I Apply SPI: Good Vibrations

This week, we take a look at the firmware involved in using the SPI bus. From the function calls to control the select pin then send out some data via the SPI bus, the form and specifics of the command structure for an accelerometer, and then we get some data flowing.

Busted data sheets, 16-bit values, and right handed chips - how can you pass this up?

Read More

Discovery: UARTs Part 3 - The Final Step

This week Andrei explains how to get a UART working using Cube. How to get printf working. And introduces the newlib standard library.

This is Andrei's final blog post of 2016, and it'll be useful for your Christmas break project where you learn about ARM processors using CubeMX and ST's Discovery board.

Read More

ESE101: Configuring MSP430 Timers

Last time I explained the basics of what a microcontroller timer is and gave an overview of how timers are configured.

This time I’ll walk you through how to configure an MSP430 timer. We’ll use it to blink a light! (By now you’ve probably realized that most embedded system demos involve blinking a light. I’m pretty sure the singularity will look a lot like a rave.)

Read More

Discovery: Button Interrupts

This week, Andrei discusses how our button can be used to generate an interrupt. Other examples include engine management computers. What things should you look out for when using interrupts. 

Don't miss the photo at the bottom of the post for a useful hack.

Read More

Discovery: Buttons

This week Andrei is writing about buttons. First a bunch of the background stuff that goes along with buttons, how the positrons scoot around and finally make it to the processor. Then he takes a look at the HAL code used to read the button position.

How hard can it be? Well sit down and get comfortable, this won't hurt a bit (we'll leave the hurting bit for next time, Bwa ha haaaaa).

Read More