Followers of this blog will know that I have an interest in the whole ecosystem of Raspberry Pi “compatible” boards. By now I have quite a selection. Mostly, the boards I have in my collection are ARM-based, often using a System-on-Chip (SOC) from AllWinner rather than the Broadcom devices used by the official Raspberry Pi …
I have been enjoying reading a blog by Ken at Sustainable Suburbia recently, and one post in particular sparked me into action. Not because of its main topic (although that is thought-provoking, too) but because of the mention of an odd early programming language named “BURP” (Basic Using Reverse Polish). Sufficiently intrigued by this idea, …
As you might imagine, if you have read many of these posts, I was very excited to hear of the launch of the Raspberry Pi Zero, and ordered one straight away. It arrived this morning, so I am now the proud owner of a Zero, and also a case and the first ‘pHat’ from the …
My previous post ended with me waiting for delivery of a surface-mount SWD connector so I could turn a Freescale Kinetis KwikStik K40 into a Segger J-Link compatible debug probe. I placed an order with Farnell UK for an appropriate connector, and it arrived the next day. Soldering the connector was surprisingly difficult. I had …
Although I had some success with using the Segger firmware on a Freescale FRDM board to program a KE04 microcontroller on a header board recently, I was very aware that I was being naughty. The terms of use for the Segger firmware make it clear that it is only for programming and debugging genuine Freescale …
If you have read my previous post in this series, you’ll know that I had mixed feelings about the LPC810 and LPC812 chips from NXP. They are certainly simple and flexible in use, but without a stable and predictable technique to program them I just ended up more frustrated. However, I impressed myself by successfully …
Continue reading ‘ARM Cortex-M board from scratch part 3: Kinetis KE04’ »
As I mentioned in my previous post in this series, I have been planning for a long time to make my own ARM Cortex development board from scratch. After a lot of mulling around, and a bit of a false start with the LPC1114 chip, I discovered JeeLabs, a comprehensive web site, blog and upcoming …
Continue reading ‘ARM Cortex-M board from scratch part 2: LPC810’ »
As many of my readers will be aware, I have quite an extensive collection of microcontroller development boards with a wide range of controller chips from a variety of architectures and manufacturers. While it’s fair to say that I enjoy programming and creating projects with these boards, there has always been a niggle in the …
Continue reading ‘ARM Cortex-M board from scratch part 1: Too Many Options’ »
For the hundredth time I found myself trying to solder some small circuit board and annoyed by the way it skittered across my desk. I had tried ‘helping hands‘ but these are fiddly and annoying to set up, the screws keep coming loose, and they hold the boards at wonky angles. I had just about …
Continue reading ‘A handy (and cheap) gadget for holding small PCBs’ »
Over the last few years I have written and edited many Arduino sketches. Aside from a brief dalliance with Sublime Text I have exclusively used the dull but ubiquitous Arduino IDE. At the time I started each project this seemed completely natural, but over time I seem to somehow lose track of where I put …