Software design and embedded system tools. » arduino

Arduino revolution

admin — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:42:45 +0000

Yesterday I visited Arduino website and found a change in their main web page, so I continued to read their blog and found some interesting alteration
that I can summarize to you as below…

Arduino new revolution

1. Arduino has a new logo (as you can see in the picture above). I thing it is “Atom” or “Infinity”. The new logo is easy to remenber than the old logo.
2. Arduino.cc will open their own webstore on 18 October, this year. New webstore will eliminate the difficulty in ordering arduino board that made by
Arduino.cc. In the past , they sold their arduino board via distributors or electronics shop only. There’re many electronics shop in the world that sold
arduino board (some shops sold real board while some shops sold clone board). For this reason the people may confuse about how to find the electronics shop
that sold the real arduino board of Arduino.cc.

3. They released the new arduino board named “Arduino Uno” and “Arduino Mega 2560″.
Both board still use AVR chip as their main processor.
(Arduino Uno use ATmega328 as main processor while Arduino Mega 2560 use ATMega2560 as processor).
Arduino Uno is special board that replace ft232 chip (FTDI USB-to-serial chip) with ATmega8U2 (8-bit microcontroller with Programmable USB
controller).
4. They launched Tinker Tookit, the new sensors development module that can connect and use with arduino board.
5. They plan to release Arduino Ethernet board. This board isn’t the ethernet shield but it is board that include ethernet interface equipment
(such as ethernet chip , ethernet port , etc) into main PWB. So in the future , user can upload program to the board via ethernet
interface (this feature is exist in mostly embedded linux board that you can upload anything to the development board via FTP or TFTP).

To view more information , please visit Arduino.cc website and Arduino.cc blog.

I am the one who like Arduino so much and I hope this change will bring a lot of good things to Arduino developer and Arduino user all over the world.

Thank you,
Jitkasem

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Simulation software for embedded system.

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:36:16 +0000

Here , I list some softwares that used for simulate the work of microcontroller or electronics circuit.
Like below…

1.VIRTUAL BREADBOARD (VBB)
I think VBB is the best arduino simulator at this moment. This software also
include some examples of arduino model ready for simulate. You can write a source
code of arduino , draw schematics and simulate it using VBB. It can simulate the
PICMICRO and PARALLAX processor too. I recommend this software for person
who want to study how to write program for arduino but don’t want to associate with
making the real hardware for test the written program. Visit virtualbreadboard website for more information about this great software or view the demo of this software at this link.

virtual-breadboard-arduino

2. VMLAB

With this software , you can draw and simulate the circuit with the C code
source you wrote for run on the targer microcontroller (VMLAB integrate WinAVR C Compiler and you can
write C program and complier within its IDE).
It support simulation of AVR and ST62 microncontroller.
It contain many hardware virtual devices like LCD display,I2C monitor,RS232 terminal, LEDs and much more.
It also has virtual measurement device like oscilloscope so you can measure the voltage on any pin you want.
You can run the simulation continuously or step by step like what you usually do when you debugging
the normal program and you can watch the result of you circuit in real-time.
VMLAB is free and you can download it from VMLAB website.

vmlab

3. proteus

This is the most popular simulator software for embedded system I’ve ever known and I usually used it
when I want to make the prototype of my embedded project. I don’t talk too much about this software but I have an interesting videos that mention about how to simulate Arudino using proteus (look below this passage). Proteus is the software from Labcenter Electronics.

video 1

video 2

4. Simavr
It is AVR simulator software run on Linux or Cygwin/MinGW.
It support many AVR target devices such as ATTiny or ATMega microcontroller series.
Before running this software you must have avr-gcc installed on your system.
Visit Simavr website for download and read more information about it.

simavr

5. TINA-TI
This is free simulator software from Texus Instrument. It suitable for use in analog circuit simulation such as Amplifiers circuit or sersor simulators. It don’t have the section that used for design the circuit or draw PCB (it’s only simulator). Visit this site for download it.

TINA-TI

Thank you,
Admin

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Interest embedded development board

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:53:13 +0000

Fez Domino

This development board was developed by GHI Electronics. It use 32 bit ARM7 (LPC2388FBD144 run at 72 Mhz) as the main microcontroller. It also the same as other general embedded development board except
that it use Visual C# 2008 Express Edition as compiler (so you must able to write the C# language) and use Microsoft .Net Micro Framework as the template for development the program on this microcontroller.
This IDE provide the full function of debugging capability. It also provide
an emulator mode , so you can run your developed program
without burning it into the real development board.

The extra capability of FEZ Domino is that its IOs port are correspond with
the hardware standard of Arduino (Pin compatible with Arduino) ,
so it can be used together with Arduino shield board.
For more information about Fez Domino , please visit TinyCLR.com

Picture of Fez Domino board

Below are videos introduce about how to develop program on Fez domino

Thanks,

If you have some questions or want to suggest something to me , please send an email to admin@embedsoftdev.com

Admin
jitkasem pintaya

More on Arduino part II

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:51:07 +0000

Pyxis OS for Arduino.

It is open source OS for Arduino. The OS and other applications can be run from sdcard as it store the OS and application in “.bin” file (like the image file on computer or mobile phone).Pyxis also provide the FAT library
called “PFAT” for read or write EEPROM card (turn the EEPROM into a harddrive).

The demo project use two microcontrollers. One for manage the user interface part
(use arduino mega) and another one use mega2560 + dataflash for handle the whole display
(it’s on the touch screen shiled board).Visit Pyxis for more information about this interesting OS.

Below is video from youtube for the demo of Pyxis OS

Thank you,
Jitkasem Pintaya.

Reference site:
1. http://www.skewworks.com/
2. http://www.electoday.com/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=4233&extra=page%3D1

More on Arduino part I.

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 06:24:48 +0000

More on Arduino part one.

- Arduino-tone
It is the library for produce square-ware tones.It can use with ATmega8,ATmega168/328 and ATmega1280
microcontroller series.With this library,you don’t need to use DAC (Digital to Analog onverter) for building the
tones.This library use timer and PWM of microcontroller, so it will affect the usage of other PWM outputs.

- Dataflash
It is the library for make your Arduino be able to interface to the external memory chip.It’s suitable for
use in storing the voice file or use in datalogging application.The original code of this library is come
from Atmel butterfly.

- Arduino contest
Finished contest from Instructables website.This contest has a lot of interesting Arduino projects and
also contain the instruction to describe about how to make each project too ( but I don’t know that it give the
source code relate to each Arduino project or not).

- ArbotiX Robocontroller
It is control board for robots.It use AVR (ATMEGA644p) as main microcontroller and also contain the Xbee module in order to communicate with the robot by wireless radio signal.The designer of ArbotiX board also designed the library that used for interfacing with the motor of Bioloid System (this will help in controlling the motor easier).This board can be used with various Bioloid motor series (Bioloid motor is “digital servo” motor, it can be commanded via RS485 or even can communicate via Xbee too).

- Multi-touch Technology

This technology is very interesting.The person who inspire this technology is Jefferson Y. Han.He is researcher at NYU (New York University).To know more about him, please visit these links.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Han
2. http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/

This is Multi-touch presentation video.

The theory that used in Multi-touch is Total internal reflection.

Multi-touch Do-It-Yourself projects.
1. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/maximum_pc_builds_a_multitouch_surface_computer

2. http://www.instructables.com/id/S1D8LVAF3ER7VNE/

Reference site :
1. Ayarafun
2. Electoday webboard

Arduino FAT

admin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:20:32 +0000

Nowadays Fat storage device has an important role for Embedded System.Many
electronics manufacturers also integrate the unit for read Fat file system with their
products such as digital camera , mobile phone , MP3/MP4 player , GPS receiver , etc…

There are many storage device on the market that use Fat file system such as harddisk,
SD card,MMC card,SDHC,Micro SD card,Mini SD card, etc. This article mention about
only SD card.

SD Card (Secure Digital Card)
It is storage equipment that use nand flash memory to store the data (non volatile
memory).SD Card was developed from MMC card.Its body is slightly thicker than MMC card.
It can have a capacity up to 4 GB while MMC card has a maximum capacity of 512 MB.The
speed of reading and writing of SD Card is faster than MMC card.Furthermore SD card can
be locked to disable any data-writing to the card by implement security system to the
card.SD Card also has high capacity version called “SDHC”.SDHC can have the capacity from
4 GB – 32GB.Mini SD or Micro SD card also has the same principle as SD card but its size
is smaller than normal SD card.

OK, now back to the story corresponding to this article topic “Arduino FAT”. For
anyone who want to develop FAT project and don’t want to spend too much money I
suggest you develop your project with Arduino because its development enviroment is very
cheap (the board and programmer is cheap and easy to find, the compiler is free).Below is
the resource on the internet that concern with FAT project for Arduino.I think they are
practicable up until now.

1.S65-Shield
It is SDFAT library for arduino to make vfat sd-card (library of SDFat is come from
elm-chan project).

2.Arduinonut
Another Far file system for Arduino that use u-fat file system.

3.Forums from arduino.cc that I found interesting.
3.1 SD card interface
3.2 SD card read/write with Arduino

4.MicroSD module for Arduino
4.1 wireless sensor networks
4.2 blushingboy

5.MMC/SD/SDHC card library

6.fat + sdcard

7.FatFs Module Application Note

I also have another article about FAT library for STM32, you can view it here.

Thank you,
Jitkasem Pintaya.

Reference site:
1. http://www.ayarafun.com/2009/04/howto-interface-arduino-with-vfat32/#more-252
2. http://www.electoday.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1232963016
3. Picture from http://www.interfacebus.com/Secure_Digital_Card_Pinout.html

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Arduino resource on the web.

admin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:03:20 +0000

For the person who love Arduido, web list below is the resource related to Arduido I found they are very useful.

Arduino Interfacing SD / MMC Card with SPI ( Arduino FAT library )
1. Arduino Stand Alone
2.Adding a MicroSD flash card module to a SquidBee
3. SDMMC learning from arduino.cc
4. Wavehc (Arduino Library for the Adafruit Wave Shield)
5. SD card read/write with Arduino Forum
6. Download SD library at this link
7. SDcard.zip on MediaFire

Arduino development software
1. Arduino 0017

xbee for arduino
1.Xbee Arduino from Google Code

GPS Arduino
1. GPS shield download stuff
2. TinyGPS A Compact Arduino GPS/NMEA Parser

Arduino Web
1. Webduino (Simple and extensible web server for Arduino and Ethernet Shield)
2. Arduino.cc

Others
1. Arduino Command in PDF
2. Squidbee board
3. Arduino on the clothes
4. Top 40 Arduino Projects on the web
5. Infrared receiver module
6. Setting up an Arduino on a breadboard
7. Burning the Bootloader without external AVR-Writer
8. Arduino board from Sparkfun
9. Using Arduino with Wiznet I
10. Using Arduino with Wiznet II
11. Funnel (The Arduino competitor)
12. Arduino forum
13. Arduino Bootloader
14.Download the ebook for Arduino experimenter (Arduino for Beginner) Source : Adafruit

Reference site : Electoday.com

Thank you,
Jitkasem Pintaya.

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arduino software download

Introduction to Arduino.

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:42:47 +0000

Arduino is the tool used together with computer to cause the computer can receive
external signal and also make computer can send signal to control the external device
more effective than using computer alone.

The Arduino board is designed from single-chip microcontroller (Normally use AVR 8-bit
microcontrooler).It also have a software used for writing the program or command to
control the board.

Arduino can be adapted to make an intelligent tools such as the tool that can receive the
signal from switch or sensor,tool for control the lamp or motor,tool for communicate with
wireless device etc.Arduino project can work alone or work joinly with PC (work by
interaction with the program that run on PC).The board can be assembled by yourself or
buy the ready-to-use development board from vendor.It is the open hardware so everyone
are able to clone it but must use other label name.The purpose of Arduino project is to
make the low cost and easy-to-use tools for hobbyists who want to develop their simple embedded
project and don’t want to use the expensive microcontroller with complicated development
environment.

Why Arduino??
In market of microncontroller, their are many choice such as Parallax Basic
Stamp,Funnel,Pidgets,MIT’s Handyboard and from other vendors that have characteristics
similar to Arduino (That is making the board easy for develop project and underline on
programming for control the microcontroller).But Arduino has an obvious different points
from the others as you can see below…

1. Board is not expensive when compare with other boards.The cheapest Arduino board can
be obtained by making it ourselve.If you want to buy it,I think ready-to-use Arduino
board is not over $30.

2.The software used for develop Arduino can work on many platforms (Windows,Macintosh OSX
and Linux).It is easy to use for beginner and have fully capability with respect to the
professional developer’s requirement.

3.Arduino software was published as an open source.You can modify the software to
increase its capability via C++ library.If you want to deeply study its software, you can
go across to use AVR C (AVR C is prototype of Arduino) and you can add AVR-C code
directly if you want.

4.Arduino is open circuit (Open Hardware).It use the microcontroller from Atmel (ATMEGA8
and ATMEGA168).You can extend the hardware according to your demand.The circuit of Arduino board was published under the Creative Commons License so you can study about its machanism for free.

Reference site : 1. www.logicthai.net
2. http://store.fungizmos.com
3. www.10logic.com

Thank you,
Written by
Jitkasem Pintaya.

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