Julier Formula Student Electrical Race Car as Television Star

Yesterday the local television station Tele 1 collected film material for a report about the “Julier” Formula Student team. The team did run more tests on the Alpnach air field, and this time the weather was much better compared to the last weekend. With the risk to get sun burned 😉

Until Tele 1 publishes the material, I have here pictures from the scene, the team and the car.

Camera, and Action

Camera, and Action

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Julier 4WD Test Drive in Alpnach

While weather is bad and Switzerland suffers from record high rain water levels, the Formula Student “julier” team was testing their race car this week-end after the rollout. This time to test the 4WD with more torque. Plus water-resistance ;-). So here are impressions, pictures and a video from this week-end:

Julier Formula Student Race Car

Julier Formula Student Race Car

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Tutorial: Arduino Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield – Part 1: Servos

This post starts a small (or larger?) series of tutorials using the Arduino Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield with the FRDM-KL25Z board. That motor shield is probably one of the most versatile on the market, and features 2 servo and 4 motor connectors for DC or stepper motors. That makes it a great shield for any robotic project :-).

Arduino Motor Stepper Servo Shield with FRDM-KL25Z

Arduino Motor Stepper Servo Shield with FRDM-KL25Z

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Character LCD with 4 Lines

Character LCD’s (like 2 lines with 16 characters each) as in this post are easy to use. Much easier to use compared to full graphical LCDs.

The ones I’m using have either 1 or 2 lines, but I saw that there are 4 line displays too. So far my LCD component only supports one or two lines.

4 Line LCD

4 Line LCD (Source: Ezequiel Bazotti)

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How to use MCUonEclipse GitHub without Git

Not everyone is familiar with Git, and not everyone wants to use it. Although I think using Git or SVN is something every software engineer today needs to master 😉 To make it easier for the ‘non-Gitter’ to use the Processor Expert components, they are available now as *.PEupd files as described here. However, the *.PEupd files are just a snapshot, and not the latest and greatest. So how to use the latest component sources and example projects without Git?

gits in a box

gits in a box

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Rollout of ‘julier’ Formula Student Race Car

Last Thursday the new Formula Student race car named ‘julier’ had its rollout to the public at Sauber Motorsports in Hinwil, Switzerland. Again a fully electrical racing car, but this time with 4-wheel drive, improved aero-pack and electronics, and able to get from 0 to 100 km/h in 2.6 seconds!

Julier racing (Source Benjamin Hildebrandt)

Julier racing (Source Benjamin Hildebrandt)

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CMSIS-DAP with IAR and the KL25Z Freedom Board

Beside of USBDM, there is another Open Source implementation of a debug interface for the Freedom Board OpenSDA: CMSIS-DAP.

CMSIS-DAP stands for ‘Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard – Debug Access Port’) has been published by ARM Inc. With this, there is an open source alternative to proprietary implementation (e.g. P&E OpenSDA or Segger OpenSDA).
Beside of the ARM MDK IDE, CMSIS-DAP is supported by Coocox and IAR. And IAR is what I’m using in this post.

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Freedom Board with Segger OpenSDA Debug Firmware

Looks like there is some movement on the ‘OpenSDA Front’: After CodeRed has released their RedProbe OpenSDA firmware, now Segger has released an OpenSDA firmware.

With this, I get a low-cost debugging solution similar to the well-known J-Link run control devices. The OpenSDA Segger Firmware is something like a J-Link-lite.

FRDM-KL25Z with Segger OpenSDA Debug Firmware

FRDM-KL25Z with Segger OpenSDA Debug Firmware

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