One of my favourite quotes about programming is this one:
“ Programming can be fun, so can cryptography; however they should not be combined. ” – Kreitzberg and Shneiderman
Well, there is truth behind this. But on contrary, there is a lot of fun with the combination of the two: the yearly IOCCC contest has posted the 2013 winners!
As in earlier years, it is amazing to see what can be done with creativity and a programming language like C ;-).
It is the last day of the Year 2013. Instead of reviewing the soon-to-be-old-2013, I want to look into 2014. For this I have my Magic Crystal Ball :-):
Microscopic Crystal Ball View, tells what will happen in 2014!
So here is my personal list of 10 things I’m seeing, in no particular order:
I admit: I have used ARM Cortex cores a lot in the recent months. Yes, I think with the ‘ARM domination of the world’ over time the ARM core will blast away probably all other cores, except for niche players? Still, there are reasons to use non-ARM cores, and even if it is just that I have a board at hand :-).
DEMOQE with MC9S08QE128 and MC13201 Transceiver Card
I admit: It would be somewhat disappointing to write articles, only to realize that nobody reads it. WordPress is my favorite blogging platform as I get detailed statistical data who in the world is reading MCUonEclipse:
MCUonEclipse Reads Geographic distribution
For the Eclipse and Processor Expert lovers of this world: there is another Eclipse based IDE you can use: ThunderBench made by Emprog:
ThunderBench for ARM Eclipse Startup Screen
They support a range of ARM based devices, including the Freescale ones I’m using. So I downloaded the v3.24 30 day trial from their download page last week. Finally I have found some time to try it out. Could this be an alternative to use my Freescale FRDM boards with Processor Expert?
The Eclipse IDE is in my view the best IDE in the world :-). But it is not the fastest one: All the functionality and comfort has a price, and such a Java and highly flexible IDE requires its resources. The Eclipse community is continuously addressing that concern, and for example the Eclipse Juno 4.2 IDE in CodeWarrior for MCU10.5 shows this nicely: things are much smoother compared to the Eclipse Indigo 3.7 in MCU10.4. But if you feel that you do not want to use Processor Expert because it is too slow, then I have a trick how to improve performance by a factor of 10 :-).
Microsoft has released the Windows 8.1 Preview. So you can try out the next update of Windows 8. In short: Do NOT use Windows 8.1 Preview if you are using a Freescale FRDM board! Otherwise you will not be able to change the OpenSDA firmware (MSD or debug application).
❗ Update: P&E has released a new firmware v114 which combines USB CDC, MSD bootloader and debug application, and this firmware fixes the issue described in this post.
Well, I have not used it personally: I never use ‘test’ or ‘preview’ versions on my ‘production’ machine. It is ok to try things out on separate ‘scratch’ machines, but not on something I need to have stable for my work. Well, some of the students in my INTRO class were not able to resist and downloaded and installed Windows 8.1 Preview on their machines. With the result that the OpenSDA Bootloader does not work with Windows 8.1 Preview:
❗ It seems that the problem exists as well with the Windows 8.1 ‘final’ release.
In this semester course, students (and myself too, of course :-)) are building a Mini Sumo Robot. That robot is using the Freescale FRDM-KL25Z board with an ARM Cortex-M0+ on it. Today I’ll give an introduction to the ARM core to the class, and timing is right: this morning I have found an excellent overview about ARM microcontroller and tools written by Jay Carlson.: Getting Started with ARM Microcontrollers.
Ahhhhrg! I admit: I’m not immune to all the silly problems an engineer can face in his life. And sometimes it is about the most basic things. This morning was again such a day: One of the infrared sensors of my Zumo Robot reported wrong values:
Sensor wrong values
Looks like a flood of new Freedom boards is coming out 🙂 : I have found out about this new one: The FRDM-KE02Z.
FRDM-KE02Z Board
MCU on Eclipse 