Tag Archives: Embedded Component

CSI Crime Scene Investigation with I2CSpy and Freedom Board

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The CSI is one of my favorite crime drama television series: not because it reflects the true reality, but because it is fun watching how they always find new ways how to investigate a crime scene with ‘close to reality’ tools. Real CSI is different: you only do a small part of the investigation chain. As for myself, I’m engaged in a research project at the university to develop hardware and software for crime scene investigation :-).

One area of that research project is to retrieve and data from credit card (ATM) skimming devices: these are devices are attached or inserted into credit or debit card machines and ‘skim’ the card information and the PIN code used. With that information, it is possible to clone a credit card for credit card fraud. Such devices are a big problem, and newer devices are very hard to spot. Simply ‘google’ for pictures for “skimming device” and you will get an idea of the diversity and madness of such devices :-(.

Microscopic investigation of skimming device

Microscopic investigation of skimming device

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HD44780 2×16 Character Display for Kinetis and Freedom Board

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In my earlier Nokia LCD post I described a ‘free of charge’ way to add a LCD display to my FRDM-KL25Z board. If that Nokia display is not available, or an alphanumeric display is enough, then the Hitachi HD44780 display is a low cost option as well.

The HD44780 (or compatible) display is one of the most common displays available. And they usually conly costs around $10 or less. I have used a ‘blue’ 3.3V version of such a display already in my lectures with a Freescale S08 microcontroller. So I thought it would be nice to port the driver to the Kinetis and the KL25Z on it.

LCD Boards with FRDM-KL25Z

LCD Boards with FRDM-KL25Z

A recent post of TKJ Electronics about such a really inexpensive (only $5) HD44780 display caught my attention. And finally I had two of such TKJ displays in my postal mail box yesterday. Time to have some fun on a weekend 🙂

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Zero Cost 84×48 Graphical LCD for the Freedom Board

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The Freedom KL25Z board has a great price of less than $15. Adding a typical LCD usually will add a multiple of that price to the budget. But hey, there is a way to add a LCD to that board at almost no costs! With the idea that I have an old outdated Nokia phone, and the cost of a small capacitor plus some wires are considered as ‘zero’ ;-).

Say Hello from the Freedom Board

Say Hello from the Freedom Board

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FRDM-KL25Z with the Arduino Motor Shield

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The great thing with the Freedom FRDM-KL25Z board is its compatibility with Arduino Shields: a great set of board available at very reasonable prices. I had my hands on the Adafruit Data Logger shield, and now it was time to use the original Arduino Motor Shield R3.

Freedom FRDM-KL25Z with Arduino Motor Shield and Arexx Chassis

Freedom FRDM-KL25Z with Arduino Motor Shield and Arexx Chassis

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Processor Expert Maxim I2C RTC for the Arduino Data Logger Shield

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There was one part missing to complete the software support for my Arduino DataLogger Shield on top of my FRDM-KL25Z Freedom board: support for the Maxim DS1307 RTC (Real Time Clock).

DS1307 on the Adafruit Data Logger Shield

DS1307 on the Adafruit Data Logger Shield (Source: http://www.ladyada.net/make/logshield/design.html)

Things got delayed a bit, as I first needed to get the I2C infrastructure up and running (see this post). But finally, I have things working :-). I proudly present: RTC_Maxim!

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A Generic I2C High Level Driver

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I’m working with the I2C bus recently a lot. I’m using it in a project to reverse-engineering skimming (credit card fraud) devices. I needed to improve one of my applications for the lecture classes where a MCF52259 is communicating with a TWR-LCD display over I2C. And I want to add RTC (Real-Time-Clock) capabilities to my Arduino Data Logger Shield which requires I2C.

The same time I want to have things working with ARM Cortex-M4 and M0+ devices. And here the challenge started: using the I2C_LDD (Logical Device Driver) Processor Expert components for the ARM Kinetis devices is definitely not simple and easy. I want to use my software compatible for both the ARM cores and say for S08 and ColdFire cores. So what I ended up is to write a ‘generic’ I2C driver on top of the low level Processor Expert components: named GenericI2C.

Generic I2C Component

Generic I2C Component

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ARM Cortex-M0+ Interrupts and FreeRTOS

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Murphy’s Law

“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”.

strikes again. Well, the modified version of it:

“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, but it will wait until it really, really goes wrong”.

It is always amazing to see that systems having a fundamental flaw, they can work for a long period. Only that on day X my application crashes. And when found the problem, I’m wondering how in the world it was *ever* working with that bug in it :-(.

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Arduino Data-Logger Shield with the FRDM-KL25Z Board

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One success factor of the Arduino platform is the broad availability so-called ‘shields’: hardware plugin-modules which extend the capability of platform. Shieldlist.org currently lists 288 different shields available! Clearly, Freescale wants to benefit from that ecosystem with the Freedom FRDM-KL25Z board which features Arduino compatible headers. Time to use the Freedom board with an Arduino shield :-).

Data Logger Shield on Top of Freedom Board

Data Logger Shield on Top of Freedom Board

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USB CDC and SCI: Side-by-Side with the Freedom Board

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In “A Shell for the Freedom KL25Z Board” I have presented an application which implements FreeRTOS, LED’s and a shell using the UART on the KL25Z over OpenSDA. So why not adding native USB CDC to the mix? Using both the USB and CDC with the same shell?

So what I have added is that the shell runs on both the SCI (over OpenSDA) and USB CDC (with the KL25Z). For this, the FSL USB CDC software stack is now part of the project:

Shell Project with USB CDC

Shell Project with USB CDC

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USB Component Splitted and Updated

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Checking the download statistics of my Processor Expert components on http://www.steinerberg.com/EmbeddedComponents/, there is a clear winner: FSL_USB_Stack 🙂

It has been a while I presented that universal USB CDC component in this blog. The component has received a larger re-architecture, I wanted to support more than just USB CDC. For this, the CDC part is now present in a separate sub-component:

FSL_USB_Stack with Sub-Components

FSL_USB_Stack with Sub-Components

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