MCU on Eclipse

Configure hidden and internal Shortcuts in Eclipse

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 18:46:02 GMT

A very useful feature in Eclipse is Ctrl+Shift+L which lists all the available shortcuts: Pressing Ctrl+Shift-L again will open up a dialog where I can configure them. But what if the shortcut or action is not listed there? The thing … Continue reading →

Getting a 96bit Unique ID for each Kinetis Device using MCUXpresso SDK

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 20:12:41 GMT

The NXP Kinetis devices implement a UID (Unique ID) for each device, using the ‘Unique Identification Register) which is part of the SIM (System Integration Module): While this number should be unique, I was wondering last week why students in … Continue reading →

New MCU-Link Debug Probe from NXP

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 17:51:54 GMT

The NXP MCUXpressso IDE Release V11.2.1 gave a hint about a coming new debug probe, the MCU-Link which is available now: The new MCU-Link is listed on Mouser.com (search for ‘MCU-Link’) for price around $10/€10/CHF11. I two from Mouser but … Continue reading →

Laser Cut Advent Calendar 2020

Sat, 28 Nov 2020 18:29:20 GMT

Tomorrow is the 1st Advent, and right on time I was able to finish a special version of an Advent calendar for the Christmas 2020: I have put the design on GitHub, so if you are looking for a last … Continue reading →

RTOS Trace: TraceX with Microsoft Azure RTOS (aka ThreadX)

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 16:34:44 GMT

Having visibility and insights into a running system is highly valuable or critical: not only for optimizations but as well to verify the system design and behavior. In Getting Started with Microsoft Azure RTOS (aka ThreadX) I showed how to … Continue reading →

Dark or Light: What is your Preference?

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 11:01:20 GMT

Most of my students seems to prefer the ‘Dark’ desktop and tool theme. So this is getting popular, and I was reluctant to use it. But tools support is getting better (see MCUXpresso IDE) and I switched do the ‘dark’ … Continue reading →

Steps to use FreeRTOS with newlib reentrant Memory Allocation

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 17:20:47 GMT

Reentrancy is an attribute of a piece of code and basically means it can re-entered by another execution flow, for example by an interrupt or by another task or thread. This is an important concept and still a lot of … Continue reading →

Getting Started with Microsoft Azure RTOS (aka ThreadX)

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 11:00:14 GMT

If you are a regular reader of my articles, you probably know that I’m using FreeRTOS in most of my applications, for obvious reasons. But clearly this is not the only RTOS out there. After Microsoft had acquired Express Logic … Continue reading →

Building a DIY High Density Philips Hue LED Stripe

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 15:34:52 GMT

Philips Hue Smart LED stripes are great, but they have a disadvantage: the LED density is rather low: one LED cluster (WW, RGB, CW) every 55 mm. This leads to the problem that individual dots might be visible if the … Continue reading →

Debugging Bootloader and Application with one Debug Session

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 18:46:08 GMT

If having a boot loader running on a micro-controller, it is very useful if both the boot loader and the loaded application can be debugged together: So how to make this work? First have the boot loader flashed and have … Continue reading →

Power Measurement with the PEmicro Multilink Universal in Eclipse

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 17:59:07 GMT

Implementing low power in embedded applications implemented can be challenging. Measuring current consumption is a first step to see if the software changes indeed have an effect on the current consumed. The PEmicro Universal Multilink FX debug probe comes with … Continue reading →

tinyK22 Board Rev 1.3 released

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 06:26:45 GMT

The tinyK22 board is a tiny micro controller board we use at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. It is used in many research project, used in lectures and labs and used in most student projects. Because there … Continue reading →

FreeRTOS and Eclipse Indexer for >5K Lines Source Files

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 11:24:53 GMT

Eclipse has a great built-in source code parser and browser (aka ‘Indexer’). It is basically a built-in compiler which parses the source files and assists the user with code completion and navigation help, making Eclipse this awesome productivity tool. On … Continue reading →

Grouping Eclipse Projects with Working Sets

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 07:35:58 GMT

Typically I have many, many projects listed in the Eclipse Project Explorer, usually more than 100 projects: from example projects, projects on git, lecture module projects, research projects or just some hobby projects I’m working on. With the default Eclipse … Continue reading →

Silsersee

Sat, 24 Oct 2020 17:18:31 GMT

Winter is coming in Switzerland, so is the second COVID-19 wave :-(. Time to look back and to share a beautiful hike at the Lake Sils (Silsersee) in Switzerland I enjoyed back this summer. We started at Palü da Lägh … Continue reading →

Tweaking MCUXpresso IDE Black Theme

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 18:35:45 GMT

‘Dark’ or ‘Black’ themes are on vogue: some love it, some do not care. The good thing is that we all have a choice. Things are getting improved on the host OS (Windows/Linux) side, but the challenge is still on … Continue reading →

Mobile Teacher Tool, Rev 2 by Gerhard

Sun, 18 Oct 2020 08:07:23 GMT

It is always great to see if someone is picking up my work and produces something even better :-). In this case, Gerhard Székely took my DIY Portable Video Conference, Sharing and Teaching Device and created an awesome version of … Continue reading →

MCUXpresso IDE V11.2.1

Sat, 17 Oct 2020 18:18:34 GMT

I have started the semester and labs using the MCUXpresso IDE V11.2.0 which has been available from July this year. The past week I received the notification that the update V11.2.1 is available: time to check it out…. The version … Continue reading →

FreeRTOS V10.4.1 with SEGGER SystemView V3.12

Sun, 11 Oct 2020 12:22:59 GMT

Amazon has released in the past week the FreeRTOS version V10.4.0. Time to upgrade, actually the most recent version 10.4.1! The same time the SEGGER SystemView V3.12 was released back in April this year. No surprise: with the FreeRTOS changes … Continue reading →

Import Projects from git into Eclipse

Sun, 04 Oct 2020 08:47:05 GMT

As a VCS (Version Control System) I’m using git in all my projects. And not only for software or firmware projects: I’m using it for hardware design (KiCAD, FreeCAD, …) or for documentation (LaTeX, …) too. The nice thing with … Continue reading →