Category Archives: Tutorial

WiFi OLED Mini Weather Station with ESP8266

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I’m convinced that this ‘Internet of Things’ thing-thing is not real. Pure marketing and buz words without any added value, right? The IoT hype is so bizar: it must be originated by aliens which have taken over the brains of all the Pointy-haired Bosses of the world? There is no useful application or use case out there!

But wait! There *is* actually good use case, at least for the geeks of this world. We all love clocks as we want to know the time, and we all love the weather forecast so we can plan accordingly. At least I usually do :-).

SQUIX ESP8266 Mini Weather Station

SQUIX ESP8266 Mini Weather Station

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Tutorial: Porting BLE+NRF Kinetis Design Studio Project to MCUXpresso IDE

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The tools and IDE market is constantly changing. Not only there is every year at least one new major Eclipse IDE release, the commercial tool chain and IDE vendors are constantly changing the environment too. For any ARM Cortex-M development, the combination of Eclipse with the GNU tool chain provided by ARM Inc. is the golden standard. But this does not mean that things can be easily moved from one IDE package to another.

While moving between Eclipse versions and GNU versions is usually not a big deal at all, moving between the Eclipse build tool integration is usually not simple. While the GNU MCU Eclipse plugins are widely used (see Breathing with Oxygen: DIY ARM Cortex-M C/C++ IDE and Toolchain with Eclipse Oxygen), the Eclipse based IDEs from the silicon vendors or commercial Eclipse toolchain vendors are using  their own GNU toolchain integration. Which means the project files are not compatible :-(.

NXP FRDM-KW41Z Board

NXP FRDM-KW41Z Board

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Getting Control over a 50 Watt CO2 Laser Cutter from China

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There are people around me who think I’m crazy. And they are probably right. Who else would buy a machine from someone he does not know. I have to pay upfront. It is not clear how things will get delivered, what gets delivered, or if it gets delivered at all. Up to the point I can lose the money I have spent. Best of all: that machine is dangerous enough to potentially kill me. And it has the potential to put my home on fire too. Well, that sounds like an exciting weekend project, or not?

Weekend Box

60 kg Weekend Project Box arrived on the front door

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Breathing with Oxygen: DIY ARM Cortex-M C/C++ IDE and Toolchain with Eclipse Oxygen

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Last month (June 2017), the latest version of Eclipse “Oxygen” has been released, and I have successfully used it in several embedded projects. Time to write a tutorial how to use it to build a custom Do-It-Yourself IDE for ARM Cortex-M development: simple, easy, unlimited and free of charge. While the DIY approach takes a few minutes more to install, it has the advantage that I have full control and I actually know what I have.

Eclipse Oxygen

Eclipse Oxygen

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Tutorial: Makefile Projects with Eclipse

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The benefit of an IDE like Eclipse is: it makes working with projects very easy, as generates make files and it takes and automatically manages the make file(s). But sometimes this might not be what I want because I need greater flexibility and control, or I want to use the same make files for my continues integration and automated testing system. In that case a hand crafted make file is the way to go.

One thing does not exclude the other: This article explains how to use make files with Eclipse with similar comfort as the managed build system in Eclipse, but with the unlimited power of make files:

Makefile Project with Eclipse

Makefile Project with Eclipse

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Getting Started: ROM Bootloader on the NXP FRDM-KL03Z Board

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A bootloader on a microcontroller is a very useful thing. It allows me to update the firmware in the field if necessary. There are many ways to use and make a bootloader (see “Serial Bootloader for the Freedom Board with Processor Expert“). But such a bootloader needs some space in FLASH, plus it needs to be programmed first on a blank device, so a JTAG programmer is needed. That’s why vendors have started including a ROM bootloader into their devices: the microcontroller comes out of the factory with a bootloader in FLASH. So instead writing my bootloader, I can use the one in the ROM.

FRDM-KL03Z with ROM Bootloader

FRDM-KL03Z with ROM Bootloader

And as with everything, there are pros and cons of that approach.

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Transforming Eclipse Linked Projects into Standalone Projects

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Some silicon vendors provide their Eclipse example and SDK projects using linked files and folders. For example a bootloader demo application is provided in the context of an SDK or library. That’s fine until the time I want to transform such an example into a real project or if I want to have it without the hundreds of files for all the other devices I don’t need or use. I cannot take the project and put it into a version control system as the linked files won’t be in my VCS. I cannot move the project to another place as the links are pointing to many places. What I need is a ‘standalone’ project: a project which has all the needed files in it and is self-containing.

Eclipse Project with Linked Files

Eclipse Project with Linked Files and virtual groups

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GNU Code Coverage on Embedded Target with Eclipse Neon and ARM gcc 5

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For a research project, we are going to send a satellite with an embedded ARM Cortex microcontroller into space early next year. Naturally, it has to work the first time. As part of all the ESA paperwork, we have to prove that we tested the hardware and software thoroughly. One piece of the that is to collect and give test coverage evidence. And there is no need for expensive tools: Free-of-charge Eclipse and GNU tools can do the job for a space mission 🙂

Eclipse with Coverage Views

Eclipse with Coverage Views

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Adding GNU Coverage Tools to Eclipse

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The GNU tools include powerful utilities to collect coverage information. With coverage I know which lines of my code have been executed, which is a very useful test metric. The GNU coverage tools are commonly used for Linux applications. But to my surprise not much for embedded application development, mostly because it requires a few extra steps to have it available? Why not using free and powerful tools for improving software quality? This article explains how to install the GNU gcov tools into the Eclipse IDE.

gcov with Embedded Target

gcov with Embedded Target

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DIY USB HID Joystick Device and Game Controller

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For many projects it would be cool to build a custom USB Joystick device, either as custom game controller for Windows or any USB host which can be used with a USB Joystick. Instead buying one, why not build my version? All what I need is a USB capable board, some kind of input (potentiometer, push buttons) and some software, and I have my USB Joystick:

DIY USB HID Joystick Device

DIY USB HID Joystick Device

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