Your Electronics Open Source

The FLEX Base Board (hosting a Microchip dsPIC) and the FLEX Multibus Board with a CAN module was used for swinging-up and maintaining the inverted equilibrium. The Source code was entirely generated using Scilab/Scicos , an automatic code generator for control systems.

At the Retis laboratory of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, a moving ball was visually tracked using FLEX board with a CMOS camera.
Movements of a freely rolling ball was visually tracked, within the visual envelope of the CMOS camera, using FLEX board . The CMOS Camera is capable of returning JPEG images to the connected FLEX board hosting a Microchip dsPIC. The Flex Board also controls two servomotors which are used to articulate the camera, thereby maintaining the focus on the rolling ball.

This book is a project collection about how to program hardware in high level languages and alternative approaches. Better call it Rapid Hardware Programming with High Level Languages. This book is trying to help the programmers who have only programming experience in PCs, rather than the embedded systems. These programmers are software experts on the PC platform, but they do not know how to light a LED at all, because they have not sufficient background in electronics engineering. This resource is trying to demonstrate those projects which use traditional and alternative high level programming languages available in desktop OSes to manipulate the hardware devices. This resource book will showcase the possibilities of development combination with different interfaces, different operation systems, and different languages.

The goal of this demo is to provide basic tools to develop more complex wireless applications, using the Erika kernel in conjunction with the FLEX Board .

Hardware

* FLEX Base Boared hosting PIC33FFJ256MC710 microcontroller

* FLEX Thru Hole Daughter Board with FlexiPanel EasyBee IEEE 802.15.4 tranceiver module or alteratively a FLex Demo Daughter Board with abuilt-in ready to use ZigBee connector

Software

* Erika Enterprise Basic 1.4.1

PC Side Application
We used a PC connected to the FLEX Board as console. To visualize the data from the FLEX we used these softwares: Hyperterminal (Windows Systems) or Minicom (Linux). The setting was 115200 bit/sec without flow control.

The PC is connected to the FLEX by a RS232(COM) port. In our case by a USB/RS232 cable converter. The FLEX Board uses its UART1 to communicate with the PC. To interface the FLEX UART signals (0V/3.3V) and the PC RS232 signals (+12V/-12V), we used the IC MAX233CPP provided by MAXIM. This is not mandatory, one can use their own preferred line driver/receiver IC.

This demo shows how to set up a USB connection between the PC and the FLEX board. The aim is to control the dsPIC LED and the PIC18 LED system from the host PC. The dsPIC LED is controlled by the SPI communication with the PIC18.
The application is divided into three parts:
1. In the first part a brief description of the USB set-up is provided. The aim is to give a brief overview of the USB protocol.
2. The second part concerns the dsPIC side with the use of the SPI connection with the PIC18.
3. The third part concerns the PC side application. You can download a simple application under Windows (XP or Vista) to communicate with FLEX in order to switch on and off both LEDs of dsPIC and PIC18.

This software implements a TCP/IP stack demo usable with FLEX boards. It enables communications with the board over an ethernet cable, using a variety of protocols. Here are some of the protocols included in the demo: DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), FTP (File Transfer Protocol), HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), Secure NTP (Network Time Protocol), Telnet.
The demo was produced adapting the Microchip Technology Inc. TCP/IP Stack (version 4.18) and the related application notes.
This is the list of hardware components needed to use the demo:

This demo demonstrates a procedure for image acquisition from a camera equipped with serial interface on CMOS levels using FLEX.
FLEX is a platform board for embedded modular systems that exploits the potential of Microchip family’s dsPIC DSC microcontroller. It is an ideal board for developing real-time applications because the onboard dsPIC33FJ256MC710 microcontroller supports advanced real-time kernel, such as the Evidence Srl’s Erika Enterprise.

This article shows how to set up a procedure for identification of a DC Motor with permanent magnets aimed at digital torque control. In this applications are used: L298 (see the datasheet) - a dual full-bridge driver designed to accept standard TTL logic levels and drive relays, solenoids, DC and stepping motors and ADM3202/ADM3222/ADM1385 - transceivers ideal for battery-powered portable instruments.
The application is divided into two parts:
1. The dsPIC implements a simultaneous sampling of voltage and current and sends the data via serial bus to a remote PC;
2. The PI controller is used to control the current (directly) and the torque (indirectly) with appropriate characteristics of strength.
On the PC side, the data are processed with a specific software for the system identification.
The methods are: subspaces method (with generic I/O data), PEM method (to refine the model) and residual analysis (to validate the model)

[Ionela, from Your Electronics Open Source]
... and stay tuned with Your News Open Source!

A web widget is a mini-web application you can put in your web page, blog or social profile that can quickly and easily provide your visitors with, user specific information , extra functionality, and even a bit of fun and games.

[Ionela, from Your Electronics Open Source]
I never handled an iPod touch until a few days a ago. But a friend of mine received as birthday present the media player iPod Touch and so I had the chance to analyze it. What can I say? It's very thin and surprising. Once you start using it, you can not leave it! The iPod touch has a reduced size: height 110mm, width 61.8mm and only 8 mm thick. Weighs only 120 grams. The 3.5 inches widescreen format display has a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels at 163 ppi. The iPod touch provides Wi-Fi wireless connectivity (802.11b/g) - the only iPod to have it. It is also provided with the lithium ion integrated battery that guarantees up to 24 hours of music and up to 5 hours of viewing video and web browsing. It can be charged through USB connection. With the iPod Touch you can listen to music, play movies and it can also be used to wirelessly surf the Web. All that really lacks is the ability to call another person.

[Ionela, from Your Electronics Open Source]

A diary, a hobby, a game - so we started. Before I liked to say "diary" but now I like more "blog" - this word seems more serious and challenging for the work we do. It's a blog on electronic design.

Every day we have guests from all over the world - more than six thousand peoples per day read our post (in the Blog or Resources section), downloading our Projects and Datasheet.

Your Electronics and Open Source is continuously published on different electronics sites and on important Social Network sites.. The visit average time is grown because we have improved the contents and we have optimized the layout.

I first learned of the STM32 Primer at a technical seminar presented by STMicroelectronics. The STM32 Primer is designed to provide a complete toolset for STM32 that is fun and easy to use. Give it a try and learn about the features of the STM32 and the powerful ARM Cortex™-M3 core.

Does the title confuse you? It's very simple...Take a teacher of literature and put her in the middle of the electronics world. I have landed like this at the ST-NEWS2008 Silverstar Seminar. Maybe you ask yourself what do literature and electronics have in common .... well let me tell you: nothing! But we don't know what life can give us and we must always be ready to change the job and, more importantly, to learn news things! I already attende some seminars, but there we talked about the metaphors or the liaison between the human been and the nature and for sure not about... microcontrollers! Luckily working since 2007 on this web site helped me a lot, so I did not feel like an alien!
Immediately after 9 o'clock a.m. Mr. Favato has presented the Seminar Schedule: new microcontrollers:STM8 e STM32 (as ST Microcontrollers Manager told me when I met him last July), MEMS , Analogic Products and Bluetooth. And from now on my article becomes serious thanks to all the notes I wrote down to make you know all these new products.

Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) and Arrow Electronics Inc. will present a live Analog eLabTM Webcast for designers titled "Selecting the Right Isolation Solution" on Wednesday, December 12, 2007, at 11:00 a.m. CST.

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Your Electronics Open Source blog,
used the new Google Ajax API to make an electronics project video-page.
The Electronics Engineer can bookmark this page, and everyone can grab this idea (code) to insert video-related content in own Blog.

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