Friday, December 30, 2011

Android ADK Development Boards

Developers using Google's Android Open Accessory Development Kit (ADK) now have more choices of hardware.  Initially the ADK supported the Arduino Mega2560 ($65 assembed from Adafruit) with Oleg Mazurov's USB Host Shield ($25).

Here is the current list from the Android Developers ADK page.

Arduino Mega ADK - available from the Arduino Store and Radio Shack $84.99


DIY Drones PhoneDrone Board for Android $99



mbed has a few solutions...



Microchip - Two boards are available, the PIC32 DM320412 (not yet for sale actually), and the PIC24 DM240415 $79.



Modern Device's Freeduino USB Host Board $79



RT Corp - RT-ADK&RT-ADS $389.03 (31,500 Yen)


Seeed Studio Seeeduino ADK Main Board $79



Sparkfun IOIO for Android (beta support) $49



Thursday, December 29, 2011

Parallax Stamp and Boe-Bot Kits on Sale

If you are interested in  the BASIC Stamp by Parallax, the acitvity kit shown below is on sale for $49 US at the online store (normally $79).
They also have a Boe-Bot kit on sale for $179 with Li-Ion Robot Power Pack and Charger (currently low stock on this item).

Another option for Parallax kits is your local Radio Shack.  On a recent visit, the store closest to me had a few smaller Parallax BASIC Stamp kits, as well as an Arduino and some Velleman kits.


Monday, December 26, 2011

SparkFun Free Day 2012

In a few weeks SparkFun Electronics will be having free day where random visitors to the website will receive a $100 gift certificate.  The fun starts on January 11th, starting at 9AM Mountain Time.
Sparkfun is a great resource for your electronics needs.  In addition to parts and kits, you can find a tutorials like this one on selecting an accelerometer breakout board, and some interesting competitions like the autonomous vehicle competition.  I found a connection with a local school, teacher Steven Kennedy from Orchard Park High School is profiled in this SparkFun ad.  If you click the previous link you can see the full resolution and you can see from the poster he even has his own youtube channel for student projects.




Friday, December 23, 2011

TI Fixed Point DSP Kit Sale

Texas Instruments is offering a 16-bit fixed-point DSP development kit for $55 until the end of the year, the C5535 eZdsp USB Stick Development Kit, normally priced at $99.  The processor is advertised as the industry's lowest-cost and lowest power DSP in its class.  Included in the kit is a free software framework for USB audio class and HID.


Thursday, December 22, 2011

Robotshop Taking Over The World's Robots

Robotshop is already the leading source for robots, now they want to control all of them with the MyRobots.com portal. The service is currently in beta, but free, so you might want to register now to try it out. The site lets you monitor and control your internet enabled robot with an open API.  If your robot doesn't have an internet connection, the MyRobots Connect kit will let you access the serial port of with an XBee wireless transceiver.

Another part of MyRobots.com that is under development is the Robot App Store, where you can sell your robot enabled apps that can run on the robot or in the cloud.

Of course, if you don't yet have a robot, you can buy one already compatible with the site from Robotshop.  Shown below is the Arduino compatible DFRobotShop Rover.  They have a lot more than robots, including development boards, soldering equipment, 3D printers and test instruments.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Electronic Guitar Pickguard



Eli Hughes, a research engineer and consultant, entered the Freescale Make It Challenge for Kinetis MCUs with an active guitar pickgaurd that really works as you can see from the video.


For the technical details on this design see this deep dive video by Eli.  It is pretty interesting how complex this design was for the contest.  He does a great job making the physics and math behind it understandable.



Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Freescale Single-Chip ARM With DSP and LCD Controller

The new K70 MCU from Freescale for graphics LCD applications features an ARM Cortex-M4 with DSP and floating point extensions.  A stand-alone development board is available and is compatible with the Frescale Tower System, the TWR-K70F120M for $109 US.  If you want to use it in a tower, the TWR-K70F120M-KIT also includes the elevator modules and serial module for $179.


Monday, December 19, 2011

EEWeb Featured Engineer

Today I'm the featured engineer on EEWeb.com.  You can read a short interview about my interests in electronics and my electrical engineering career (and see a geeky picture of me).

EEWeb is a electrical engineering community site with sections focusing on analog design, RF design, power management, embedded design, test and measure, components and PCB design.  There is also a forum, jobs and even an original electrical engineering comic.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Blackfin EZ-KIT Lite Sale

Avnet is advertising the Blackfin BF506F EZ-KIT Lite for over half off the normal price at $99US.  There is currently a problem with the website that prevented me from ordering but hopefully that will be fixed soon.

Please note this offer is valid in North America only. Offer valid until January 31, 2012, or while supplies last.

On the Analog Devices website, you can find a complete list of features for the BF506F EZ-KIT LiteYou can read more about the BF506F in the latest issues of Tech Review from Avnet.  Look for the article "Blackfin BF506F: Bringing Higher Levels of Performance to Industrial Applications" in the November/December 2011 issue. 

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

How to compile the STMicro UM0424 USB Stack with IAR 6.3

Steps to compile the STMicro UM0424 USB Stack with the newer IAR compiler versions.  Example for IAR 6.3 and  STM3210B-EVAL and Custom_HID project.

For background on this problem see the technical notes from IAR and ST:

IAR Technical Note 75890: CMSIS build problems with IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM 6.20

ST Technical Note TN0830: How to use EWARM 6.2x with projects built with EWARM 6.1 and previous versions

The technical notes explain the problem and the general solution, but here is a specific example that might help, especially if you are using the USB stack.

1. Unzip um0424.zip and open the workspace in the following path:
STM32_USB-FS-Device_Lib_V3.3.0\Project\Custom_HID\EWARM

2. Select the target board (STM3210B-EVAL) in the workspace dropdown.


3. Bring up the project options with ALT-F7 or from the menu under Project - Options.
4. Under General Options, select the tab Library Configuration, under CMSIS, check USE CMSIS.



5. Select Catagory C/C++ Compiler, under tab Preprocessor, go to Additional include directories.  Remove the two CMSIS dirs.


The following directories are left:

$PROJ_DIR$\..\inc
$PROJ_DIR$\..\..\..\Libraries\STM32_USB-FS-Device_Driver\inc
$PROJ_DIR$\..\..\..\Libraries\STM32F10x_StdPeriph_Driver\inc
$PROJ_DIR$\..\..\..\Utilities\STM32_EVAL
$PROJ_DIR$\..\..\..\Utilities\STM32_EVAL\Common
$PROJ_DIR$\..\..\..\Utilities\STM32_EVAL\STM3210B_EVAL

Click OK to save the changes to project options.

6.  Copy three files from the unused CMSIS directory to your project directories.
A.  Copy the following two files
  system_stm32f10x.h
  stm32f10x.h
from this directory:
  STM32_USB-FS-Device_Lib_V3.3.0\Libraries\CMSIS\CM3\DeviceSupport\ST\STM32F10x
to this one:
  STM32_USB-FS-Device_Lib_V3.3.0\Project\Custom_HID\inc

B.  Copy the following file
  system_stm32f10x.c
from this directory:
  STM32_USB-FS-Device_Lib_V3.3.0\Libraries\CMSIS\CM3\DeviceSupport\ST\STM32F10x
to this one:
  STM32_USB-FS-Device_Lib_V3.3.0\Project\Custom_HID\src

7. Add system_stm32f10x.c in src to the User folder in the workspace.

8. Remove the CMSIS directory from your project.



9. Rebuid All

TI Stellaris Kits On Sale

Texas Instruments has joined in on the end-of-the year sale blitz with three popular Stellaris kits.  Follow the preceding link or see the image below for coupon codes to use at the TI eStore.


*Codes valid through December 31, 2011 or while supplies last at TI's eStore
*One of each tool per customer


CadSoft Eagle 6 Release

Cadsoft has released Eagle 6 and their sluggish site may indicate it's increasing popularity.  Eagle has been popular for it's low cost and free versions, especially with DIY electronics enthusiasts and students.  You can even get a skill badge with the Eagle Logo from Adafruit.


Eagle's low cost and popularity with DIYers may be helping it gain support in industry.  For example, Texas Instruments provides a library of symbols and footprints for the MSP430 for use with Eagle.  TI also provides schematics and layout for its $4.30US MSP430 LaunchPad development board in Eagle format.


LaunchPad Schematic and PCB Trace (Created using Eagle) | Download Now

Shown above is the LaunchPad with a transciever daughterboard from the $19 RF BoosterPack and a blurb from TI about eagle support.  If you are interested in MSP430 development on other boards than the LaunchPad, tideals.com is featuring a USB Debugger/board bundle.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Microchip Development Tool Sale

Microchip is having its annual end of year sale on select development tools.  You can save on boards from Microchip and third party tools sold at microchipDIRECT until January 5, 2012.  Included in the sale are the ICD3 in circuit debugger  for $152 US and the new accessory development starter kit for android for $65.


Monday, December 12, 2011


Google honors early electronics engineer Robert Noyce with today's doodle. Noyce was part of a group of researchers who left Shockley Semiconductor in 1957 to form Fairchild Semiconductor.  Known as the traitorous eight, these men are considered the real fathers of Silicon Valley.

Noyce, born in Iowa in 1927, received a PhD from MIT in 1953 in Physics, and after working at Schockley and starting Fairchild, went on to found Intel Corporation with Gordon Moore.  Here is a brief bio of Noyce from pbs.org, and another interesting one at history-computer.com
Robert Noyce

Friday, December 9, 2011

Breadboard Oscilloscopes

Gabotronics, a developer of tools for electronics hobbyists, has released a new larger size oscilloscope display that can be mounted on a solderless breadboard.


The XMEGA Minilab is not just a mixed signal oscilloscope - it also has a meter mode, spectrum analyzer and arbitrary waveform generator with frequency sweep.  It has a micro USB connection but the interface is still under development.   The logic analyzer has 8 digital inputs and can decode UART, I2C and SPI.  The scope has 2 analog inputs with 200kHz bandwidth and 2MS/s maximum sample rate.  You can buy it direct for $69 US.  Gabotronics also sells the smaller XMEGA Protolab with similar features for $49.

UPDATE: Gabotronics has developed a few portable oscilloscopes and is developing an oscilloscope watch.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Variscite Adds High Performance ARM Module

Variscite offers system-on-modules, single board computers and evaluation kits with TI ARM processors.  They have recently released the VAR-SOM-4460 for high performance multimedia, advanced graphics and video applications.  It features the TI OMAP4460 with two ARM Cortex-A9 cores running at 1.5GHz.
If you don't need all that power and are looking for a low cost module, Variscite also offers the VAR-SOM-AM35  starting at $49 with a TI 600MHz Cortex A8.  It features a CAN bus controller and targets industrial and automotive applications.  It supports Android, Linux, Windows Embedded CE and Windows Embedded Compact 7.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Final Week of STMicroelectronics Primer Contest

The STMicroelectronics STM32 OpenWorld Application Design Contest is in the final week for submissions. Even if you weren't awarded free tools in Phase 1 of the contest you can enter your EvoPrimer design by December 14, 2011.  Judges will award prizes to 11 entrants of up to $5,000 US.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Google Search Adds Graphing Calculator

Google will now show a graph of a function entered in the search box.  Here is an example for the sinc function.
The official google search blog gives more details on the new graphing feature.

If you want more than a quick graph, I recommend Wolfram Alpha.  Here is the output for the same function.

Here is my original post on Wolfram Alpha.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Microstick 2 Low Cost PIC Development Board

The Microchip Microstick 2 (a.k.a. Microstick II) is a development board with on board USB debug compatible with MPLAB with a socket that supports 16 and 32-bit PIC MCUs and 16-bit DSCs.  It is shaped and advertised to be about the size of a stick of gum, like the more powerful gumstix open source hardware.  The Microstick 2 sells for $34.95 US and includes a USB cable, headers for connecting to proto boards and 4 different processors that can be used for development: PIC24FJ64GB002, PIC24HJ64GP502, dsPIC33FJ64MC802, and PIC32MX220F032.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Thursday, December 1, 2011

New BeagleBone Now in Stock

The new BeagleBone TI Am335x ARM  Cortex A8  development board is now in stock at  Special Computing for $79.95, here is a list of  the current BeagleBone distributors to check 


Adafruit Industries will soon have them too and is selling a custom proto board for $9.95 that fits right on top of the BeagleBone called the proto cape.  For those unfamiliar, a cape is like a daughter board for the main board like a shield for an Arduino.  (My wife wants to know why there are daughterboards and motherboards, but not father or son boards, please leave a comment if you know the answer).