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Thursday, March 22, 2007

Open Sound Control: modern messaging protocol

The MAKE controller board supports this out of the box:

Introduction to OSC | OSC

We initially threw it away for simple struct passing over UDP, but it looks like it bears more looking into.

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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

LCD GUI toolkit for deeply embedded systems

Micrium.com ::: Empowering Embedded Systems

Hard to tell if Segger's emWin licences this library, or vice-versa, but it looks like everything you'd want in this sort of arena.

They even let you download the simulator to try it out on Windows.

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thiner, cheaper, more reliable buttons

Here's an article for DIY capacitive buttons. It has some quality references to alternative and more commercialized solutions as well.

linkage

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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

TCP/IP over USB

Everyone seems to support RS232 over USB, but you don't see many people doing TCP/IP over USB.

From a programmer's point of view TCP/IP is a far better API than a standard serial interface, principally because of no COM port and baud rate worries. Stack onto this the ability to open multiple communications channels and utilize broadcast packets and you have a very scalable solution.

Microsoft nicely supplies the windows side of the equation with their Remote NDIS (RNDIS)

USB Remote NDIS Devices and Windows

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Friday, February 02, 2007

Super cool AT91 board



This board is so cool. It has a 130x130 12 color LCD display,from a Nokia 6610, that is accessible over SPI, and an SD card slot (which I didn't realize was accessed via SPI as well)

Just as important as having those, it comes with example source for talking to both devices as well! If I could just think of something I'd like to make with it...


Development and Prototype boards and tools for AT91SAM7

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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Dependable Embedded Systems

This is a serious course in dependable embedded systems at CMU's main campus.



18-849 Dependable Embedded Systems

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4 bit CRC

"Everything you wanted to know about CRC algorithms, but were afraid to ask for fear that errors in your understanding might be detected."

That's the subtitle to a very informational web book on CRCs in general. A PAINLESS GUIDE TO CRC ERROR DETECTION ALGORITHMS


There's tons of resources for more standard long CRCs for big machines, but I'm interested in a four bit CRC I can cram into my 128 data bit messages processed by a little 8051. "CRC Selection for Embedded Network Messages" is a *great* paper that lays out the trade offs between number of CRC bits / data bit length / level of protection, and gives a table with the breakpoints for each. This is computer science doing good for practicing engineers.

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Thursday, November 16, 2006

The CINT C/C Interpreter

Another interpreter, but this sounds even more heavy weight than Tcl/Tk

The CINT C/C Interpreter

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Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Embedding TCL

Seemsl like TCL is big in the debug and test world. As I'm writing debug and test hardware it looks like it would be interesting to at least look into embedding TCL in our USB <-> SPI bridge.

Probably won't fit into 16k of code space though!


Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk

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Wednesday, August 09, 2006

PC based Logic Analyzer

By far, the best PC based logic analyzer I've used, with a decent price point of $389.

Unlike the USBee, this has software that's comparable to a benchtop logic analyzer. You can save your setup, group signals, and it has SPI, I2C, and RS232 decoders.

Intronix LogicPort PC-Based Logic Analyzer with USB Interface

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Thursday, March 02, 2006

program the flash in SiLabs C80501F019

This will be usefull for creating a utility for programming PID/Serial# which will also load the flash.

Mixed-Signal ICs - Flash Programming

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