It is the exam and grading time at the university, and the same time I’m preparing the lectures and labs for the new semester starting mid of February. I’m always heading for using the latest and greatest tools in my labs. A few days ago, NXP released the new version of the MCUXpresso IDE, version 11.7.0. Time to check it out…
The year 2022 is coming to an end, and I have spent some time today on a little side project. It is about making an Electrical Vehicle (EV) wallbox charger accessible over Modbus RTU. It is not finished yet, and I plan to publish more articles on it, but I can share that I’m able to access and control the Heidelberg EV charger with a Raspberry Pi Pico W (Dual Core Cortex M0+), NXP K22FN512 (Cortex M4F) and LPC845 (Single Core Cortex M0+):
I’m pleased to announce a new release of the McuOnEclipse Processor Expert components, available on SourceForge.
In many embedded applications, it is mandatory that memory allocation is static and not dynamic. Means that no calls to things like malloc() or free() shall be used in the application, because they might fail at runtime (out of memory, heap fragmentation).
But when linking with 3rd party libraries or even with the C/C++ standard libraries, how to ensure no dynamic memory is used? The problem can occur as well for C++ objects, or a simple call to printf() which internally requires some dynamic memory allocated.
Continue readingTool chains like the GNU compiler collection (gcc) have a plethora of options. The probably most important ones are the ones which tell the compiler how to optimize the code. Running out of code space, or the application is not performing well? Then have a look at the compiler optimization levels!
However, which one to select can be a difficult choice. And the result might very well depend on the application and coding style too. So I’ll give you some hints and guidance with an autonomous robot application we use at the Lucerne University for research and education.
I’m now in the middle of the university fall semester exam season with writing exams and grading student work, and the same time the new semester courses need to be prepared. With the global silicon and board shortage, this will be again a challenge to equip all the labs with the needed infrastructure. The good thing is that there is no shortage on software and tools side of the infrastructure: NXP released last week their new flagship Eclipse based IDE: the MCUXpresso IDE 11.5.0. Time to check it out for the upcoming lectures and classes….
Continue readingSpoiler Alert: It has a new view for FreeRTOS lovers, plus new features for energy/power measurements!
Split-flap displays are electromechanical display devices, which were common in airports or railway stations a few years ago.Unfortunately, most of them are gone and replaced by LED displays. Why not create a DIY version of it?
LoRaWAN is getting more an more popular, both for terrestrial and increasingly with low-orbit satellite systems. The ‘Long Range’ in ‘LoRa’ makes it an ideal solution for low-power and low data rate applications. For a university research project we selected the Semtech SX1261/62 transceiver together with the NXP LPC55S16 mikrocontroller. Because the board used for that project is not available for the public (yet), I share here how you can run the LoRaWAN stack with the NXP LPC55S16-EVK.
I’m pleased to announce a new release of the McuOnEclipse components, available on SourceForge. This release includes several bug fixes, support for more devices, and updated components like FreeRTOS, MinINI, Percepio Tracealyzer and SEGGER SystemView.
SourceForge
University exam grading are all done now and results are in the system, and it is already time to prepare for the fall semester. I always try to use the latest and greatest tools in my courses, and the NXP MCUXpresso IDE 11.4.0 just came out. So time to have a look and explore the changes and features.
MCU on Eclipse 