If you are familiar with battle games, then typically there is portrait of the machinery you can use. Or if you have every watched ‘competitive’ sports, then every player can have an opportunity to present himself to the audience. So here we go…
Fredy the Commander
Tomorrow will the STD (Sumo Tournament Day)! Here are a few last tips and tricks to be prepared for that Sumo Tournament using the Pololu Zumo Robot chassis:
If two robots crash into each other, there can be quite some force. What I have observed is that it can be strong enough to temporarily disconnects the batteries from their spring contacts. I use pieces of plastic parts to keep the batteries tight and in place.
Battery Enforcement
I have one rule I try to follow every day: my code shall be warning free. Writing software for multiple compilers gets challenging with this rule, but it avoids the ‘not seeing the forest because of the trees’ problem. This rule extends to writing Processor Expert components with CDE (Component Development Environment). What I have missed (and not used) is a useful option to enable debug output:
Enable Processor Expert Components Debug Verbose Mode
For my RNet stack I need a way to identify nodes in the network using a unique address. What I need is Media-Access (MAC) address. Base on such a unique address I can assign short addresses (e.g. with a DHCP or similar protocol to automatically assign shorter network addresses). So how to uniquely identify my network nodes?
The Freescale Kinetis microcontroller have nice feature: they have a Unique Identification Register (UID) which would be a perfect fit for a MAC address :-).
UID Output
Eclipse is very workspace centric: it only knows and deals with files in the workspace. So it is easy to compare and merge files present in the workspace: I select both files/folders and compare them with each other:
Compare with Each Other
But what if the files and folders are NOT in the workspace?
The INTRO course is progressing fast, with a lot of information passed on how to build a successful mini Sumo robot based on the Freescale FRDM-KL25Z and a modified Pololu Zumo chassis. The PID control loop implementation for speed and position finally starts to work properly with the help of FreeMaster. Things are not perfect yet, but the robots get better from day-to-day.
Zumo Test Battle
In case you are desperately looking a component in the components library view, but somehow it does not show up? For example I know there is component ‘InterruptVector’, but it is not present in the Components library view?
Where is the InterruptVector Component
So this tutorial is about using a terminal connection between my board and my host (e.g. a notebook) to read and write text:
Color Text in PuTTY
Wondering how much heap is used by Eclipse? Using the menu Window > Preferences there is a setting I can enable: “Show heap status“:
Show Heap Status in Eclipse
Are you using IAR tools and you are jealous looking at what others can accomplish with Eclipse? You wish you could use your IAR build tools but taking advantage of Eclipse too?
I do not want to start a religious IDE war here ;-). At least for IAR, there is a way to bring both worlds together: having IAR build and debug tools integrated in Eclipse 
:
Using IAR Compiler and Debugger in Eclipse
