“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
Major changes in this new release:
Segger SystemViewer V2.36a
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
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
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
It has been already two months after the Feb 2016 release, and so much things are going on, so a new release was overdue. Today I have released a new version of the McuOnEclipse components on SourceForge with the following main changes and features:
See readme on SourceForge for the full history.
McuOnEclipse 2016-04-03 Release
I’m using the tiny and inexpensive Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ transceiver (see “Tutorial: Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board“) in many projects: it costs less than $3 and allows me to communicate with a proprietary 2.4GHz protocol in a low power way (see “IoT: FreeRTOS Down to the Micro Amps“). I have that transceiver now running with the tinyK20 board too:
nRF24L01+ Transceiver with tinyK20
New in this release:
Segger SystemViewer V2.30
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
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 