Tag Archives: Embedded Component

USB with the TWR-KL25Z48M Board: Check Jumper J18!

Posted on by
1

When I ordered my first Freedom FRDM-KL25Z board, I placed an order the Tower TWR-KL25Z48M shortly afterwards. But I was so happy with the FRDM-KL25Z, and because the FRDM board is much less expensive and easier to handle, that Tower board was sitting in my board shelf, waiting for a maybe a student project or to get any other use of it. Well, I can tell that my students wanted the FRDM board, not the Tower board ;-). But when I saw this week in the Freescale forum a user asking for a USB example for that Tower board, I thought that now I could at least use that board to help someone out.

MKL25Z128VLK4 on the TWR-KL25Z Board

MKL25Z128VLK4 on the TWR-KL25Z48M Board

Continue reading →

Multi-Drive Support with FatFS

Posted on by
6

I admit: I’m sometimes a lazy person. In my projects, I only needed one ‘disk drive’ with the FatFS Processor Expert component: either a SD card or a USB MSD drive. But a reader of this blog wanted to use FatFS with multiple drives: using it with an SD card and a USB MSD drive. And actually FatFS does support this, I just had no need for it, thus I did not add anything special for it. But that reader let me think that I better add Multi-Drive support. Even if I do not need it now, that could be very handy in the future 🙂

FatFS Drive System (Source http://elm-chan.org/fsw/ff/en/appnote.html)

FatFS Drive System (Source http://elm-chan.org/fsw/ff/en/appnote.html)

Continue reading →

Showcase of Student Project Exhibition 2014 in Horw

Posted on by
10

Yesterday Friday afternoon, the students at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Horw showcased their last semester project work to the public at the university. There were many, many interesting projects, so here are a few to give an idea what has been accomplished …

Part of the Exhibition Area

Part of the Exhibition Area

Continue reading →

Tutorial: Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board

Posted on by
73

For some time I’m using the Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+ transceiver successfully in many projects (see “Tutorial: Ultra Low Cost 2.4 GHz Wireless Transceiver with the FRDM Board“). Since that tutorial things evolved a lot with the introduced RNet Stack. To honor the popularity of the Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01+, Freescale has put a socket on the FRDM-K64F board. So time to make a new step-by-step tutorial how to use the nRF24L01+ with the FRDM-K64F.

Two FRDM-K64F Boards with nRF24L01+ Transceiver

Two FRDM-K64F Boards with nRF24L01+ Transceiver

Continue reading →

Switching between ‘tabs’ and ‘no-tabs’ UI in Processor Expert

Posted on by
3

Newer releases of Processor Expert (e.g. in Kinetis Design Studio (KDS)) come with a ‘graphical’ (or ‘tabbed’) view of the Component Inspector. The UI elements are different and ‘tabs’ are using:

Component Inspector in Tabbed View

Component Inspector in Tabbed View

I like much more the earlier ‘no-tabs’ view. Luckily, there is a setting to switch the view back.

Continue reading →

Tutorial: PWM with DMA on ARM/Kinetis

Posted on by
62

For a project I need to change the PWM duty cycle after a PWM period is over. One way to do this is to have an interrupt at the end of the PWM period, and then set the new PWM duty (compare) register value in the interrupt. That works fine for ‘slow’ PWM frequencies, but if the PWM frequency is high, the CPU load is massively increasing. A better way is to use DMA (Direct Memory Access).

FRDM-KL25Z with DMA PWM and Logic Analyzer

FRDM-KL25Z with DMA PWM and Logic Analyzer

Continue reading →

Configuration Data: Using the Internal FLASH instead of an external EEPROM

Posted on by
121

Many applications need to store persistent (non-volatile) data at runtime: configuration data, error logs, sensor data, calibration values, etc. The question is: where to store that data? If it is only a few kBytes, an SD card or similar is an overkill. Adding an external EEPROM? Sure, that works, but adds an extra part to the design. Some microcontroller have internal EEPROM. But what if not? Why not using the microprocessor internal flash memory?

Internal FLASH vs. external EEPROM

Internal FLASH vs. external EEPROM

Continue reading →

Tutorial: Freedom Board with Adafruit Ultimate GPS Data Logger Shield

Posted on by
9

Many times I start with a project and tutorial, only to get interrupted for emergency tasks and assignments. For a long time I wanted to add GPS (Global Positioning System) functionality to one of my projects. While I started a few months ago on this, it took me until this week-end to finish the at least the first part: a SD card data logger with GPS :-): I calculate global positioning and time information, can use it in Google maps and store it on a SD card:

Adafruit GPS Data Logger Shield on a FRDM-KL25Z Board

Adafruit GPS Data Logger Shield on a FRDM-KL25Z Board

Continue reading →

Tutorial: Data Logger with the FRDM-K64F Board

Posted on by
116

The Freescale FRDM-K64F is a great board for data logger applications: it has a powerful ARM Cortex M4F with 120 MHz, 1 MB Flash and 256 KByte RAM. Best of all: it already has a micro SD card socket on the board :-).

Data Logger with FRDM-K64F

Data Logger with FRDM-K64F

Continue reading →