The 40 new PCB’s for the new Pololu optical encoders arrived (see “Processing the Pololu Motor Shaft Encoders“) 🙂
40 Encoder PCBs arrived
New Encoder PCB’s arrived
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Blooming Crocus
Gallery
This gallery contains 8 photos.
Looks like Spring finally arrived in the lower Swiss Alps. The Crocus is one of the first blooming flowers. When I planted them about 6 years ago, I did not think that they will survive, especially as that part of … Continue reading
Tutorial: Thermal Printer, Part 1: Hardware Setup with FRDM Board
One of my embedded projects is to measure the running time in a sports event (see “Sports Timing System in a Lunch Box“). The recorded time is stored in an EEPROM plus sent over USB or wireless connection to the host. It would be great if I could print out the time and ranking directly, so if there is no PC, the system can be small and tiny. So here is my next project and tutorial: Printing with the Freedom board!
Hello World on the Printer with FRDM-KL25Z
Generating Static FreeRTOS Source Code
Using Processor Expert is an awesome tool: it generates source code for me, and I can can ‘dynamically’ tune my projects to my needs. Still, sometimes it is better or desirable to have a ‘normal’ or ‘static’ project. This is very well possible with Processor Expert (see “Sneaking from Processor Expert” or “Disable my Code Generation“): I can generate the code one time, and then use it without Processor Expert.
To make this even easier, I have added an option to the FreeRTOS Processor Expert component to generate ‘static’ code I can copy-paste to projects and tool chains which are either not supported by Processor Expert, or just for ‘static’ projects.
FreeRTOS Custom Port Settings
Processing the Pololu Motor Shaft Encoders
For the first generation of the INTRO Zumo robots, I have Pololu optical wheel encoders (see “Adding Quadrature Encoder to the Zumo Chassis“) which were available last year. It seems that Pololu heard my feedback, and are offering new encoders. Time to move things to the next level, using an optical encoder attached to the motor shaft:
Optical Motor Shaft Encoder
First Steps with the Freescale TWR-K64F120M
Naturally, I have several project ideas lingering around. No time to make them all (for now). One of it is interfacing the Raspberry Pi camera with a microcontroller. To store the images, I need plenty of RAM on the device, and so far the Kinetis microcontroller did not have that. Finally, Freescale announced the K64F120 a few months back, and my ordered TWR-K64F120M board arrived on my desk, waiting to be used: Finally I get an ARM Cortex-M4F with 1 MByte of FLASH and 256 KByte of RAM :-).
TWR-K64F120M Box
Boards from Embedded World (STM Nucleo, Atmel Xplained Mini, Cypress PSoC 4)
At conferences and shows like the Embedded World in Nürnberg it is not only about gathering the trends of the industry: it is as well about collecting all the goodies handed out to the attendees. I’m less interested in things like pens or the like: what I love most are microcontroller on a board I can use :-). This year STMicroelectronics, Atmel and Cypress all had boards to distribute ‘like candies’ 🙂
Goodies from Embedded World
Should I use that Elevator?
I’m returning from the Embedded World in Nürnberg/Germany. A very busy schedule, a crowed exhibition, and a *lot* of good stuff. IoT (Internet of Things) was everywhere, to the point that I heard from visitors that they do not want to hear it anymore, about it because it so over-used ;-). And it seems that every vendor wants to have its feet in it, without really knowing where it could go. Sounds like in the early days of the ‘internet’, and everyone fears that if he has not ‘IoT’ somewhere, they might miss something.
But the topic here is something completely different: I was staying at a small and inexpensive hotel near the city center. I returned last night around 11pm. I was really tired from the long day, and with a heavy notebook back with me. I was going to enter the elevator to the upper floors, when I saw this signage on the elevator door (sorry the bad image quality):
Elevator Door Sign
So there I was staying in front of that door, about to press the button, still thinking about the consequences. Not a good sign. Can I take the risk? What would you do?
Happy Elevating 🙂
FreeRTOS V8.0.0 Final Release available as Processor Expert Component
The final FreeRTOS V8.0.0 has been released last week: time to update the Processor Expert component for it, and this time it is really a major release 🙂 : from V7.5.0 to V8.0.0:
FreeRTOS V8.0.0 Processor Expert Component
FreeRTOS V8.0.0 comes with many small changes, especially it now includes many of the extra casts I have contributed to avoid compiler warnings. And additionally it has a brand new feature: Event Groups.
DIY Free Toolchain for Kinetis: Part 10 – Project Creation with GNU ARM Eclipse 2.1.1
As mentioned in Part 9: There is a new GNU ARM Eclipse plugin 2.1.1, and this one makes project creation for Freescale devices easier than ever 🙂
- Native Kinetis-L project templates for FRDM-KL25Z and FRDM-KL46Z boards
- Easier than ever project creation for Processor Expert projects
GNU ARM Eclipse 2.1.1
MCU on Eclipse 