How to get Data off an Embedded System: FatFS with USB MSD Host and FreeRTOS Direct Task Notification

Posted on June 14, 2020 by Erich Styger

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This is a follow-up article of my earlier project presented in “FatFS, MinIni, Shell and FreeRTOS for the NXP K22FN512“. I wanted to extend it with a USB MSD (memory stick) device: The USB storage device gets automatically mounted, and depending on a configuration (.ini) file on the memory device I can perform various actions, for example automatically copy data from the SD card to the USB device. For example the system logs data, and to get the data I insert the memory stick, it copies the data on it and automatically unmounts it, and I can remove the memory stick.

FRDM-K22F USB Host Mode with Memory Sticks

FRDM-K22F USB Host Mode with Memory Sticks

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Behind the Canvas: Making of “60 Billion Lights”

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Erich Styger

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As promised I’m going to share more details about the “60 Billion Lights” project. It is about a project to build a piece of electronics behind a 100×50 cm canvas to show animations or to display information like temperature, humidity, weather, time or just any arbitrary text.

Make it

Writing text

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McuLog: Logging Framework for small Embedded Microcontroller Systems

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Erich Styger

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An essential tool especially developing larger applications or distributed firmware is to use logging. This article presents an open source logging framework I’m using. It is small and easy to use and can log to a console, to a file on the host or even to a file on an embedded file system as FatFS.

Log Output

Log Output

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DIY ‘Meta Clock’ with 24 Analog Clocks

Posted on December 29, 2019 by Erich Styger

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Human since 1982 claims

“Human since 1982 have the copyright to works displaying digital time using a grid arrangement of analog clocks…”

I’m not a lawyer, but without obligations (imho) I have removed the content.

You can read more of the details here: Copyright Law for Makers and Educators

Thanks for understanding,

Erich

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

Posted on January 5, 2019 by Erich Styger

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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

Posted on July 9, 2017 by Erich Styger

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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

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Making-Of Sea Shell Sand Clock

Posted on November 23, 2016 by Erich Styger

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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

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Erich Styger

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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

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McuOnEclipse Components: 31-July-2016 Release

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Erich Styger

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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

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FatFS with Adafruit MicroSD Breakout Board and NXP FRDM-KL25Z

Posted on July 9, 2016 by Erich Styger

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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

Posted on June 25, 2016 by Erich Styger

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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

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Erich Styger

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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

Posted on May 29, 2016 by Erich Styger

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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

Posted on May 8, 2016 by Erich Styger

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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

Posted on March 13, 2016 by Erich Styger

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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

Posted on February 6, 2016 by Erich Styger

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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

Posted on January 9, 2016 by Erich Styger

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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

Posted on December 26, 2015 by Erich Styger

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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

Posted on November 8, 2015 by Erich Styger

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

New component for Segger RTT makes adding a console communication interface super easy (and fast!)
RTT support for the command line Shell component
RTT component used for Percepio FreeRTOS Tracing
Updated USB component, support for USB CDC blocking/waiting and endpoint configuration
Updated FreeRTOS to V8.2.3, memory heap selection improved and setting for time slicing
RingBuffer implements a Delete() method
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

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Erich Styger

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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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