Tutorial: Understanding and Using FreeRTOS Software Timers

Posted on May 27, 2018 by Erich Styger

Hardware Timers are essential to most embedded applications: I use them mostly for triggering actions at a given frequency, such as acquiring data from a sensor. With using an RTOS I can do a similar thing using a task: the task will run with a given frequency and I can periodic work in it. However, using a task might be too much overhead doing this. The good news is that there is a much more efficient way to do this in FreeRTOS with Software Timers. And this is what this tutorial is about: how to use Software Timers with FreeRTOS.

FreeRTOS Software Timers

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Do you Speak Klingon? How to change the Eclipse IDE UI Language with Babel

Posted on May 23, 2018 by Erich Styger

We in Switzerland are proud about the fact that our country has four official languages: Italian, French, German and Romansh. Most of Swiss people speak at least two of them, plus the inofficial fifth language (English).

Eclipse is even better than that and speaks 46 different languages. If you are not happy with the default language, try out Babel! And yes, Eclipse has a language pack for Klingon too:

Babel Language Packs in Klingon

🙂

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Understanding FreeRTOS Task Stack Usage and Kernel Awareness Information

Posted on May 21, 2018 by Erich Styger

When using the FreeRTOS Task List in the Eclipse based MCUXpresso IDE, it shows the list of tasks with their stack size used. But with the default FreeRTOS settings it is not able to determine the correct stack size and shows a warning icon:

Warning for Stack Usage

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Smokerless Smoked Brisked – Sous Vide for +55h at 66°C

Posted on May 13, 2018 by Erich Styger

I did not publish any BBQ posts for a while. But this time I tried something new: Brisket the sous vide way.

Brisket Sandwich

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Upgrading a Laser Cutter with Cohesion3D Mini and LCD

Posted on April 15, 2018 by Erich Styger

I’m very happy with my 50W Laser Cutter (see “Getting Control over a 50 Watt CO2 Laser Cutter from China“). My main decision factors were (and still are): Software, software, tools and again software, and down in the list finally the hardware. Same thing for that laser cutter. After several upgrades (see “50W Laser Cutter Upgrades“), it was time replace the stock controller hardware with a new one including LCD display:

New Laser Cutter LCD Panel

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Debugging ARM Cores with IP based Debug Probes and Eclipse

Posted on April 14, 2018 by Erich Styger

Using IP (Ethernet) based debug probes is a very handy thing: I don’t have to be directly connected to the debug probe (e.g. with the USB cable). This article explains how to use an IP-based Segger or P&E probe with the Eclipse based MCUXpresso IDE.

LAN Based Debugging

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Recovering OpenSDA Boards with Windows 10

Posted on April 10, 2018 by Erich Styger

Windows 8 and 10 have added a ‘feature’ to scan and index devices attached to the host machine. This means that bootloaders or MSD (Mass Storage Device) programming implementations on evaluation boards developed in the Windows 7 age might not be prepared for that. Up to the point that it can impact the bootloader as outlined in “Bricking and Recovering OpenSDA Boards in Windows 8 and 10“. So far one of the easiest way to get out that situation was to use a Windows 7 machine. But if you only have a Windows 10 machine available, this article describes the needed steps to update the bootloader with Windows 10 host machines.

OpenSDA LED

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Listing Code and Data Size with GNU nm in Eclipse

Posted on April 2, 2018 by Erich Styger

The map file produced by the GNU linker includes lots of information, however it is very cryptic to read. In “Listing Code and Data Size for each Source File with GNU and Eclipse” I showed how the GNU size utility can be used to report the code and data size for each object file. The Eclipse based MCUXpresso IDE comes with another nice view which shows detailed information about code and data allocation: