Category: Embedded Development

Cypress 5LP

Cypress released a Cortex M3 MCU some time ago that caught my interest. I ordered two devkits costing 10.- USD each and all in all their concept actually impresses me. Cypress have for years released MCU’s that are referred to as “PSoC” (Programmable System on Chip). The difference is that a 5LP includes a ARM MCU,…

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10 Mhz Logic Analyzer

One of my interests  for some time have been how to create a MSO (Mixed Signal Oscilloscope). I have several scopes, but I lack a Logic Analyzer on any of them. My first thought was to bit-bang the GPIO of Raspberry PI directly, but as I looked into this I realized that I would not get…

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User HMI Applications

The drawing above illustrate the different components used to achieve a complete application with HMI. We have briefly discussed the internals of the Hat (left) consisting of hardware interfaces or communication drivers, a IO configuration and the SPI driver communicating with Raspberry PI. RPI have the master SPI driver and two new components that are…

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Zero Running

Just moved a MicroSD card from a Raspberry PI 3 over to Zero and it just works. The only challenge I have is cables for keyboard/mouse + I use a HDMI adapter cable that is a bit unstable. Nice to know because the easiest way to develope for the Zero is probably just to use…

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Raspberry PI Zero

Wow, I actually got a Zero in my hands. I have been holding back production of new Hat’s because I wanted to check with zero drilling holes. I am not sure where I got my dimensions from, but I was actually 1 mm off.

HMI Solution

Dealing with embedded solutions you also need to deal with HMI. A majority of HMI will always be on displays so having the Raspberry PI as base is quite nice. It is very capable of supporting our GUI needs, but how do we program it? A friend of mine uses Python with various libraries. I…

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XML Parser

It’s some years ago I wrote my first XML parser. The story was that I was doing a communication interface and discovered that the interface sent XML messages. In two days I wrapped up a small XML parser as a library and got the task done.The technique I used was a classic recursive descent parser.…

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8 bit AVR

Alf & Vegard’s RISC processor was created while they where students at NTH in Trondheim, Norway back in 1996. It has since become one of the most popular MCU’s worldwide. It’s foremost competition was Microchip’s PIC series, so it’s ironic that it’s now Microchip that own Atmel (and AVR). Even more ironic that while Atmel…

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CAN eXtended, Message Format

Modern CAN uses two formats referred to as CAN 2.0A and CAN 2.0B. These again can use at least two wired solutions. The one we discuss here is the high speed version using twisted pairs. Two newer relatives to CAN that require either a logic circuit or MCU with special port support are CAN FD…

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Raspberry PI Zero

Wow – I actually managed to order a Raspberry Pi Zero for 3.33 GBP. I have wanted one for months for testing, but declined to pay 50.- GBP or more on ebay. This was through one of the official distributors. 1 Raspberry Pi Zero – Max 1 Pi Zero Per Customer!Pi Zero only 1 £3.33…

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