I’m using the NXP Pins tool (see “Tutorial: Muxing with the New NXP Pins Tool“) now in several projects, and I think it is time to share a few tips and tricks.
Pins Tool
So join me on a journey through the internals of the NXP Pins tool :-).
The Lilium Martagon (Turk’s Cap Lily, Lily of Istanbul, Sultan Lily or Dragon Lily.) grows up to 2 meters and is one of the most beautiful lily flower in my area. I can find it mostly around 1000-1200 m in the nearby Alps, e.g. on the Rigi mountain range.
Lilium Martagon
A smoker is great for big pieces of pork, beef or chicken. Putting fish directly on the grid is usually not an option because the fish can fall apart or is difficult to remove. Instead wrapping it into aluminium foil or putting it on a metal or stone plate, I prefer to put fish on a cedar plank. In my opinion the best way to BBQ fish:
Salmon on Cedar Plank
Just nearby where I live I have a mountain peak with a beautiful panorama view. So I’ll take you on virtual tour with high-resolution pictures to the Rigi Hochflue (1998 m).
The tour starts from the Gätterli summit (1699 m) in the morning:
Start in Gätterli: view to the South
With the NXP Pins Tool (see “Tutorial: Muxing with the New NXP Pins Tool“) I can configure and mux (multiplex) the microcontroller pins. What is really powerful and what might not be so obvious at the first sight is that it gives me deep control over every register bit and setting. For example I have below the PTB1 (Port B, pin 1) muxed as GPIO (General Purpose I/O):
PTB1 Muxed with Pins Tool
But it only generates this:
void BOARD_InitPins(void) {
CLOCK_EnableClock(kCLOCK_PortB); /* Port B Clock Gate Control: Clock enabled */
PORT_SetPinMux(PORTB, PIN1_IDX, kPORT_MuxAsGpio); /* PORTB1 (pin 54) is configured as PTB1 */
}
So what about all the other bits and pieces? Continue reading
With the beautiful Alps just outside the door step, I hiked up to the Rigi Hochflue on Sunday, so I can share pictures of alpine flowers at 1698 m (click to enlarge):
Smartwatches are around for a while now. To me it is still questionable how useful the ‘big’ ones for iOS and Android are. But there are definitely the crowd funded smartwatch projects which caught my attention. Maybe it is about the ‘do-anything’ with connectivity? One of these gadgets is Hexiwear: a hackable open source device
Hexiwear Device
While it *could* be a kind of smartwatch, the value of this thing is more that it includes a plethora of sensors with two microcontroller, and I can use Eclipse with GNU tools to build my firmware :-).
Alert: Hackster.io is giving away 100 Hexiwears, but you need to hurry up (submission until July 15th 2016)!
Breakout boards are great: they allow me to explore functions quickly, without to build my custom board: all what I need is some wires and ideally a bread board.
Adadfruit MicroSD Card Breakout Board
NXP has released their Kernel Awareness for FreeRTOS in Eclipse (Kinetis Design Studio):
Having a total of 14 guests in the evening, why not preparing a great BBQ? A smoker can take a lot of meat, so for this I decided to smoke two kinds of Baby Back Ribs plus one pork shoulder for pulled pork. Everyone is helping with preparing desert plus the salad dishes:
Salad bar
My job was to get up early to deal with the fire and meat 🙂
MCU on Eclipse 