Yesterday I started with something I had in my mind for a very long time:
to build my own DIY drone based on a Kinetis 🙂
Kinetis Quadrocopter Drone
Kinetis Drone: Frame Construction with Graupner Race Copter Alpha 250 Q
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Tag Archives: software project
Using Precompiled Headers with GNU gcc in Eclipse
Some of my robotics projects take a rather long time do a full build. When I developed applications with Visual C++ on the host, using precompiled headers gave me a big boost in compilation speed. I was looking for the same in similar with GNU and gcc, and as expected: gcc does support precompiled headers too. And indeed, I was able to cut down compilation time by 30% :-). So this post is about how to use gcc with precompiled headers in Eclipse/CDT to give my builds a boost.
using precompiled header
Overview: From Snippets to Code Generation
To build an application for a modern microcontroller today is not a simple thing. Well, it depends what ‘simple’ means. But compared to the ‘old days of 8bit micro controllers’ (which are still in use!) developing for a complex 32bit device is definitely a different thing. Not only the complexity has changed, but as well the breath of tools and helpers. In my view, the only constant is ‘change’, and I have changed the way how to develop several times in my career. In this post I present several different techniques I’m using in my development.
Processor Expert CPU View
Thanks to Erich and FRDM-K64F!! :)
It has been a long time since I wrote my last blog. I really want to apologize to you all for the delay, but I was busy with another project about the competitive analysis of Freescale with our competitors. I hope I can provide you guys later with some important findings from my research.
Well as far as my project for neopixels using FRDM-K64F is concerned, Erich wrote the wonderful tutorial for all of us to turn on the NeoMatrix. I tried my hands on that and I was indeed able to turn on the board but not in the way I wanted it to. 😦 So, it turns out that I got few LEDs turning blue or some turning green. I asked Erich about it and I got to know that it is because I screwed up with the timing signals. I was using an oscilloscope and not a logic analyzer but Erich’s recommendation was to use the Logic Analyzer. This was the result of my experiment following Erich’s tutorials.
Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 1: Hardware
The Hardware
Sneak Preview: Profiling Bare Metal Microcontroller Applications with GNU gprof
I’m working on a conference paper and presentation, and tonight I had a break-through :-). So how cool is this: Profiling with GNU gprof a bare-metal embedded Cortex-M application (Freescale Kinetis K64F running the Freescale Kinetis SDK) in Eclipse:
Freescale Kinetis Microcontroller Application Profiling
Revert an Eclipse Update Installation
I’ve been running into an issue with an Eclipse plugin update: I updated a plugin, and then broke a critical functionality. What I usually do is to uninstall the plugin (see “Uninstalling Eclipse Plugins“), and then install it again. However, in this case the uninstall ended with an error too :-(.
Uninstall failed
What now? How can I revert that plugin installation/update?
Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 5: DMA
This is Part 5 of a Mini Series. In Part 4, I described how to set up the FTM (Kinetis Flex Timer Module) to generate the required waveforms used for DMA operations (see “Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 4: Timer“). In this post I describe how to use to trigger DMA (Direct To Memory) events. The goal is to drive Adafruit’s NeoPixel (WS2812B) with the Freescale FRDM-K64F board:
FRDM-K64F with Adafruit NeoPixel
Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 4: Timer
This is Part 4 of a Mini Series. In Part 3, I described the software concepts (see “Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 3: Concepts“). In this post I describe how to set-up the timer to trigger later DMA operations. The goal is to drive Adafruit’s NeoPixel (WS2812B) with the Freescale FRDM-K64F board:
NeoPixels with FRDM-K64F
Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 3: Concepts
This is Part 3 of a Mini Series. In Part 2, I described how to set up the development tools and to debug the first project (see “Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 2: Software Tools“). Now it is time to look into the software concepts. The goal is to drive Adafruit’s NeoPixel (WS2812B) with the Freescale FRDM-K64F board:
Adafruit 8×8 NeoPixel Shield with Freescale FRDM-K64F Board
Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 2: Software Tools
This is Part 2 of a Mini Series. In Part 1, I described how to set up the hardware (see “Tutorial: Adafruit WS2812B NeoPixels with the Freescale FRDM-K64F Board – Part 1: Hardware“). Now it is time to have the software tools ready. In this post I describe to have the IDE (Freescale Kinetis Design Studio) with the Freescale SDK installed, along with the correct firmware on the FRDM-K64F Board. The goal is to drive Adafruit’s NeoPixel (WS2812B) with the Freescale FRDM-K64F board:
Freescale FRDM-K64F with NeoPixels
MCU on Eclipse 