You might wonder what ‘Zork‘ is? Zork is one of the first and earlist fictive computer games, written around 1977 and 1979, written in MDL on a DEC PDP-10 by members of the MIT Dynamic Modelling group (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork). I believe the first time I have played Zork was around 1984 on a Commodore 64.
Zork
With Eclipse as IDE it is very easy to debug an application on a board. Still sometimes it is useful to get one level down and control the GDB server directly.
Monitor Flash Download
What is the life span of a cheap Chinese CO2 laser tube? I mean: how long can I use one these (aka K40) laser engraver/cutter tubes as used in that 50W machine I have? I have used my machine for over a year for now, and I don’t have hour meter, but I estimate it have used it for about 500 hours. I don’t have a data sheet of the tube used inside my machine. Discussions on the internet estimate the live span from DOA (Dead On Arrival) to ‘a few months with moderate usage’ up to 3000-5000h’. Well, whatever it would be: my laser cutter stopped working two weeks ago. Here is how I got it back operating again….
New Laser Tube on the Bench
Need a quick way how to attach a LED, a push button and two resistors to the Raspberry Pi header? One way is to use some ‘flying’ wires. Or to use three pieces of lasercut plywood for a nice looking Raspy extension board:
Wood Circuit Board on Raspberry Pi
There are things which are game changer in the world of software development: one such event was when I started using a VCS (Version Control System): it changed for me how I keep and store my projects and settings. It even changed the way how I deal with non-software related items like documents or other valuable things: I started storing them in to a VCS too.
I’m pleased to announce a new release of the McuOnEclipse components, available on SourceForge. This release includes several bug fixes, extra support for the NXP S32 Design Studio and SDK and includes FreeRTOS V10.1.1.
SourceForge
Summer is over and Fall has started in the northern hemisphere. Time of the year to do more beautiful hikes in the Alps. This time I take you on a hike through the green Tschamin valley: for me one of the most beautiful and scenic places in the Dolomites, Italy.
Rechter Leger
Oh, the mountains! Getting up, free your mind and have a wonderful view! So here is another hike with stunning views we enjoyed this summer: from the Karer Pass up to the Poppenkanzel on the Latemar. Including sitting in a movie theatre 🙂
View from the Latemar
What makes mountain lakes so special? Get the answer with that picture below :-).
Lake at Wuhnleger
Unit testing is a common practice for host development. But for embedded development this still seems mostly a ‘blank’ area. Mostly because embedded engineers are not used to unit testing, or because the usual framework for unit testing requires too many resources on an embedded target?
What I have used is the μCUnit framework which is a small and easy to use framework, targeting small microcontroller applications.
uCUnit
MCU on Eclipse 