Renesas Green Energy Challenge

Renesas is giving away hundreds of development kits to contestants in the RL78 Green Energy Challenge.  Qualified applicants will receive the RL78G12 Renesas Demonstration Kit (RDK) including IAR Kickstart edition development tools. The contest runs from March 26 to August 31, 2012 with prizes of $17,500 US.  Additional prizes will be given away on a weekly basis such as development tools, Wi-Fi modules, and embedded systems books.

Silicon Labs ARM-USB Development Kit Giveaway

Silicon Labs is running a web drawing to give away the Precision32 SiM3U1xx-B-DK USB development kit.  The $99US Kit features an ARM Cortex-M3 based SiM3u167 processor.  

Processors in this family have a flexible I/O mapping capability called the Precision32 crossbar architecture for details see app note Precision32 Port I/O Crossbar Decoder (AN671.pdf).  The peripheral pin mapping can be configured with the AppBuilder GUI utililty, a part of the free Precision32 Development Suite.

ARM Announces Ultra Low Power Cortex-M0+

Today ARM introduced the Cortex-M0+ as the "world's most energy-efficient processor" in a press release.  Both Freescale and NXP have announced they will license the core in today's press releases that coincide with ARM's announcement.

Freescale is introducing the Kinetis L series as the first microcontroller to be built on the Cortex-M0+.
They list some new features of the ore including reducing the pipeline to two stages, single-cycle access to I/O, faster access to program memory, linear address space and a micro trace buffer.  Freescale has functional silicon today according to the following YouTube video.

NXP's announcement talks about the success they have had with the predecessor Cortex-M0 core.  They currently have the lowest power Cortex-M0 at 110uA/MHz, licensing the new Cortex-M0+ will enable them to continue to offer the lowest power ARM processors.  The new license is part of NXP's strategy to offer the widest range of ARM solutions as you can see in this interview.

NXP Android Accessory Kit Includes Two ARM Development Boards

Embedded Artists and NXP have developed the Android Open Accessory Application Kit (AOAA).  The kit implements a USB host interface and the Android accessory protocol used by the Android Open Accessory Development Kit (ADK)  An added bonus to this $79 US development kit is an ARM Cortex-M0 board that is detachable from the main board and features the  NXP LPC11C24 microcontroller  The main board uses an ARM Cortex-M4 NXP LPC1769 that interfaces with the second ARM through a CAN interface.

Here is a video presentation from NXP about the kit.

To purchase the kit visit the embedded artists AOAA page, it can be purchased direct or through distributors including Digi-Key and Mouser.   The embedded artists page also includes documentation and software downloads.  In addition, there is a kit resource page at the LPCware NXP community.

Tiny Serial WiFi Module Includes ARM Cortex M3

The Inventek Systems 802.11 b/g/n Serial to WiFi module makes it easy to add Wi-Fi to your embedded design.  It can be programmed from a host with a choice of serial interfaces using a simple AT command set.

These serial interfaces are provided by an STM32 ARM Cortex M3 processor as shown on the block diagram.  No software development is required for the STM32, the AT command set interface is resident in firmware.  This means your host microcontroller does not need a TCP/IP stack or RTOS.  This simplifies software development for your application - you only need to write serial I/O code to send the AT commands and process data.

An embedded wireless evaluation board is available that make it easy to connect the module to your microcontroller board for development of your WiFi application.  Both the evaluation board and the module are available from the Inventek Systems online store.

For more information on the module and evaluation board watch this video that includes a description of the functional block diagram above.

Tesla Coil Guitar Amplifier

High voltage is not just the name of a song and album from AC/DC.  The latest Another Geek Moment Video from Digi-Key shows how to use a Tesla coil to see and hear "high voltage rock and roll" without an amp or speaker.

This doesn't look safe to build for most DIYers, but I see from videos on YouTube a few people have tried this before.  It sounds a little harsh, with distortion a bit beyond a heavy metal sound, but the Digi-Key setup sounds better than most.  I wonder if you could use a tube amplifier somewhere in the circuit for a smoother sound.... If it didn't sound better, at least it would look even more extreme with the lights off.

Google Honors Heinrich Hertz Discoverer of Radio Waves

Today's Google Doodle honors the Physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz who discovered what are now called radio waves in November 11, 1886.  He name is well known because of a previous commemoration for this discovery.   The Hertz is the SI unit of frequency (which is why the abbreviation is capitalized as Hz).  Hertz made this discovery conducting experiments based on the work of James Clerk Maxwell.

Introduction to Radio Waves

Lec 27  MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism, Spring 2002

Electromagnetic Spectrum Poster by UniHedron - click for links to online retailers

ATMega Development Board Supports GPS Video Overlay Module

Decade Engineering has released the BUD Smart Application Board that is designed to display GPS and user defined video overlay using the BOB-4 on screen display module. BUD can also be used as a general-purpose Atmel megaAVR development board. It has an ATmega640, uses a serial bootloader, and can use free AVR-GCC based development tools, so an external debugger and third-party tools aren't required. The processor has 64KB flash and 4KB EEPROM, additional EEPROM can be added to the board as an option. You can easily to download example software and schematics from Decade's website, registration is not required.

The videos below show the BOB-4 used for GPS overlay with an RC plane camera in Antarctica and for a Datsun 240Z track session.  The BOB-4 can easily be used with other microcontroller development boards or a PC, it only requires 5VDC, serial data, and video I/O.

You can purchase BUD and BOB-4 from Decade Engineering's website.  The BOB-4 module is also available from Solarbotics and Farnell.  See the Decade Engineering site for additional dealers.  

Free ChipKit Boards For DesignSpark Contest

The DesignSpark chipKIT Challenge is giving away 1000 chipKIT Max32 development Kits to registered participants.

The chipKIT Max32 is an arduiono-like platform from Diligent with a Microchip PIC32MX795F512 MIPS processor and 512K Flash.  Cash prizes will be awarded for the most energy-efficient designs ranging from $5000 US for first prize to $200 for honorable mention.  Community awards will also be given, $100 vouchers for electronics and magazine subscriptions.  The deadline for entries is in March 2012.

Lattice Low-Cost PLD Breakout Board

The Lattice Semiconductor MachXO2-1200ZE Breakout Board Evaluation Kit includes a MachXO2 programmable logic device with 1280 look up tables, 108 I/O, and support for DDR, LVDS, and hardened I2C, SPI, and timer/counter.   The board is only $29.99 and includes free access to Lattice Diamond design tools.  The on-board FTDI USB allows easy connectivity and programming without additional debug hardware, power is also provided via USB.  The large prototyping/header area surrounding the chip has standard 0.1 inch spacing.