Engineering Joke of the Week: The Genie

Three men: a project manager, a software engineer, and a hardware engineer are helping out on a project. About midweek they decide to walk up and down the beach during their lunch hour. Halfway up the beach, they stumbled upon a lamp. As they rub the lamp a genie appears and says “Normally I would grant you three wishes, but since there are three of you, I will grant you each one wish.”
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McuOnEclipse Component Sources in Dedicated GitHub Repository

From time to time it is good to do some cleanup work: what has grown organically sometimes needs some cuts and moves. The same applies to the McuOnEclipse GitHub repository (https://github.com/ErichStyger/mcuoneclipse) which has grown to 522 MByte, 8364 files and 1444 folders. I already moved out the Processor Expert component releases (see “McuOnEclipse Releases on SourceForge“). Time to cleanup and move something else: the Processor Expert component sources.

McuOnEclipse_PEx

McuOnEclipse_PEx

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Updated McuOnEclipse Components: USB for KL24Z, FatFs v0.10c, Shell Backspace and FreeRTOS Trace Hook Configuration

I have received several requests to post a quick note when there is a new release (16-Nov-2014) of the McuOnEclipse components on SourceForge (see “McuOnEclipse Releases on SourceForge“). I have published today a new release, and with following major improvements:

  1. USB support for Kinetis KL24Z
  2. FatFs now features the latest Elm-Chan v0.10c release
  3. Backspace support in Shell
  4. Configuration item in FreeRTOS for Percepio Trace Hooks
McuOnEclipse SourceForge

McuOnEclipse SourceForge

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Tutorial: How to Erase the FLASH with the GNU GDB debugger

I have several applications where I store application specific information in the microcontroller FLASH memory (see “Configuration Data: Using the Internal FLASH instead of an external EEPROM“). I have run into issues recently with the Segger J-Link GDB server as by default it does *not* erase all the FLASH memory. So the question is: How can I erase all (or part) of the FLASH memory with GDB (e.g. in Kinetis Design Studio or in Eclipse)?

Memory Monitor with Erased Flash

Memory Monitor with Erased Flash

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Engineering Joke of the Week: The Train Ticket

On a train to a large computer convention, there was a bunch of engineers and a bunch of managers. Each of the managers had a train ticket. The group of engineers had only ONE ticket for all of them. The managers started laughing, figuring the engineers were going to get caught and thrown off the train.

When one of the engineers, the lookout, said, “Here comes the conductor,” all of the engineers went into the bathroom. The managers were puzzled.
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Adding Processor Expert to Atollic TrueSTUDIO

For me as an Eclipse and Processor Expert lover, a press release that Atollic supports Processor Expert catched my eye :-). So there is yet another way to use Processor Expert: with a commercial Eclipse IDE provided by Atollic (atollic.com/).

Atollic Splash Screen

Atollic Splash Screen

Time to check it out…

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Recovering the FRDM-K64F Bootloader, or: Cloning the Program of a Microcontroller

The Freescale FRDM-K64F and FRDM-K22F have a different OpenSDA (v2) firmware on it: unlike the earlier (v1), that firmware is open and not protected which is a great thing. However, it has the disadvantage if you use the wrong SWD/JTAG header on your board, the bootloader on the K20 OpenSDA microcontroller is gone 😦

Two SWD Headers on FRDM-K64F Board

Two SWD Headers on FRDM-K64F Board

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NeoShield: WS2812 RGB LED Shield with DMA and nRF24L01+

In my earlier post I used a hacked together shield for building a clock based on Adafruit’s NeoPixel/WS2812 (“LED Clock with Kitchen Hot Pan Protector“). The new design supports now 8 parallel data streams, integrated realtime clock and wireless connectivity with the nRF24L01+ module.

NeoPixel Shield for FRDM Boards

NeoPixel Shield for FRDM Boards

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Using Keil μVision 5 with Processor Expert

I happily used the Keil v4.71.2.0 μVision tools for a few small projects (see “Using Keil µVision (ARM-MDK) with Processor Expert Driver Suite“) with the ‘lite’ edition (32kByte code size limitation). This weekend I wanted to move to the new v5.12.05 version.

Keil uVision5

Keil uVision5

And there were indeed several things which are different. So this is post is about getting this version getting up and running as the v4.7 one.

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