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Sinestro posted:Sorry, I am not at my most coherent at 2:27 AM. I want to learn to do advanced layout, such as a board using a CC430 family chip --I've never payed out a board with wireless on it. The CC430 chip (only?) comes in a pretty hard to use QFN package. The actual layout of everything but the antenna should be pretty easy but the soldering will be a bitch. If you design a PCB TI provides a document with specifications so you can layout a PCB antenna or select a COTS antenna. A CC430 dev board would be a good place to start, even if you just grab the documentation as a starting point in your design. There are a few things that I consider critical designing a PCB - high power circuits (size traces appropriate so they don't explode), high speed circuits (careful routing to prevent issues with slew or noise) or RF (graphflhadsfph). Stuff like crystals are also of concern, but it's not difficult to get something that works there long as you don't get crazy with spreading out the crystal and caps from the IC. The magic blue smoke thread in DIY has a few more people with experience on this topic as well. EDIT: http://www.ti.com/lit/an/swra227e/swra227e.pdf for the PCB antenna. http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slaa462/slaa462.pdf for the balun design; I'm not really sure if the device will 'work' (even if non-ideally) without it, but if you're designing it you might as well do it right. For designing the balun I recommend following their schematic and layout perfectly. At RF frequencies, the components do not operate in the same way as they do in (relatively) low frequency situations. As soon as your wavelengths start getting smaller than the components, you need to be careful with how you do your modeling. I recommend letting the TI engineers do the hard work 
Delta-Wye fucked around with this message at 20:21 on May 15, 2013 |
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May 15, 2013 20:17
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Otto Skorzeny posted:Probably he means using classes as ersatz namespaces. This seems like an unnecessary reason to use C++ over C. To be honest, I have done embedded C++ development for an 8-bit micro (for an arduino library  ) that used inheritance and polymorphism. OOP lets you do some nice convenient stuff, but the overhead is expensive in both ROM and cycles. In theory the RAM usuage should be pretty similar except for vtables or whatever equivalent system the compiler uses.I've also done some embedded dev on an ARM core running Linux and at 800MHz who gives a gently caress how efficient it is?
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May 15, 2013 20:24
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Sinestro posted:Sorry, I am not at my most coherent at 2:27 AM. I want to learn to do advanced layout, such as a board using a CC430 family chip --I've never payed out a board with wireless on it. You might want to check out the Electronics thread in DIY & Hobbies if you have specific questions. The best rule of thumb I can think of is to understand how current will flow (including the return currents), and design with that in mind. Unrelated, but I have a question about ARM development environments. I'm going to be putting an ARM in a design for the first time, and I really don't want to spend time loving with tools. I haven't quite decided which part vendor I will use, although I'd like to go with a smaller M4/M4F. I'm actually leaning towards an Atmel SAM4 not because of hardware reasons, but because it looks like they provide a free toolchain that's straight forward to install and setup. Is there an ARM development/debugging environment that is free/low cost and reasonably easy to install and use?
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May 15, 2013 20:44
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SnoPuppy posted:Unrelated, but I have a question about ARM development environments. I will say that I've never once regretted my decision to do all my ARM development in (separate) VMs.
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May 15, 2013 20:50
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Most of the ARM vendors' IDEs will use one of the variants of gcc-arm as the compiler (some will use Keil, which is a worse compiler and has an annual license fee and needs to phone home to a license server or some poo poo). It's possible to use the GCC ARM toolchain without an IDE if that's your thing (although using gdb with no IDE wrapping it feels like stepping into 1970). I believe STM and TI both ship free IDEs; my own professional experience with ARM is with Cypress's PSoC and its PSoC Creator IDE, which I wouldn't wish on anyone (although the LP did improve the situation considerably).
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May 15, 2013 20:54
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Is Atmel Studio really a one-stop IDE for all their devices? Like can I use the same IDE to work on an 8 bit AVR and a SAM3/4 device? For free?
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May 16, 2013 00:16
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Delta-Wye posted:Tell me again about how developing for ARM is fundamentally different than an 8bit micro ARMs are almost cheap enough now to replace 8-bit micros, at least in low-volume hobby applications where CPU cost comes out in the wash. 
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May 16, 2013 02:02
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Base Emitter posted:ARMs are almost cheap enough now to replace 8-bit micros, at least in low-volume hobby applications where CPU cost comes out in the wash. They are, but the issues comes with libraries. ARM-based chips are inevitably way more complex, it seems, and stuffed full of peripherals. In my experience, this means that you basically need premade driver sourcefiles for the stuff you need. A lot of "basic" stuff still can require a lot of code to setup and configure registers. This wouldn't be a problem, if the free libraries didn't inevitably have a whole bunch of bugs, and the manuals for chips didn't have lots of errors. Once you get everything setup and your drivers working it's just as easy as working with an 8bit uC, but getting to that point is often harder.
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May 16, 2013 02:39
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I'm developing for STM 32 with gcc-arm, libopencm3 and sublime and the sublime-clang plugin and debugging via st-link using stlink as a gdb server, although our system is built up enough with comms libraries that I almost never touch gdb. It's pretty awesome, I don't really know what else I'd want. Sublime-clang is amazeballs. I'd think the vim clang would be similarly awesome but less pretty.
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May 16, 2013 04:34
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Otto Skorzeny posted:Most of the ARM vendors' IDEs will use one of the variants of gcc-arm as the compiler (some will use Keil, which is a worse compiler and has an annual license fee and needs to phone home to a license server or some poo poo). It's possible to use the GCC ARM toolchain without an IDE if that's your thing (although using gdb with no IDE wrapping it feels like stepping into 1970). I believe STM and TI both ship free IDEs; my own professional experience with ARM is with Cypress's PSoC and its PSoC Creator IDE, which I wouldn't wish on anyone (although the LP did improve the situation considerably). Good to know - I definitely want to avoid using the raw GDB interface. I guess I feel like my biggest question still is what to do once I have the binary, in terms of actually downloading and debugging to the device. It seems like there many vendors that have JTAG programmers, including the actual chip manufactures, but I wouldn't think they're all supported with GDB. So if I want to program and debug for a generic ARM device, what do I need? Or is it vendor specific? I come from an FPGA background where typically the only option is the JTAG programmer from the vendor, but you're guaranteed that it will work with their parts and tools. And generally the tools are free for the medium to low end devices (the <$100 parts). So you can get a known good development environment from the people who make the chips for little cost. The ARM development market feels extremely fragmented compared to what I'm familiar with using, and it's making it hard to figure out what exactly I need. I'll take a look at STM and TI, although I thought you had to pay for TI Code Composer unless you were using one of their dev boards.
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May 17, 2013 16:24
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Martytoof posted:Is Atmel Studio really a one-stop IDE for all their devices? Like can I use the same IDE to work on an 8 bit AVR and a SAM3/4 device? For free? Yes - everything works the same way for AVR (AVR8/XMEGA/UC3) and SAM (SAM3/SAM4). The catch is that not all SAM devices are supported, just the new SAM3 and SAM4 families at the moment.
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May 17, 2013 18:31
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SnoPuppy posted:I thought you had to pay for TI Code Composer unless you were using one of their dev boards. TI still makes you pay for CCS even if you're using a dev board, I think. But they say the free version is limited to 16k programs, and the binaries I've uploaded to my Launchpad say they're 23k so I must be misunderstanding that. I've heard people say they don't like the ez430 Chronos watch because the free version of CCS doesn't let you upload full sized programs.
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May 21, 2013 00:22
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Asked this a while back but I think it might have gotten lost. If I want to debug AVR 8bit chips, do I need to shell out for the JTAGICE mk2 or will a Dragon do in circuit debugging as well?
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May 21, 2013 00:31
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I think the Dragon will do, although I recall reading that it's flaky. There's a $42 xPlained board that will also do; JawnV6 linked to it in the post he later edited out. I have since closed my browser, so I don't know which one it was.
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May 21, 2013 00:46
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Martytoof posted:Asked this a while back but I think it might have gotten lost. If I want to debug AVR 8bit chips, do I need to shell out for the JTAGICE mk2 or will a Dragon do in circuit debugging as well? I haven't tried to do any in circuit debugging with my dragon yet, but it is an advertised feature. I would volunteer to give it a shot and report back, but I won't have time until probably Monday at the absolute earliest.
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May 21, 2013 02:32
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Oh no rush at ALL. I'm just dabbling in this stuff as a hobby. If you could just try to step through something simple that would be great  If possible maybe set a breakpoint on an ISR and see if it lets you step through at that point? Thanks
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May 21, 2013 02:54
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Martytoof posted:Oh no rush at ALL. I'm just dabbling in this stuff as a hobby. If you could just try to step through something simple that would be great The Dragon is exactly what you're looking for. Works great with AVR studio, and is a little flakier with the GNU tools. Occasionally, I'll set a software breakpoint in GDB, the program will fly off into la-la land, and when I reboot the chip, the breakpoint remains and I have to reflash the chip. I've heard reports that the Dragon is exceptionally ESD sensitive, so I laser-cut a case for it.
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May 21, 2013 03:11
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Martytoof posted:Oh no rush at ALL. I'm just dabbling in this stuff as a hobby. If you could just try to step through something simple that would be great Likewise - just dabbling as a hobby. This gives me something to try out though, and I like little projects. I will put it on my short list and try to get to it this weekend. I still need to make a case for my Dragon. I wanted to 3D print or laser cut one, but I haven't gotten around to it. I should probably just get a cheap project box from the radio shack down the street for now to stick it in.
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May 21, 2013 03:25
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I finally gave up any hopes of using a native MacOS programming environment, and I got really tired of not being able to breadboard any of the Cortex chips I bought, so I'm just calling it quits on that front until I can find a good DIP cortex chip that isn't out of stock. Atmel studio 6 is surprisingly awesome and runs really well in VMware Fusion, and the AVR simulator is pretty great. I've just got to figure out how to simulate peripheral input and I'm all set I noticed it doesn't have any support for older JTAGICE devices though, so I guess I can't really use one of those cheapo eBay programmers. Still though, the Dragon is not really expensive or anything, at $46 from Newark through work. Desperately trying to come up with a simple project for them so I can justify expensing one out instead of spending my own money though 
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May 21, 2013 05:12
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I'd suggest you look at an alternative to the Dragon if you have yet to order it. I dunno if the XPlained boards can be used for both SAM and AVR hardware debugging or only one. Maybe if you prod JawnV6 he'll comment? He seems to know quite a bit about Atmel products.
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May 21, 2013 05:26
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Probably the wrong place to ask this question, but a question on Parallax Stamp Microcontrollers. I was really bored, walking through a Radio Shack, and noticed a few of these kits on clearance for about 1/2-1/5th the cost of the other systems. It's been several years since I did anything close to either programming or electronics, but was really interested in giving it a go as something to do in my free time, but I'm not 100% sure I'll keep up with it. Compared to the Arduino kits and the like, I'm sure they're pretty primitive, but do they still allow a good degree of actual learning that I can then gradually move on towards something more advanced? Or is it better to take a risk with a more popular/expensive/versatile platform?
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May 22, 2013 08:32
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Don't waste your time. An arduino/arduino clone is under $20. They're called BASIC stamps because they literally run BASIC. I don't think there has been much improvement on them in 8-10 years, and you won't be able to find accessories or much help on them besides websites from 2005 and old entry-level books that just tell you how to blink LEDs. Whereas Arduino is basically C and will let you transition to bare Atmega or a million other things easily.
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May 22, 2013 15:59
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evensevenone posted:Don't waste your time. An arduino/arduino clone is under $20. BASIC is a totally suitable language for all things - ask Mug  Please don't buy one, they were cool when I was in HS and that was a loooooong time ago. Imagine coming in here and asking about getting a pentium 2 instead of a modern processor because it's cheaper
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May 22, 2013 17:15
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The absolutely cheapest way to get started in my opinion is the TI MSP430 LaunchPad. For the price of a Starbucks thingy, you get the programmer/debugger, the chip, loving everything. C is not that hard! You can definitely make things blink with just a few lines, and it'll get you in the nice habit of reading datasheets to find the information you need. Once you know that, every subsequent processor is easy. It's reflexive: "hey, I need to wiggle some pins...I should look for a chapter called 'Ports' or 'Digital I/O', and find their equivalent of data direction reg, port data reg, and latch reg". Likewise for any hardware peripherals. Did I mention that's its less than $5 and a few hours of your time? Well, OK, so add a few bucks for shipping. Still cheap as balls.
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May 22, 2013 17:35
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movax posted:Did I mention that's its less than $5 and a few hours of your time? Well, OK, so add a few bucks for shipping. Still cheap as balls. I think they bumped the price up to $10. It's not $4.30 anymore unfortunately. Still cheap and all-inclusive though as you say.
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May 22, 2013 17:43
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movax posted:The absolutely cheapest way to get started in my opinion is the TI MSP430 LaunchPad. For the price of a Starbucks thingy, you get the programmer/debugger, the chip, loving everything. Ti ships them for free but it takes a while. Really nice hardware and a closer to metal feel than arduino
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May 22, 2013 17:44
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Malcolm XML posted:Ti ships them for free but it takes a while. Really nice hardware and a closer to metal feel than arduino This is very true, and while I love the MSP430 platform, it can be a bit overwhelming for new folks. A lot of the low-power features result in complicated configuration due to the several clock domains. IMHO, anyways.
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May 22, 2013 18:01
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Delta-Wye posted:This is very true, and while I love the MSP430 platform, it can be a bit overwhelming for new folks. A lot of the low-power features result in complicated configuration due to the several clock domains. IMHO, anyways.
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May 22, 2013 18:56
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Martytoof posted:If possible maybe set a breakpoint on an ISR and see if it lets you step through at that point? So I'm currently planning on getting this up and running on a Windows 7 box running AVR Studio 6, my Dragon, and an atmega1284-PU. Did you mention at some point that you are developing in a VM on OSX? If so, if I get it running without the VM in the mix, I'll have a go at it in a VMWare Fusion Windows 7 instance on my mac laptop. I am planning to keep the code super simple, and just set up an ISR to trigger on a clock timer or button press or something. I will probably just breadboard a minimal circuit to test it out. If I get through all of that, I also want to see what I can do on an atmega328p and an attiny85 with debugWire. I don't know if you have any specific requests, but that's the stuff I have lying around.
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May 22, 2013 20:12
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Thanks for this. No specific requests, I just wanted some feedback on the usability of Dragon to step through code running on the AVR. I'm developing in a VM on OSX, but I'm not terribly worried about that. I can't imagine that would make a huge difference It's actually a pretty ridiculous request so honestly unless you're interested in seeing it go then I wouldn't even bother. I can't imagine that the Dragon won't debug an AVR properly in Atmel Studio 6  (but thanks again) And thanks to everyone for their input. I'm still investigating my options but it's nice to know there's a place to fall back on to get good opinions. I'm mainly interested in the debugging angle of working on micros because I learn best by stepping through code, so being able to hit a button on my breadboard and have a breakpoint trigger is amazing. Rather than having to hook up an LCD and display debugging messages or something.
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May 22, 2013 20:16
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armorer posted:So I'm currently planning on getting this up and running on a Windows 7 box running AVR Studio 6, my Dragon, and an atmega1284-PU. Did you mention at some point that you are developing in a VM on OSX? If so, if I get it running without the VM in the mix, I'll have a go at it in a VMWare Fusion Windows 7 instance on my mac laptop. I am planning to keep the code super simple, and just set up an ISR to trigger on a clock timer or button press or something. I will probably just breadboard a minimal circuit to test it out. If I get through all of that, I also want to see what I can do on an atmega328p and an attiny85 with debugWire. I never had any issues running MPLAB (Microchip) in VMWare Fusion on my MBP; the debugger gets passed through directly, so there weren't ever any issues with performance or stability. They later came out with MPLAB X, which has an OSX native version, but shortly thereafter I just bought a ThinkPad because I can't deal with the MBP keyboard & layout slowing me down (I juggle 3-4 different layouts/OSes a day) e: The Dragon+AVR Studio 6 sure as poo poo will waste 2 hours of your time loving up simple ISP programming when AVRDude+Dragon can get the same thing done instantly, albeit with some libusb fuckery
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May 22, 2013 20:16
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Martytoof posted:It's actually a pretty ridiculous request so honestly unless you're interested in seeing it go then I wouldn't even bother. I can't imagine that the Dragon won't debug an AVR properly in Atmel Studio 6 I am very interested in seeing it go! I write code for a living, and make regular use of a number of different debuggers. When you mentioned JTAG support for OCD I realized that I hadn't even tried it yet since the code I was writing was pretty trivial. So it is really just an opportunity to familiarize myself with it, and having someone else that is interested means I'll pay more attention as I go through it. movax posted:e: The Dragon+AVR Studio 6 sure as poo poo will waste 2 hours of your time loving up simple ISP programming when AVRDude+Dragon can get the same thing done instantly, albeit with some libusb fuckery I've done ISP programming via AVR Studio 6 and the Dragon, and it was really simple. A tiny bit of hunting for the right menu icon, and a few clicks, and my code was compiled and loaded. I haven't mucked around with JTAG yet though, for programming or OCD. I personally prefer to code on linux, and I fully intend to learn my way around the gnu toolchain for AVR development. At the moment though I am using AVR Studio because I can only learn so many things at once and I am focused elsewhere. I know it's a bit atypical, but I actually have a MBP for work. When they decide to replace it for me I am going to get a thinkpad too because (a) the MBP keyboard drives me nuts and (b) I would rather just have a linux box.
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May 22, 2013 20:28
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armorer posted:I personally prefer to code on linux, and I fully intend to learn my way around the gnu toolchain for AVR development. At the moment though I am using AVR Studio because I can only learn so many things at once and I am focused elsewhere. I know it's a bit atypical, but I actually have a MBP for work. When they decide to replace it for me I am going to get a thinkpad too because (a) the MBP keyboard drives me nuts and (b) I would rather just have a linux box. So far I've done all my AVR coding on linux having taken one look at AVR studio bloat and noped right out of there. The import thing to bear in mind is that support for XMega architecture is hilariously broken in pretty much every OS bundled, and AVR source distributed, version. The oficial AVR binary distribution works perfectly however, so no bother but learning that cost me a few hours. Apart from that, gcc and avrdude has been running without problems. LUFA handles all the complex peripheral stuff, although it has a "somewhat" quirky build methodology, and the rest is simple enough to bash out onto the registers.
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May 24, 2013 23:25
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Anyone have any good resources on doing ARM debugging? I'm trying to figure out an error that's popping up at work, and my knowledge of using the debugger is mostly from trial and error. Also, if anyone here is familiar with the cortex M3: I'm getting an ARM Bus fault, which is being logged as a Precise data bus error. I have no loving clue what that even means. (for reference: http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dui0552a/Cihcfefj.html) Thoughts?
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May 25, 2013 00:46
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Just from reading the link, the BFAR register (separate from BFSR) should hold the data address that caused the fault and the return address on the stack frame points to the instruction that caused it. The BFARVALID bit in that register should also be set. Imprecise would mean that a bus error happened, but due to some higher priority process the debug information got trashed and the proc can't be sure what to tell you. Not sure if that helps, but bow howdy I've read/written some fault documentation and that's what it's saying to me. Knowing those two addresses should get you pointed in the right direction, figure out what instruction/code is causing it and how it got the goofy address that caused a fault.
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May 25, 2013 01:11
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JawnV6 posted:Just from reading the link, the BFAR register (separate from BFSR) should hold the data address that caused the fault and the return address on the stack frame points to the instruction that caused it. The BFARVALID bit in that register should also be set. Imprecise would mean that a bus error happened, but due to some higher priority process the debug information got trashed and the proc can't be sure what to tell you. Not sure if that helps, but bow howdy I've read/written some fault documentation and that's what it's saying to me. That to make sense. I think my confusion comes from my ignorance of the architecture, since I have no idea of an example of something that could cause this fault to occur. I know this is occurring at an inline function that is appending null-terminated strings to a packet, which is called countless times, and is properly checking for overflows in the event that it is passed a string without null termination. Worst comes to worst, I'll ask the King of the low level programmers here, since he would probably know exactly what was up in 20 seconds or less.
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May 25, 2013 01:28
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I'm looking to get my feet wet with some embedded stuff after taking a really simplified microcontrollers class which used old PIC boards where we wrote assembly code. It wasn't a very comprehensive class so we didn't really learn too much. I basically just want to get something that is pretty cheap, but where I can learn a bit more in-depth about microcontrollers and maybe use a programmed microcontroller in a circuit or something. The TI Launchpad looks good but the price is $10 now, so I was wondering if there were any better alternatives around that price point. Has anyone heard of Freescale's FRDM-K20D50M ($18)? It says it comes with a 32-bit MK20DX128VLH5 microcontroller which has a 50 MHz ARM Cortex-M4 core while the STM Discovery ($14.55) says it comes with a 32-bit STM32F100RB microcontroller which has a 24 MHz Cortex-M3 core (not really sure how important this is or not). Also I have some old equipment, an STK500 and AVR Dragon, but I don't have any cables with them (the STK500 manual says it should come with some ribbon cables). Would better to just buy a serial to USB converter and use the STK500 or is it way too old? The manual says the STK500 comes with a AT90S8515-8PC with seems to be a discontinued 8 bit Atmel microcontroller. Sorry if this is a dumb question it's just a bit overwhelming with all the different brands and models.
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May 25, 2013 06:37
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Delta-Wye posted:BASIC is a totally suitable language for all things - ask Mug I sort of figure that if/when I ever accidentally get thrown back in time I'll need that sort of edge to survive in a time just after the PS1, but right before the PS3... I totally get what you're saying, though. I ended up going with that TI MSP430 based on price, but I couldn't figure out how to order it through TI so I ended up going with a reseller they listed. It seemed like the store and the purchase agreement on the TI site made it look like I wasn't actually qualified to buy it because I couldn't seem to find the right selection to put down for the step where it asks about your company/agency and the type of work it does, as well as their terms of sale that came up. I get the feeling that with what shipping was going to cost me, I likely should have just ordered a pair because I know that coming into it out of the cold, I WILL probably break the first one. I also just bought a small electronics kit to work on the meantime to reteach myself soldering over the next several days, hopefully. Possible final question: Are any of the books on how to develop on the MSP430 that are more or less better than others for something more or less coming in from the cold. I know there are likely good/better online references, but I'm sort of still more attached to print-based material for a lot of things.
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May 25, 2013 07:51
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JediTalentAgent posted:I sort of figure that if/when I ever accidentally get thrown back in time I'll need that sort of edge to survive in a time just after the PS1, but right before the PS3... TI puts hilarious restrictions on everything and makes you jump through silly hoops to get anything from them. I like the mental image of TI goons in MIB suits grilling everyone who wants to get an MSP430Gxxxx chip, while next door Massimo Banzi is handing out Arduino Megas and other high-end Atmel chips to anyone who walks by. Yes, TI, if the Iranians or Chinese get their hands on an 8-bit shift register, we'll be speaking Farsi by this time next week...  I actually got told by them via email that I had been placed on the "US Denied Exports List", it turns out I had used my initial instead of my full last name while filling out their silly forms. I expected the FBI to crash through my windows the way they wrote that email (I was trying to get some 7805 voltage regulators!).
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May 25, 2013 14:52
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Slanderer posted:I know this is occurring at an inline function that is appending null-terminated strings to a packet, which is called countless times, and is properly checking for overflows in the event that it is passed a string without null termination.
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May 25, 2013 14:54
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