OpenPnP is a great open source framework for building a DIY SMT Pick&Place machine. But it does not stop there: It is possible to use OpenPnP with a commercial pick & place machine, for example the Charmhigh CHM-T36VA. This Chinese machine comes with its own controller software which works but is not that great. The good news is that it is possible to hack and retrofit the machine so it can run the much more powerful OpenPnP.
Retrofitted CHM-T36VA
I will always take the same approach when I receive a new embedded board: firstly I want to see how quickly I can get it up-and-running, then I want to see what it does “out-of-the-box” and finally I want to find out if the board is “useful”. Does it have some features that will inspire me for new projects??
The NXP LPC55S16-EVK has some great features – CAN-FD, dual USB and a high performance Cortex M33 microcontroller, running at 150 MHz. I have an idea to use the LPC55xx series as the basis for a Weather Station. But this is only feasible if the chip has a low power consumption and can run for weeks on a small battery.
Time to run some test code and get my digital multimeter out…
Continue readingHi, this is Mark from embeddedpro in the United Kingdom and I’m back with more videos and blogs. In the next few weeks there are two new Cortex M33 development boards becoming available. I’ll blog about my first impressions of the boards, and what I’ve been doing with them. I want my blogs give you some tips, hints and ideas about things that you can do: let me know in the Comments below.
FreeRTOS has many cool features, and one is that it can report the CPU percentage spent in each task. The downside is that to get this kind of information some extra work is needed. In this article I show how to do this for the NXP i.MX1064.
FreeRTOS Runtime Information
Using the debugger to inspect the application data is a very convenient thing. But if the data grows and if the data set is large, it makes more sense to dump the data to the host and process it offline. GDB is the de-facto debugger engine and includes a powerful command line and scripting engine which can be used in Eclipse too.
GDB Debugger Console in Eclipse
It is the 4th week: Stores, school and universities are closed. Everyone should stay at home if possible. It is really a special situation, and there is no Easter traffic jam to the South.
For nature it means less pollution, there is much less traffic, and ideal to enjoy nature. But we should stay at home. I’m very happy that I live in a rural area and that I can enjoy this beautiful blooming tree behind the house.
Blooming Pear Tree
Especially in a lab or classroom environment it is convenient to start with a template project, and then explore different ways to shape the project for different needs. As for any IDE of this world, this requires an understanding of the inner workings to get it right. So in this article I show how to copy, clone or rename properly an Eclipse ‘template’ project in the MCUXpresso IDE.
Template Project
I love Eclipse because as an IDE it can do pretty much everything. Up to the point that some call it an ‘Eierlegende Wollmilchsau‘: something which can do anything. But with all the tools, menus and features, it can be daunting for a someone new to Eclipse. But the good news is: Eclipse is very versatile and can be customized to make it easier and simpler to use too. In this article I show how I’m tweaking it the way I want it, with just the menus and buttons I need:
Eclipse Optimized Menus and Toolbars
Maker spaces and ‘FabLabs’ are popular and accessible in many areas. 3D printers are on the cheap, and powerful laser cutters are in the range of the fearless hobbyist. You can get dirty-cheap PCBs from China in less than a week (ok, probably not right now because of Corona virus) and it is easy to SMD solder parts these days with a DIY SMD PnP machine and OpenPnP. With the right equipment and skill set it is possible to build many cool projects. It is very rewarding and a great learning thing. Blog about it so other can learn too. And it even could get featured on Hackaday.
But: The risk is that someone might send you letter about a ‘Copyright Infringement’. Sadly, this is what happened to me for one of my recent projects. I don’t think that ‘take down’ letter was justified, but I learned a great deal what I should have done differently to avoid that situation. So in the end, it was a learning opportunity, which I believe is worth to share. In essence: what can a maker or educator do?
Hackaday: building a giant meta-clock made of smaller clocks (image: original image from Hackaday)
The tinyK22 board with the NXP K22FN512 is a bread-board-friendly small board with a 8 MHz external oscillator:
tinyK22 Board
This tutorial is about how to use the NXP MCUXpresso Clock configuration and configure the board to the maximum clock frequency of 120 MHz. The same steps apply to many other boards, including the FRDM-K22F one.
MCU on Eclipse 