Controller update:Quick controller and support for the FRDM-K64F

While the controller lets you control all the GPIOs, DACs and ADCs available on your platform, you might not be interested in controlling all of them at the same time. To over come this, you can now use an option called "QuickCtl". By using this option, you will be able to use condensed version of the controller app. Using this option allows you to pick the pins that you want to control.

Controller update:Quick controller and support for the FRDM-K64F

While the controller lets you control all the GPIOs, DACs and ADCs available on your platform, you might not be interested in controlling all of them at the same time. To over come this, you can now use an option called "QuickCtl". By using this option, you will be able to use condensed version of the controller app. Using this option allows you to pick the pins that you want to control.

Getting started with the FRDM-K64F

I was lucky enough to win a FRDM-K64F platform in the recently concluded #MountainMondays.

The board is mbed enabled. Which translates to access to a free (on line) compiler and lots of great libraries.

My first experience with the YRDKRX63N

This post is going to be about my first experience with the awesome new "YRDKRX63N" kit that I received recently from the Renesas electronics Singapore. This kit was sent to me as prize for the recently held  "Renesas RX Robot Challenge" on facebook. 

Using FFT to scan for FM channels with RTL_SDR

Recently, my brother got selected for the "Beagle Bone radio challenge" road test by element14. As part of this challenge, the selected individuals had to build a working radio using the components provided by element 14. I've decided to help my brother a little with a feature called "scan". This post is going to be how we got the "scan" feature to work. This feature scans the available FM channels.

Analysis:
Tools used for analysis:

• Python 2.7
• matplot
• scipy
• dvb t dongle
• rtl_fm program

The first thing to do is analyze few samples that the rtl_fm program outputs. The rtl_fm is the program that can be used to tune into FM channels. Below is a typical command that can be invoked to tune into any FM channel.

          rtl_fm -f 91.1e6 -s 200000 -r 48000 - | aplay -r 48k -f S16_LE


Options:

-f         Specify the frequency, which is 91.1Mhz in the above line
-s         The sampling rate used (Sampling rate for the audio data decoded by RTL sdr)
-r         The output sapling rate (The sampling rate that the "rtl_fm" is going to use to output audio)

Controller

This one is still related to the my previous posts. This time around, I have added features that I had promised in my earlier posts. The usage of the software remains mainly unchanged. What has changed is the way in which the firmware is written. The firmware now uses polymorphism to make it easier to adapt the communication frame work to different hardware platforms (The selected hardware platform should support C++ as a programming language to use this approach). The current implementation makes use of polymorphism at two different places
(a) For the implementation of the communication channel (UART/serial protocol in our case)
(b) For  implementing the functions required for accessing the digital and analog peripherals

EvoPrimer Tutorial: ToolBars

 

This blog post is the first in series (hopefully, there will be more) of tutorials on the EvoPrimer dev kit from Raisonance. These tutorials will mainly concentrate on usage of the circle OS. This tutorial assumes that you already know how to create a simple Circle OS project. If you are not aware of the procedure to do so, you can follow this tutorial to learn about it.

For this tutorial, we will see how we can create and use a tool bar under Circle OS. Toolbars are the widgets that appear on the top of the LCD.

For this tutorial, we will build a simple game of gears, papers and scissors (I could not find a rock icon in Tango image library :p). The game logic itself is simple, the CPU makes a random selection of an object, either a rock(gears), paper or scissor and compares against the user selection, selected via the tool bar.