Category Archives: Shell

Driver for VL53L0X Time-Of-Flight (ToF) Sensor and NXP K20DX128

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I’m using the VL6180X ToF (Time-of-Flight) sensors successfully in different projects. The VL6180X is great, but only can measure distances up to 20 cm and in ‘extended mode’ up to 60 cm. For a project I need to go beyond that, so the logical choice is the VL53L0X which measures between 30 cm and 100 cm or up to 200 cm. For this project I’m using the VL53L0X breakout board from Adafruit, but similar products are available e.g. from Pololu.

NXP K20dx128 with adafruit vl53l0x tof sensor

NXP K20dx128 with Adafruit VL53LOx tof sensor

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McuOnEclipse Components: 09-July-2017 Release

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I’m pleased to announce that a new release of the McuOnEclipse components is available in SourceForge, with the following major changes and updates:

  • Complete refactoring for 1-Wire stack and DS18B20 temperature sensor components
  • Added HID Joystick device class to the FSL_USB_Stack
  • New SDK_Timer component to work with Kinetis SDK
  • New ST756P LCD driver component
  • New TSL2561 digitial temperature sensor driver
  • Added ReadByte() and WriteByte() GenericI2C functions
  • Added 64bit mapping functions to Utility
  • added configUSE_NEWLIB_REENTRANT and newlib reentrancy support to FreeRTOS
  • Pull resistor support for SDK_BitIO
  • Many smaller bug fixes and enhancements
SourceForge

SourceForge

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Making-Of Sea Shell Sand Clock

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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

Sandclock

If you are interested to build your own version, I have documented the different steps with tips and tricks…

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McuOnEclipse Components: 30-Oct-2016 Release

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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:

  • Segger SystemView library with kernel time reporting
  • GenericTimeDate supports different hardware RTC devices
  • Utility with little endian packet handling functions
  • Shell Standard I/O handlers for USB CDC, Segger RTT and Bluetooth
  • FreeRTOS and stack size reporting
  • printf() support in Shell component
  • Various small bug fixes and improvements
SourceForge

SourceForge

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McuOnEclipse Components: 31-July-2016 Release

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Time for a new major update of the McuOnEclipse components, with the fillowing main features and changes:

  • FatFS component updated to R0.12 with patch 3 and exFAT support
  • Extended support for Cortex-M7
  • Extended support for Kinetis SDK V2.0
  • USB component support for Kinetis SDK V1.3
  • Improved FreeRTOS for NXP FreeRTOS TAD plugin
  • Added C++ wrappers to multiple components
  • Many smaller fixes and improvements

    SourceForge

    SourceForge

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FatFS with Adafruit MicroSD Breakout Board and NXP FRDM-KL25Z

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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

Adadfruit MicroSD Card Breakout Board

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McuOnEclipse Components: 25-June-2016 Release

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SourceForge

SourceForge

A new release is available on SourceForge, with the following main changes:

  • Support for FreeRTOS and Cortex-M7
  • Segger SystemView updated to V2.38
  • Components for NXP Kinetis SDK V1.3
  • Fixed bug in Wait component (register handling for GCC and ARM)
  • FatFS supports FreeRTOS V9.0.0 with static memory allocation
  • FreeRTOS shell and task list with static memory allocation
  • Floating point conversion routines in Utility
  • FreeRTOS component shows NVIC mask bits

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Swiss Army Knife of Terminal Program for Serial Bootloaders

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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

RealTerm

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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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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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nRF24L01+ 2.4 GHz Wireless Connectivity with the tinyK20 Board

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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

nRF24L01+ Transceiver with tinyK20

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Tutorial: Bare-Metal Shell for Kinetis

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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

Console Application

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How to Add Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Connection to ARM Cortex-M

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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

BLE Enabled Kinetis

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USB CDC with the Raspberry Pi

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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

FRDM-K22F and FRDM-K64F attached to Raspberry Pi 2

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McuOnEclipse Components: 08-Nov-2015 Release

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Time is flying fast, time for another McuOnEclipse components release on SourceForge with the following main changes and features:

  1. New component for Segger RTT makes adding a console communication interface super easy (and fast!)
  2. RTT support for the command line Shell component
  3. RTT component used for Percepio FreeRTOS Tracing
  4. Updated USB component, support for USB CDC blocking/waiting and endpoint configuration
  5. Updated FreeRTOS to V8.2.3, memory heap selection improved and setting for time slicing
  6. RingBuffer implements a Delete() method
  7. Extended Kinetis SDK support in components, added by default
Segger RTT Console

Segger RTT Console

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UART with the FRDM-KL02Z Board

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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

FRDM-KL02Z Board

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Using the DHT11/DHT22 Temperature/Humidity Sensor with a FRDM Board

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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

Test Setup for DHT11 Sensor

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McuOnEclipse Components: 22-Mar-2015 Release

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There is a new release of the McuOnEclipse components available on SourceForge, with the following main changes:

  1. Shell: Fixed and improved history handling.
  2. MinIni: Option to select local/stack or global memory for buffers
  3. FreeRTOS: Ability to use the tick counter instead of dedicated timer for performance measurement.
  4. FSL_USB_Stack: Added deinitialization for USB stack.
  5. FatFsMemSDHC: added custom card detection and write protection pin handling.
  6. Multiple Bug Fixes
SourceForge McuOnEclipse

SourceForge McuOnEclipse

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