Programmable logic has now become a critical component for the design community, moving from the prototyping stage into general designs.

Let us explore how to install a full Debian distribution on an emulated ARM926 machine with QEMU.  The consumer now have alternative choices for their devices. On the other hand, the developers can leverage the native compiler coming with the ARM Linux distribution to build their projects with less effort. No more cross-compiler is necessary now. You can also setup a build farm to speed up your native build with distcc.  The development requirement is almost identical to the desktop system.

Before we start with the Speech Record and Playback demo, here’s a list of things that are needed for this demo. You first need the MPLAB starter kit for dsPIC DSCs. Note that you don’t need to program the starter kit board for the demo since the board is preprogrammed.

MPLAB IDE has enjoyed many years of evolution cracking Microchip’s popular catalogue of micro controllers and digital signal controllers.

Usually a traditional control system requires a regulated power supply (5V/3.3V), controlling the lighting loads via an opto-coupler. Another approach is interfacing the microcontroller directly to the main supply. Philips Semiconductors/NXP released several application notes for the latter approach, which was named as easytriac. It allows a low-end microcontroller to be embedded into the casing of each incandescent, CFL or LED lamps.