Your Electronics Open Source

This blog describes my idea about integrating MMC/SDIO in embedded systems, including software in host controller and card controller running in SPI mode. Although I do not have full source code to demonstrate, theoretically it is realizable.
Flash Cards Everywhere
All kinds of flash cards are parts of our digital lives. They are used everywhere in mobiles, cameras, mp3s and DVD players. These cards are offering more storage memory space in much lower price. Technically these cards are quite mature to be integrated into many devices. However the engineers can not find suitable open source stack solutions because of legal issues from the corresponding flash card associations.

The question is how to find extra timers in a complex application while a standard microcontroller usually has only two or three timers?

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.

The Scripting languages are deployed in many operation systems, either in UNIX/Linux or Windows. These languages are developed for general purpose process automation and web programming. But you can consider using them for the software development process in many ways. Among these languages, awk and Perl are suitable for automate and speed up software development for embedded systems. Because many embedded systems only have cross tool chain, without powerful IDE supports for process automation. Here I will show you why we need them and how these tools help us.

USB-Stick as development systems.

It's the fad of the moment and, we, as designers, do love these Gadgets!
But what they are? Are Development Tools in USB Stick format simply toys or are they offering a complete and reliable debug system?
Surely the latter, because the capability (some of them have an ARM on board) and the versatility make a quality product highly useful for the developers. Some time ago I had the opportunity to "test" the Texas Instruments' Stick USB, the Ez430, related to the MSP430 Low Power Microcontroller, and I have to say that this "Gadget" (please note the quotes) surprised me, for its capabilities and easy of use. After 10 minutes I was already in step_by_step debug with my first application on Stick! (Ok, I did flashed a LED under interrupt while I had controlled the inputs in polling with debounce software, but the start-up times were reduced to a few minutes!!! )
Also, the really low costs of these Development Tools (I will not call them gadget anymore) allows you to evaluate any system before you start to design ..... starting from $ 10 and almost none of the presented Tools exceeds 50$
As far as I remember, TI with MSP430 was the first to launch this "fashion", and now the market is full of these Development Sticks, so I decided to see which new micros we can play ...(Ooops!) work with , to evaluate and then design, develop and go into massive production.
(The correction was necessary, otherwise, distributors and representatives will not give us any more Stick )

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.

When I developed a TV project, something strange really bothered me for weeks. The CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) TV project was based upon a Philips 8051 TV microcontroller with on-chip OSD (On Screen Display) and Tuning features. The software was running on my emulator without any problems. So our customer decided to launch pilot production. The QA team found something strange in the internal audit procedure and notified me urgently. Among 12 TV sets, about 5 TV sets randomly shown the retrace scanning lines after AC switching on. The occurrence was unpredictable.

5 years ago, one of my colleagues developed a project upon 8051 platform. Unfortunately, there was a fatal bug in the firmware which would lead to a business fiasco and damage company's goodwill. Our boss asked us if there was any means to save the business and escape from the crisis. I knew that the microcontroller' intermal memory was actually using OTP (One Time Programming) EPROM technology, so I promised to study the code and try to hack it.

After a short survey, I found we can save the chips even these parts had already been programmed .

So I told boss that the code could be patched. The distributors called back the microcontrollers and reprogrammed with the patched code. Everybody was grateful. However, nobody even mentioned me or expressed their appreciation. It seems that code was self-healing. But after that, many project managers who have bug issues will ask my help. Unfortunately not all the microcontrollers can saved if

Some AVR developers reported that the AVR's EEPROM will be erased randomly. And these poor people are driven crazy because they have no clue about the real cause for it. Is AVR micro's embedded EEPROM not stable at all? Well, there are not perfect products in the world. But I would rather say the real cause might be yourself.
Do you have any idea what AVR is doing during reset?

Out of the box code is quite often a God send gift, especially when handling a new micro. But sometimes ......

I started mucking around with a dsPic4011 few months ago, using MPLAB and C30. I was quite happy since I was able to run an "hello world" application in a very short time. Not only did the MPLAB and C30 installation go smoothly but coping and pasting code available on the C30 peripherals library, programming uart1 and timer1 was a piece of cake!