Category Archives: NXP

A Flying UAV Drone Full of Sensors

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One goal of this blog is to inspire engineers, in one way or another. And when I get reports back that things were useful, I like to share it :-).

So here is something what a team of young undergraduates (Przemyslaw Brudny, Marek Ulita, Maciej Olejnik) did for theirs Master Thesis work at the Politechnika Wroclawska, Poland: a very cool flying machine controlled by two Kinetis K66, having many sensors (on own designed boards) with a custom debug/programmer board similar to the tinyK20, developed with the NXP Kinetis Design Studio:

Plane Model

UAV (Source: Thesis of Przemyslaw Brudny)

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INTRO FS2016 Semester Closing with Robot Maze Challenge

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“Learning-by-doing” is one of the core principles of my embedded systems and robotics course at the Lucerne University. For this the students apply what they learned using a robotics platform. In earlier semesters we did a Sumo battle at the end. This time the challenge was to build a remote controller plus to add the ability to explore and solve a line maze:

maze solving robots

maze solving robots

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McuOnEclipse Components: 29-May-2016 Release

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Major changes in this new release:

  • FreeRTOS V9.0.0 with static memory allocation.
  • Shell with single character I/O function.
  • FatFS File System with extra shell commands for memory dump and file creation.
  • Segger SystemViewer library updated to V2.36a
Segger SystemViewer V2.36a

Segger SystemViewer V2.36a

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FreeRTOS V9.0.0 with Static Memory Allocation

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I’m using FreeRTOS in most of my applications. There were only a few exceptions where an RTOS has to be used in safety critical systems: there usually it is not permitted to use any dynamic memory allocation because this adds the risk that a memory allocation could fail at runtime because of memory fragmentation or memory leak. And FreeRTOS uses a dynamic memory (heap) for the task stacks and the RTOS resources including semaphore, mutex and queues.

This is now a thing of the past. This week a new FreeRTOS Version 9 was released which does not need any dynamic memory allocation anymore: it is possible now to build completely statically allocated systems with FreeRTOS :-).

Dynamic and Static Memory Allocation in FreeRTOS V9.0.0

Dynamic and Static Memory Allocation in FreeRTOS V9.0.0

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Tutorial: Blinky with NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 and Processor Expert

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In “Mother of Components: Processor Expert with NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 Projects” I presented an approach how to use Processor Expert components with the NXP Kinetis SDK. This article is a tutorial how to create a blinking LED project with that approach, using McuOnEclipse Processor Expert components and the Kinetis SDK V2.0. As board the FRDM-K22F is used:

Blinky on a FRDM-K22F with SDK V2.0 and Processor Expert

Blinky on a FRDM-K22F with SDK V2.0 and Processor Expert

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NXP FTF Hands-On with FreeRTOS Task Aware Debugger

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I mentioned the hands-on sessions on FreeRTOS I do this week at NXP FTF Tech Forum in Austin in my previous post. What we are using in the session is an Eclipse plugin in Kinetis Design Studio showing all kinds of FreeRTOS information:

NXP FreeRTOS Plugin in Kinetis Design Studio

NXP FreeRTOS Plugin in Kinetis Design Studio

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FreeRTOS Thread Debugging with Segger GDB in Eclipse

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NXP FTF Tech Forum in Austin has been a blast! I’m running another FreeRTOS hands-on session (FTF-DES-N2048) this afternoon which yet again is fully booked. But we will squeeze in as many as possible from the waiting list.

One very exciting thing we are going to use is FreeRTOS thread awareness in Eclipse/Kinetis Design Studio: to see and debug the FreeRTOS threads in Eclipse using the Segger GDB and it will show the list of threads in the Debug view:

FreeRTOS Thread Awareness with Segger GDB

FreeRTOS Thread Awareness with Segger GDB

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Mother of Components: Processor Expert with NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 Projects

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Unfortunately, now the NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 does not include Processor Expert support (see “First NXP Kinetis SDK Release: SDK V2.0 with Online On-Demand Package Builder“). But at the Lucerne University we are using more than 150 different custom Processor Expert components we would like to use with that new SDK. So how to make them working with the Kinetis SDK V2.0? Using a Processor Expert as “the mother of all components”:

NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 and Processor Expert Side-by-Side under Eclipse

NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 and Processor Expert Side-by-Side under Eclipse

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McuOnEclipse Components: 8-May-2016 Release

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Time is passing fast, and many components have been updated to make the compatible with the NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0. As a highlight, besides of FreeRTOS the following components are now usable with the NXP Kinetis SDK:

Components compatible with Kinetis SDK

Components compatible with Kinetis SDK

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Fix for GDB and “The system tried to join a drive to a directory on a joined drive”

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The bad thing with Eclipse and GDB is: if something is failing, then all what I get is a very cryptic error message when I launch the debugger:

The system tried to join a drive to a directory on a joined drive

The system tried to join a drive to a directory on a joined drive

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