Tag Archives: Embedded Component

First Steps with the Freescale TWR-K64F120M

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Naturally, I have several project ideas lingering around. No time to make them all (for now). One of it is interfacing the Raspberry Pi camera with a microcontroller. To store the images, I need plenty of RAM on the device, and so far the Kinetis microcontroller did not have that. Finally, Freescale announced the K64F120 a few months back, and my ordered TWR-K64F120M board arrived on my desk, waiting to be used: Finally I get an ARM Cortex-M4F with 1 MByte of FLASH and 256 KByte of RAM :-).

TWR-K64F120M Box

TWR-K64F120M Box

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FreeRTOS V8.0.0 Final Release available as Processor Expert Component

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The final FreeRTOS V8.0.0 has been released last week: time to update the Processor Expert component for it, and this time it is really a major release 🙂 : from V7.5.0 to V8.0.0:

FreeRTOS V8.0.0 Processor Expert Component

FreeRTOS V8.0.0 Processor Expert Component

FreeRTOS V8.0.0 comes with many small changes, especially it now includes many of the extra casts I have contributed to avoid compiler warnings. And additionally it has a brand new feature: Event Groups.

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DIY Free Toolchain for Kinetis: Part 9 – Express Setup in 8 Steps

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On Monday the new semester starts, and yet again: we will do a Sumo thing :-). They can choose which tool chain they would like to use to develop their application for the ARM Cortex-M0+ used from Freescale. One option is to create a ‘Do-It-Yourself’ toolchain. Since the start of the series, things have evolved: there is a new GNU ARM tool chain available, Segger has updated their drivers, and most important the GNU ARM Eclipse plugin has been greatly extended to support Freescale parts and Processor Expert. So instead to read through all the previous tutorials, this one is about putting together a free tool chain less than 10 minutes (not counting the time to download around 500 MByte).

DIY Eclipse Toolchain

DIY Eclipse Toolchain

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IoT: FreeRTOS Down to the Micro Amps

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University research projects can be a lot fun, and are very challenging the same time. The good thing is that there is always someting new to learn :-).

This week-end I was working on my Internet of Things (IoT) project, based on a Freescale KL15Z and a nRF24L01+ transceiver. In essence it is a wireless data logger. For this, I only can afford a few micro amps consumed by the whole board over an extended period of time. I mean 21 micro amps for running a whole board with sensor, EEPROM, wireless transceiver, operating system and an ARM Cortex-M0+ ready to crunch numbers at 20 MHz 🙂

21 micro amps for wireless sensor node

21 micro amps for wireless sensor node (when not sending)

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CriticalSection Component

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I have created and published on GitHub a new component ‘CriticalSection’:

Critical Section Component Methods

Critical Section Component Methods

This component is a wrapper between my components and the problematic current implementation in Processor Expert (see EnterCritical() and ExitCritical(): Why Things are Failing Badly). It uses a flexible approach and uses macros to either use my modified version of EnterCritical() and ExitCritical(), or simply defaults to the original implementation.

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FRDM with Arduino Ethernet Shield R3, Part 3: Embedded Web Server

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This is Part 3 of an ongoing tutorial to use the Arduino Ethernet Shield R3 with a Freescale FRDM-KL25Z board (or any other board you like).

In Part 1 I worked on the SD card, in Part 2 I have added basic network connection. Now time to run a web server with my FRDM-KL25Z :-). With this, I can get access to my board through the network, and the board will host a web page where I can do pretty much everything: showing status, or adding functions to turn on things like an LED 🙂

Web Server with W5100 on FRDM-KL25Z

Web Server with W5100 on FRDM-KL25Z

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USB for the TWR-K21F120M

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Finally my Freescale TWR-K21F120M board arrived 🙂

TWR-K21F120M on the bench

TWR-K21F120M on the bench

For the next generation of INTRO Zumo robots I’m evaluating a new ‘brain’: more processing power, more FLASH, more RAM, more of everything 😉

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DIY: Changing Processor Expert Components

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I’m maintaining and hosting now more than 100 different Processor Expert components on GitHub. Instead to deal with CDE (Component Development Environment, that’s the SDK to create your own components), most users simply download and install the PEupd files. If you deal with normal source files, and if spot something you want (or need to change), then you can easily do this. But what if you want or need to change something in that code which comes with the PEupd file(s)?

Components in the Components Library

Components in the Components Library

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FRDM with Arduino Ethernet Shield R3, Part 2: Ping

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In Part 1 of this series I have covered the SD card on the Arduino Ethernet shield. In Part 2 I’m hooking up the board to the network and will be able to ping it 🙂

Arduino Ethernet Shield with FRDM-KL25Z

Arduino Ethernet Shield with FRDM-KL25Z

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