Free Static Code Analysis with Eclipse

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I know for myself: the earlier I’m able to fix a bug, the better. So I’m always grateful for things which help me to find issues in my sources as early in the development process as possible. Eclipse and CodeWarrior already help me to find syntax errors in my code while I’m typing:

Eclipse highlighting syntax error

Eclipse highlighting syntax error

With the built-in syntax checker of Eclipse, this helps me many times to get things right without the need to build my code with the compiler. But when I’m able to compile successfully my code, this does not mean it is without bugs. It would be good to catch as many errors *before* downloading and running it on the target.

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The Freedom Robot

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I have the Arduino Motor Shield working, the Ultrasonic module is pinging around, Christmas brought some small DC toy motors, and a bag of plastic gears is on my desk. All the good ingredients for a small robot: the Freedom Robot!

❗ Warning: Multiple Coke bottles have  been destroyed, and a FRDM box got hurt during his experiment! 😯 Do not try yourself if you cannot handle it.:-)

Smile

Smile

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Tutorial: Ultrasonic Ranging with the Freedom Board

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Question: What makes 8 times ‘beep’, but I cannot hear it?

Answer: My ultrasonic range finder 🙂

FRDM-KL25Z with HC-SR04

FRDM-KL25Z with HC-SR04

What I have added to my FRDM-KL25Z board is an ultrasonic distance sensor, measuring distances up to 4 meters.

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A new Freedom Board: FRDM-KL05Z

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Christmas and New Year time is great: Gifts and time to work on my home projects. But this post is not about one gift I have organized for myself: a Raspberry Pi ;-)). No, this post is about a gift I have received from Freescale: a *new* Freedom board, the FRDM-KL05Z :-).

FRDM-KL05Z Board and Box

FRDM-KL05Z Board and Box

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PWM and Shell for a LED

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Controlling a LED is a great starter for any embedded project: simple and you immediately get feedback if it works :-). Even better: as driving a LED is not different from working with another digital I/O or controlling a solenoid, the ‘LED’ concept and driver is very universal. I recently have simplified my Processor Expert LED component, so it might be a good time to add some more functionality again ;-). Let’s add support for PWM, and adding a shell interface on top of it. That way the LED is dimmable, plus I can do everything with a command interface as well:

LED Properties

LED Properties

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An Idea for the New Year, and Asking for Your Opinion

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The year 2012 is coming to an end, and luckily the end of the world is postponed :-). So time to make plans for the year 2013! And here is one I would like to ask your opinion about it: A public repository for Processor Expert components.

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A Processor Expert Component to Help with Hard Faults

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Ahrg! Again my ARM application crashed somewhere and I ended up in a HardFault exception :-(. In my earlier post I used a handler to get information from the processor what happened. But it is painful to add this handler again and again. So I decided to make things easier for me: with a special HardFault Processor Expert component :-).

After adding this HardFault component to my project, it automatically adds an entry to the vector table. So no manual steps are needed: having the component in the project and enabled will do the needed steps.

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Migrating Kinetis-L Projects from Beta to Final MCU 10.3

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I have successfully used CodeWarrior for MCU10.3 beta version for many projects. With the advent of the final CodeWarrior for MCU10.3, I want to migrate my existing projects to the new and final version. First: my existing projects work as well in the final version, which is good news. But there are two things to change to take advantage of the final 10.3:

  1. Linker file memory split
  2. ARM Micro Trace Buffer (MTB) support

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LED’s for Kinetis, simplified

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Sometimes it takes a while until things get better. Same thing applies to software: from time to time a refactoring and simplification makes sense. Especially if the underlying technology has been improved. With CodeWarrior for MCU10.3 available, it is time to refactor the LED component.

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