versatile and open source debugging probe which virtually can debug any ARM Cortex-M device as a standard ARM CMSIS-DAP probe:

picoLink Debug Probe debugging a Raspberry Pi Pico Board
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Changing the Startup: Custom initial PC and SP Register Setting with the Debugger

By default, the debugger cares about the initial register settings after connecting to the target. But for special cases like using a bootloader combined with a loaded application, this requires a bit more than the usually ‘standard procedure’. For example I need to set both a custom program counter (PC) and stack pointer (SP).

How to set custom PC and SP for startup of the application
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RP2040 with PIO and DMA to address WS2812B LEDs

I love the WS2812B (aka SK6812) addressable LEDs: they are inexpensive and available in different packages. I have used them in different projects, including the MetaClockClock one. I used the NXP Kinetis for these projects, but because they are not available any more, for a new project we had to choose a new microcontroller, with the Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 as the winner.

Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 driving WS2812B with PIO and DMA
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BLE with WiFi and FreeRTOS on Raspberry Pi Pico-W

The Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 is a very versatile microcontroller. It is not the least expensive or the most powerful microcontroller, but it is one which is available and has an excellent software and tool ecosystem.

This article shows how to use the Raspberry Pi Pico-W with BLE and optional WiFi, running with FreeRTOS.

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Using Semihosting the direct Way

Most embedded developers have probably used ‘semihosting’. And yes, it is generally seen as a bad thing. Maybe you have used it, without realizing what it really is and what it does. It is simple to add a printf() to the code (again: you should not use printf), and with the right standard library, it magically it shows up in a console view:

printf a hello world

That looks great, but what is behind this, to make it happen? Actually, it is really amazing technology. And it can be used for better things than just printing text.

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IDE Custom C/C++ Local Build Environment

On my host machine I have many different development environment installed. From different make, cmake and python versions up to different versions of GNU tool chains. Adding them to the PATH environment variable on Windows is really a bad thing: instead I want to keep my PATH as clean as possible. If I need to set up a different environment with different tools, then I prefer to have a ‘local’ environment.

PATH Setting
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Avoiding Stack Overflows: Application Monitoring the Stack Usage

One of the biggest fears of embedded systems developers are stack overflows. FreeRTOS includes a cool feature to monitor and catch task stack overflows. But what about the MSP (Main Stack Pointer) on ARM, or the interrupt stack? What if not using an RTOS and running a bare-metal application?

Checking stack size used

There is a simple way monitoring stack usage at runtime, and for this I want to share the routines and what is now available inside the McuArm module.

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You_Shall_Not_Use_Printf: How to make sure no printf() is used

Every embedded system developer should know by now, that using printf() is not a good thing for smaller systems. Printf() and the like are not only problematic from a code and data size perspective, they are infamous for vulnerability attacks too.

In this article I’ll show you multiple ways how to ban printf() or anything similar you want to avoid.

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Using MQTT with the Raspberry Pi Pico W and HomeAssistant for an Optimized Solar Energy Electrical Vehicle Charger

I’m in the final stage of finishing a electrical vehicle (EV) charger controller, which optimizes battery loading using the available PV system: use as much as possible the solar energy and not the grid.

Raspberry Pi Pico W as a EV Charger Controller

While the controller talks with an Modbus (RS-485) interface to the vehicle charger itself (see Controlling an EV Charger with Modbus RTU), it uses MQTT over WiFi to get information about the available solar energy from HomeAssistant and the Powerwall.

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