The year is coming to an end, the Holiday season is approaching. In case you are looking for a nice present: I have completed my version of a sand clock: a clock writing the time into sand:
Sandclock
If you are interested to build your own version, I have documented the different steps with tips and tricks…
A new McuOnEclipse components release was long overdue, so I’m pleased to announce that a new drop is available with the following major changes:
SourceForge
Time for a new major update of the McuOnEclipse components, with the fillowing main features and changes:
SourceForge
Breakout boards are great: they allow me to explore functions quickly, without to build my custom board: all what I need is some wires and ideally a bread board.
Adadfruit MicroSD Card Breakout Board
SourceForge
A new release is available on SourceForge, with the following main changes:
A bootloader shall be small and concise. I very much like bootloaders which do not need a ‘special’ program on the host, so I prefer a simple terminal for this. While porting my serial bootloader to the NXP FRDM-K64F board, I have found RealTerm which offers a lot of cool features:
RealTerm
Major changes in this new release:
Segger SystemViewer V2.36a
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
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
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
In many of my embedded projects I’m using successfully the Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ (see “Tutorial: Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board“) and the HC-06 Bluetooth transceivers (see “Getting Bluetooth Working with JY-MCU BT_BOARD V1.06“) for wireless communication. However, the nRF24L01+ is using a proprietary protocol, and the HC-06 does not work with Apple products (it does very well with Android devices). To close that gap I decided to add Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE, or Bluetooth 4.x). So this post is about how to add Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to NXP (formerly Freescale) Kinetis devices:
BLE Enabled Kinetis
For my home automation project with openHAB I want to attach Freescale (now NXP) FRDM (Freedom) boards so they can take care about the realtime aspects and to act as gateways to my other systems. One way is to use USB CDC (Serial over USB) as communication channel. USB has the advantage that it powers the board, plus I can attach multiple devices: up to four on the Raspberry Pi 2 and even more with using a USB hub. In a standard configuration with a USB WiFi and a USB HID (mouse plus keyboard) dongle I still can attach two Freescale (ahem, NXP) Freedom boards to the Raspberry Pi:
FRDM-K22F and FRDM-K64F attached to Raspberry Pi 2
Time is flying fast, time for another McuOnEclipse components release on SourceForge with the following main changes and features:
Segger RTT Console
In my classes I’m mainly using the Freescale FRDM-KL25Z board, as it provides the best value for the money, and 128 kByte FLASH with 16 kByte of RAM is enough for many smaller projects. I do have as well the FRDM-KL02Z Board (32 KByte FLASH, 4 KByte of RAM) which is an inexpensive board to evaluate the smaller KL02Z microcontroller. Because someone reported a problem not being able to use the UART over OpenSDA/USB-to-CDC bridge, I have created a demo project which communicates with a console on the host.
FRDM-KL02Z Board
For a home automation project I need to know the room temperature and humidity percentage of the room air. Adafruit has an inexpensive DHT11 sensor from http://www.aosong.com which I decided to use for that project.
Test Setup for DHT11 Sensor
There is a new release of the McuOnEclipse components available on SourceForge, with the following main changes:
SourceForge McuOnEclipse
Thanks to the contribution from [francescoaru], the Shell component has now a history function:
Shell with History
