A flash memory is an essential component in an electronics device to store code and data. Every designer expects a perfect non-volatile memory to meet their requirements. The electronics devices are growing very fast, so we can find a variety of flash memories. However, the flash memories vary in timing, bus width, protocol, rewrite lifecycle, multi-level capability and native support of microprocessor. So the designers have to study the available products to select a proper device for their applications according to the storage purpose, interface and timing.

The Network-Attached Storage or NAS was designed for the enterprise file sharing services. Now the consumer NAS (Network-attached Storage) has integrated many additional features including BT/eMule downloading, digital media server and video surveillance.

Howto interface an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) to the FPGA board. In this post I will give some ideas about interfacing an ADC to the FPGA design. One of the Digilent Inc.’s product is the ADC module codenamed Pmod-AD1.

This article offers open source software (oss) for FAT over MMC SDC. We have many options of open source TCP/IP stack implementations. However we don’t have enough choices for open source FAT file system over popular MMC/SDC, because of commercial reasons. Most of the popular flash cards are covered and protected by patents and copy rights. For an experienced engineer it is easy to hack the protocol, but this will bring legal problems if he releases what he found during the reverse engineering.

Wireless communication is becoming more and more pervasive, that's why new development tools for wireless applications are welcome. 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 [with a microcontroller from Microchip Datasheet]

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.

FLEX is born as a development board where to easily develop and test real-time applications for the Microchip microcontrollers (Datasheet 2.0). Scilab/Scicos is a code generator for the FLEX Board.
Let's see how to control a DC Motor Servo using FLEX with Scilab/Scicos.

More and more desktop applications are migrated to web based, including Office suite and instant messenger. Now we can find some web enabled devices that can connect to the remote server via regular web page. This blog presents some existing solutions and alternative solutions for such applications.

Crystals are key component of practical electronics devices. The product will malfunction if the crystal stops. They are heartbeat of the product. Because crystals are mechanical devices, it is sensitive to the mechanical damage. Crystals can present challenges to design engineers. However, new packaging methods and careful circuit layout can help to minimize many issues. Improved package designs, such as surface mount, incorporate lower mass and higher pin count to support the crystal body. This are excellent solutions for mechanical vibration related failures. SMT spreads mass over larger base and uses additional leads and improved lead strength. Regardless of the package style used, the body of the crystal should be mounted flush with the board.

The software trap is a programming feature used to capture an abnormal program running status. The general principle is to setup a trap for software, and redirect from the code out of control to a specified address, and get back to its normal running mode. The software traps can be placed between the user codes or after the jump instructions, or be placed in the unused space by a consecutive trap codes. The most popular trap code for 80C51 is 5 byte instruction, which is: