Arduino FreeRTOS
For a long time I have been using the AVR port of FreeRTOS as the platform for my Arduino hardware habit. I’ve written (acquired, stolen, and corrupted) a plethora of different drivers and solutions for the various projects I’ve built over the last years. But, sometimes it would be nice to just try out a new piece of hardware in a solid multi-tasking environment…
ATmega Arduino USART in SPI Master Mode MSPIM
The AVR ATmega MCU used by the Arduino Uno and its clones and peers (Leonardo, Pro, Fio, LilyPad, etc) and the Arduino Mega have the capability to use their USART (Universal Serial Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter), also known as the Serial Port, as an additional SPI bus interface in SPI Master mode. This fact is noted in the datasheets of the ATmega328p, ATmega32u4, and the…
ArduSat SD Card Prototyping
Since my last post on the ArduSat and the idea I had to use the Supervisor node, an ATmega2561, as the core of a centralised eXtended RAM system for the Client nodes, ATmega328p “Arduino” devices, I’ve been thinking and working on a solution for building a centralised non-volatile SD Card based storage solution. With design, sometimes it is necessary to let an idea stew…
ArduSat XRAMFS Prototyping
It is not every day that I get to tell the family I’m doing “rocket science”, but I hope over the past few days, it can be an exception. Space, the final frontier. In this case, it was a lack of space and the frontier it creates, that got me think…
DS3231 RTC hwclock for Raspberry Pi and Arduino
I’ve been spending some time with the Maxim Integrated DS3231 “Extremely Accurate I2C Integrated RTC”. Many have recommended it to provide a RTC for an advanced Arduino style board called the Goldilocks, so I looked into putting one of these SOIC16 devices on the board. The bottom line is that the best device price to me is greater than the finished price for a…
Wiznet W5200 Arduino Shield by Elecrow
Oh W5100, why you so slow? For a long time the standard Arduino Ethernet Shield has been driven by the Wiznet W5100 Internet Processor. This shield and the chip upon which it is based forms the basis of just about every IP enabled networking project in the Arduino world. The Wiznet W5100 chip has some interesting features, such as direct and indirect memory access,…
Making waves – Open Music Labs’ DSP Shield – Arduino – freeRTOS
There’s a great new Arduino Uno (pre-R3) Shield available from Open Music Labs. Their Audio Codec Shield is an Arduino shield that uses the Wolfson WM8731 codec. It is capable of sampling and reproducing audio up to 88kHz, 24bit stereo, but for use with the Arduino it is practically limited to 44kHz, 16bit stereo. The Audio Codec Shield has 1/8″ stereo input and headphone output jacks, a single pole…
QuadRAM (512kByte) on Freetronics EtherMega (Arduino) ATmega2560 with freeRTOS
I’ve been spending some time integrating the Rugged Circuits QuadRAM extension for the Arduino Mega (or Freetronics EtherMega) into the freeRTOS environment. And, it is now my standard environment. Actually, the MegaRAM, a slightly cheaper 128kByt…
EtherMega (Arduino Mega 2560) and freeRTOS
This is an unboxing and porting review of the Freetronics EtherMega. It is an Arduino Mega 2560 compatible product, with the added goodness of a Wiznet W5100 Ethernet module and a MicroSD card cage on board. http://www.freetronics.com/products/eth…
freeRTOS and libraries for AVR ATmega with Eclipse IDE
I’ve created a Sourceforge project as a place to host all my current tools and working environment. Sourceforge freeRTOS & libraries for AVR ATMEGA That’s the thing about open source. Sometime you have to give back. Things I’m really happy about: …
Freetronics freeRTOS Retrograde Real Time Clock (DS1307) – Part 3 Final
In Part 2 I promised to build a very stylish finished product, that could be displayed with pride. Well, I don’t think I’ve quite achieved that. But, at least now I consider the project finished, and now have the confidence to get on with other pr…
Freetronics freeRTOS Retrograde Real Time Clock on PS3 – Part 2a
Just for interest, I decided to see how the support for AVR or Arduino was on the PS3. Using the standard tools on Ubuntu Lucid 10.4 from my OtherOS installation. A quick search for AVR on synaptic got the avr-lib, avr-gcc, and avrdude tools neede…
Freetronics freeRTOS Retrograde Real Time Clock (DS1307) – Part 2
Part 2 of this project involved learning how to use hardware PWM to control servos. And, then to make the clock actually work with retrograde analogue hands. First the functional definition. A retrograde movement in horological terms is where the …
Freetronics 2010 (Arduino Duemilanova) freeRTOS Real Time Clock (DS1307) – Part 1
I was pondering the blank space on my 2010 recently, and combining that space with some other left over kit from Dogbot, I decided to make a dual retrograde analogue clock. To build the clock I have the choice of either using NTP to sync a wireles…
Freetronics 2010 (Arduino Duemilanova) Overclocking & Review
Recently, I picked up a Freetronics 2010 from Little Bird Electronics. I thought that it would make a nice upgrade to my Dogbot test bed. It uses the same USB connector as Dogbot’s Pololu SVP, so it saves me from keeping different USB cables handy…
Melding freeRTOS with ChaN’s FatF & HD44780 LCD on Freetronics EtherMega
This post is a bit of a mixed bag, describing some software and hardware integration, together with some raving about a great tool I’ve been using. So, let’s get started. Platform Some time ago I got a Freetronics EtherMega, which is essentially a…
Make Arduino Duemilanova run NerdKits C code
Just got a NerdKit, and although it was fun to put the it all together and make it work, I like stable power and comms, so I also just bought a Duemilanova to play with too. But, also not liking IDE programming, much less dirty code that has “wiri…
Gone Bush 