I guess that not many people know about what this place looks like, so it would be a good idea to post a picture of our laboratory.
The place we all like to work at.
I guess that the big coily thing in the middle of the room looks like something interesting. It is probably not surprise to anyone that one of our friends here is building a Tesla coil. The reason it is not a surprise, is that there are always people in labs like ours, that like building some crazy shit. For example High voltage (about 1MV) generator.
Here is the close up on the Tesla Coil. I have no knowledge about theory.
This is the controller pcb compared to the coil itself.
As that is not very new or innovative, we also have serious people solving real problems. One of such real problems is that quite often we happen to forget a baton of very good milk chocolate on a PSU. It is not a problem until someone starts using the Power supply and it starts to warm up. Then the chocolate will, quite fast, stop being a baton and will turn in to something like very thick milkshake. No one likes that. So, after one day it happened again we decided to use our engineering smartness to fix the problem. I guess it was not the most optimal solution, but pretty cool nevertheless.
Our version of chocolate cooler. Duct tape is vital!
Now, as these things might not look like the coolest stuff ever, I got something extra to show! The glowing CuSO4·5H2O.
This is the crystal from StarCraft! Gives out energy and all!!!!
All of the previous tech belongs to Matis Averin and Kalle-Gustav Kruus.
Also, can anyone guess how they it glow?
About my things, I also got something.
First of all I have started learning Altium Designer and also LTSpice. I like both of the programs very much. They are easy to use, with really good user interface and flexible. Also my pcb order arrived some time ago.
Teensy clones from Erik Ilbis, my sound modules and some LED shields.
I really love how my Sound module design was again defective. It just made my day. Also, not only was it defective but I found a module that costs 9€ and has more features that I was working on. Goddamn.
Anyway, I guess the things on my mind are on the web now. Best of luck!
A Few weeks ago I got a phone call from the postal service.
At first thought that my led strip from E-bay had arrived but that was not the case. Instead it turns out that a UPS courier delivered a TI Launchpad to my doorstep. I had no idea about why it arrived but I’m always up for new gadgets. A Few days later I noticed that a friend of mine from India had keen on finding out if I had gotten any interesting mail. The connection for me was way too far to understand. So he straight up asked me if I got my MSP430 development board. Thank you a lot Sameer!
What is a MSP430 Launchpad? Well, I’m glad you asked . The best answer for this question comes from the Launchpad wiki .
What is LaunchPad?
LaunchPad is an easy-to-use development tool intended for beginners and experienced users alike for creating microcontroller-based applications. At $4.30, the LaunchPad offers everything you need to get started with your projects.
The LaunchPad development kit is a part of the MSP430 Value Line series. LaunchPad has an integrated DIP target socket that supports up to 20 pins, allowing MSP430 Value Line devices to be dropped into the LaunchPad board. Also, an on-board flash emulation tool allows direct interface to a PC for easy programming, debugging, and evaluation. Included are free and downloadable software development environments for writing and debugging software. LaunchPad can be used to create interactive solutions thanks to its on-board push buttons, LEDs, and extra input/output pins for easy integration of external devices.
Technically we are talking about TI-s push to appeal to the hobbyist market. As we all know everyone wants to use the same kind of tools at work that they are used to. The Launchpad is a very nice push to make people use the MSP value line processors instead of the nowadays standard AVR . As Dave Jones from EEVBlog pointed out, the main problem with TI-s push is that their development board is not Arduino compatible. Even Microchip decided to push there and many see that as a success.
For me, as I am not very interested in the Arduino, the missing compatibility is not an issue. What is a real issue is the missing of nice free IDE for development work. If someone decides to use an AVR processor they will get the free development and simulation environment AVRStudio, but TI’s cpu has mostly proprietary environments. There is also a MSPGCC toolchain, but for many beginners a tool that works in terminal environment is really scary!
I did test out the IAR embedded workbench and toyed around with the Launchpad, but I never felt at home with it. Also after the evaluation time ran out it closed itself on me and left me in a dire situation where I wanted to test out some more code but could not. Also the half closed environment is really not my thing. It leaves me feeling like I am chained to something especially when I could do AVR programming and simulations on AVRStudio with no restrictions, full support, huge community and aesthetic GUI.
A little time went by and I decided to try out the MSPGCC toolchain. Basically it works like a charm if one can take a linux terminal and feels at home when using a console.The only problem there is with some dependencies that take time to load and install. If anyone that is trying that has got previous experience in programming using AVRGCC then it is even easier. Also I toyed around with the simulation program there but I have no opinion about that yet.
The development board itself is really nice. It is small and compact, has its own programming interface that one can use for all the same value line MCU-s, spy by wire debugging interface AND the cpu is 16bit with possible clock up to 25MHz witch is pretty nice.
The TI has taken a little novel approach to the MSP430 datasheet (or maybe to their cpu datasheets as a whole) . They have basically three documents for one cpu. There is the infamous errata, processor specifications sheet and cpu line user manual. For me it seemed alienating at first, since I’m very used to Atmel datasheets, but after some time I really got used to it and it is pretty comfortable.
Another really awesome feature for this line are the working example codes provided from TI and very informative header files. When there is anything you can not find about intialization, setup or peripherals go check the C header file of your cpu. It is almost always there.
All in all I find the MSP value line CPUs to be very useful pieces of silicone. I will surely use one of these processors for some of my projects and maybe even post here about my feelings about them later.
About one week ago I stumbled on very interesting problem about one of the ATMEL microcontrollers. When I was writing TWI using code for 32u4 series witch worked, I was unable to make the same code compile for 16u4.
Digging a little deeper, I was unable to find a solution for my problem. But when I decided to ask about it from avrfreaks forum, it started to surface that the problem might not be mine to begin with.
The first response to my query was that AtMega32u4 has broken TWI. I could not agree with that since I just used the same hardware from the same micro.
But the responses from the forum were really helpful. Firstly I got a response from someone from AVR tool chain team (Dean, thank you for the response) that it might be oversight from them.
Also there are some extra things to worry about. The AtMega32/16u4 chips have still some problems with TWI hardware. From the datasheet under “ATmega16U4/ATmega32U4 Rev A” one can find information about TWI malfunction.
“1. Spike on TWI pins when TWI is enabled
100 ns negative spike occurs on SDA and SCL pins when TWI is enabled.
Problem Fix/work around
Enable ATmega16U4/ATmega32U4 TWI before the other nodes of the TWI network.”
I wonder if this might become a problem for me later on? For now it seems to be a little inconvenience that does not change the overall design process much.
Sadly I have to be ready for ATMEL-s response (if any) about this problem. The forum posts also pointed out a possibility of this being a part of deeper problem about the TWI hardware. If it does not work I might have to change the projects main micro. That would not be a fun thing to do. The only alternative posted was using something from the XMega series. Sadly that would mean changing the pcb design to 3.3V.
The development board I am using right now is design of Erik Ilbis (A5D)
A5D designed AtMega Development board. (teensy clone)
Best regards to the avrfreaks, A5D and all the others,
Cmc
I had a lucky day to get some leftovers from the electronics manufacturing company. It all begun as 4kg bag of useless crap and by now we have a supply of 8kg per month to the DigiLab.
So, this is one moment of my sorting
But after few hours of work, I managed to create something a little more useful.
Sorting takes time, but it is worth it
Electronics manufacturing companies have got a lot of components that come of the line and are not usable by pick-and-place machines because of one reason or another. Getting these components is not the greatest win. The greatest is when you get a load of sorted expensive components that are actually obtainable from local distributors. My favourite find so far is the 20€ ISO122UE4.
Also I have a set of tantalum capacitors, 30A N-channel mosfets, diferent valued inductors, Standard off the shelf smpsu transformers from Coilcraft, SD card sockets and more.
At first I was quite dubious about the usefulness of the bag, but really, small stuff is to throw away and anything with ID large enough to identify (except resistors) is worth the time.
The key to access to such deals is getting to know people. You need to talk to your teachers, mentors, friends etc or just go to work to some. Mostly the latter is not a good idea, since real fun engineering is not part of factory. Teaching on the other hand is.
