Sumo Robot Sensor Shield

The PCB’s for the Sumo robot (see “New Sumo Robot Assembled, and looking good!“) arrived. It is the ‘production’ version of that shield I have shown in “Sensor and Communication Shield for Sumo Robot” which adds following to the robot:

  1. Ultrasonic module
  2. Bluetooth module
  3. nRF24L01+ module
  4. I2C I/O Expander for 8 extra I/Os
  5. One general purpose I/O header
  6. One general purpose I2C header
  7. Up to 6 infrared distance sensors
Sensor Shield

Sensor Shield

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November

Image

Every season has its special colors. I very much like the warm colors of the Fall season. Maybe this was the weekend before we will get snow into the lower areas. Soon everything will be covered by cold snow….

Lake View

Lake View

Happy Falling πŸ™‚

Electrical Race Car Breaks Acceleration World Record

I’m very proud what our students can accomplish: they broke today the previous world record for acceleration in an electrical car:
From 0 to 100 km/h (62.1371 miles/h) in 1.785 seconds πŸ™‚

World Record Acceleration (Source: AMZ Racing)

World Record Acceleration (Source: AMZ Racing)

It only took 30 meters runway to reach 100 km/h :-).

Details: https://www.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2014/11/Grimsel_bricht_Weltrekord.html

Happy Accelerating πŸ™‚

Debugging Failure: Check List and Hints

I think the biggest frustration point for any new or even seasoned engineer is the debugging phase: my application finally builds fine, but I’m not able to connect and download it to the target board :-(. In my view the debugging part is the most fragile part of the development process. I’m always very relieved if I can connect to a brand new board, because I know if it does not work, then the problem could be a very bad one, costing my several hours or even days to overcome it.

Remote Communication Error

Remote Communication Error, what now?

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RAM Target with Kinetis Design Studio and FRDM-K64F

Newer microcontroller have increase RAM areas, making it suitable to run the application from RAM instead of FLASH. For the FRDM-K64F board and the Kinetis Design Studio (V1.1.1), I have explored how to run the application out of RAM instead of FLASH memory, both for P&E and Segger connections.

MK64FN1M0VLL12

MK64FN1M0VLL12

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Processor Expert Value Proposals

The cool thing with Processor Expert is that it gives me guidance through the settings. And there is a nice (rather hidden feature) which proposes me values I can enter:

πŸ’‘ First, switch to the non-Tabs (classic) view, as the classic view is using the screen real estate better, and shows you *all* the information needed, and does not hide some.

So if you have some values to correct because other settings have changed:

Values to Enter

Values to Enter

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Illustrated Step-by-Step Instructions: Updating the Freescale Freedom Board Firmware

I have received a bunch of Freescale FRDM boards to be used in an Embedded Systems programming crash course. There are multiple issues with the boards coming from the factory:

  1. They come with an old bootloader which is not compatible with Windows 8.x
  2. They have an old and outdated firmware on the board only supports a MSD bootloader

This post is a step-by-step instruction how to update Freescale FRDM boards (e.g. FRDM-KL25Z) to the latest firmware.

FRDM Board

FRDM Board

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1000 Days of Blogging: Numbers and Tips for You

Surprise, surprise: I have completed my first 1000 days of blogging on McuOnEclipse :-). And *finally* I have completed today the Compendium. When I started the blog back at Feb 1st 2012, it was the beginning of a journey to the unknown. And yes, it is still Kevin’s fault ;-). During these days (actually: nights) of that project, I have learned a lot, so let me share some of the data.

Wordpress statistics

WordPress Statistics (dzone not included)

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Engineering Joke of the Week: The Pet Shop

A tourist walked into a pet shop and was looking at the animals on display. While he was there, another customer walked in and said to the shopkeeper: “I’llΒ  have a C-monkey please”.

The shopkeeper nodded, went over to a cage at the side of the shop, and took out a monkey. He fit a collar and leash and handed it to the customer, saying “That’ll be $5000”.

The customer paid and walked out with his monkey.

Startled, the tourist went over to the shopkeeper and said: “That was a very expensive monkey, most of them are only a few hundred dollars. Why did it cost so much?”
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