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
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
From my earlier work to use the NXP Kinetis with openHAB (see “Controlling NXP Freedom Board RGB LED with openHAB and Raspberry Pi“) it was only a small step to control a 20x20x20 cm light cube with 256 Adafruit WS2812 NeoPixels:
Kinetis RGB Cube with openHAB
There are plenty of different software packages available for microcontroller these days from all the silicon vendors. Finding a good software package is one challenge, getting what I really need is another one. Freescale is now part of NXP since December 2015, so this is probably the first release of the former Freescale part now as NXP: The NXP Kinetis SDK Version 2.0.
It comes with an interesting distribution way: instead of downloading huge packages with all-and-everything in it, I can build it ‘on demand’ online and get what I need, on demand from a web-based front end:
NXP Kinetis Expert with Kinetis SDK
In “Blinky LED with openHAB on Raspberry Pi” I have used openHAB on a Raspberry Pi to control an LED attached to the Pi, and in “Controlling NXP Freedom Board RGB LED with openHAB and Raspberry Pi” I have explored how to connect a NXP Freedom Board over USB CDC to the Raspberry Pi. In this article I’m going to combine both: to control the LED on a NXP Freedom board remotely with openHAB on the Raspberry Pi.
ColorPicker with openHAB and FRDM-KL25Z
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
By default, there are no Undo/Redo toolbar buttons in the Eclipse toolbar. With Eclipse as an open and extensible framework, how to add them?
Undo and Redo Toolbar Buttons in Eclipse
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
MCU on Eclipse 