For a home automation project I need to know the room temperature and humidity percentage of the room air. Adafruit has an inexpensive DHT11 sensor from http://www.aosong.com which I decided to use for that project.
Test Setup for DHT11 Sensor
Eclipse with GDB is great: it comes with a graphical front end for debugging. But sometimes it is all about to download a program. Is it really necessary to launch an IDE like Eclipse to program or quickly debug a board? With the GNU Debugger (GDB), the answer is ‘no’: GDB comes with a command line debugger which is designed exactly for this: providing a command line interface for programming/downloading and debugging, bypassing any GUI (Graphical User Interface).
Combination of GDB Debugging Probes and Boards (P&E, Segger and FRDM-KL25Z)
OpenOCD is an open source and free-of-charge debugging solution, which is a great option here at the University of Lucerne, as students do not need to buy an expensive debugging probe. Still, I recommend to buy professional probes like the P&E or Segger ones, as they are worth every (Euro) cent. But for a ‘zero’ budget, OpenOCD with CMSIS-DAP is something to consider. And with Kinetis Design Studio using the GNU ARM Eclipse Plugins, OpenOCD is not that hard to be used. And because both Freescale and GNU ARM Eclipse offer OpenOCD Windows binaries, that connection method is in the reach of Windows users too.
FRDM-KL25Z with OpenOCD Debug
This happens several times for me: I have a board running for a while (even for days), and then it crashes or is stuck somewhere. Yes, I usually use a watchdog do recover from that situation. But it would be good to know and debug the problem. With CodeWarrior I had the functionality in the debugger to ‘attach’ or ‘connect’ to a running (stuck/crashed) board. However, with Eclipse/Kinetis Design Studio/GDB this is a different debugger, and not possible. At connection time with the debugger the target does a reset, so I don’t know any more where the application crashed. But now I have a solution, at least with the Segger GDB :-).
Debug Hard Fault Attached Target
Sometimes it is all about knowing the simple tricks, even if they might be obvious ;-). In my post “Eclipse Performance Improvement Tip: Close Unused Projects” I explained why it is important to close the ‘not used’ projects in the workspace to improve Eclipse performance:
Closing Project in Eclipse Workspace
For everyone who wants to combine the power of Eclipse and Processor Expert with the IAR Embedded Workbench IDE, here is how to get them working side by side:
Continue reading
There is no special option in Kinetis Design Studio ‘New Project Wizard’ (NPW) to create a library (or archive). But it is really easy to create a library project.
Library Project
Percepio has recently released the v2.7 version of Tracealyzer. This is a major upgrade from the v2.6 version which I have used so far: time to upgrade my Trace component for FreeRTOS to the latest and greatest v2.7!
FreeRTOS+Trace View (V2.7)
The great thing with open source tools like Eclipse and GNU (gcc, gdb) is that there is a wealth of excellent tools: one thing I had in mind to explore for a while is how to generate code coverage of my embedded application. Yes, GNU and Eclipse comes with code profiling and code coverage tools, all for free! The only downside seems to be that these tools seems to be rarely used for embedded targets. Maybe that knowledge is not widely available? So here is my attempt to change this :-).
Or: How cool is it to see in Eclipse how many times a line in my sources has been executed?
Line Coverage in Eclipse
And best of all, it does not stop here….
As I have received multiple questions about that Darth Vader Santa Claus/Christmas robot in the Mini-Sumo competition last week, here are the details in case you want to build your own :-)…
Darth Vader Sumo Bot
MCU on Eclipse 