How to Read a Power MOSFET Datasheet
One of my pet peeves is when my fellow engineers misinterpret component datasheets. This happened a few times recently in separate instances, all involving power MOSFETs. So it’s time for me to get on my soapbox. Listen up!
I was going to post an article on how to read component datasheets in general. But MOSFETs are a good place to start, and are a little more specific. I’m not the first person to write something about how to read datasheets; here are some other good...
Coding Step 3 - High-Level Requirements
Articles in this series:
- Coding Step 0 - Development Environments
- Coding Step 1 - Hello World and Makefiles
- Coding Step 2- Source Control
- Coding Step 3 - High-Level Requirements
- Coding Step 4 - Design
If this series of articles has been light on one thing it's 'coding'. If it's been light on two things the second is 'embedded'. In three articles I haven't gotten past Hello World on a desktop PC. That changes (slowly) with this article. In this article I'll...
Coding Step 2 - Source Control
Articles in this series:
- Coding Step 0 - Development Environments
- Coding Step 1 - Hello World and Makefiles
- Coding Step 2 - Source Control
- Coding Step 3 - High-Level Requirements
- Coding Step 4 - Design
When I first started out in programming, version control was not an introductory topic. Not in the least because it required a 'server' (ie, a computer which a teenaged me couldn't afford) but because it seemed difficult and only useful to teams rather than...
Coding Step 1 - Hello World and Makefiles
Articles in this series:
- Coding Step 0 - Development Environments
- Coding Step 1 - Hello World and Makefiles
- Coding Step 2 - Source Control
- Coding Step 3 - High-Level Requirements
- Coding Step 4 - Design
Step 0 discussed how to install GCC and the make utility with the expectation of writing and compiling your first C program. In this article, I discuss how to use those tools we installed last time. Specifically, how to use GCC to compile a C program and...
Coding - Step 0: Setting Up a Development Environment
Articles in this series:
- Coding Step 0 - Development Environments
- Coding Step 1 - Hello World and Makefiles
- Coding Step 2 - Source Control
- Coding Step 3 - High-Level Requirements
- Coding Step 4 - Design
You can easily find a million articles out there discussing compiler nuances, weighing the pros and cons of various data structures or discussing the optimization of databases. Those sorts of articles are fascinating reads for advanced programmers but...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - 7-segment displays & Multiplexing
Doing the 7 Segment Shuffle
The 7 segment display is ubiquitous in the modern world. Just about every digital clock, calculator and movie bomb has one. The treadmills at my gym have 6 or 7, each one displaying 3 or 4 digits. What makes the 7-seg interesting is that it presents an opportunity to make a trade off between GPIO (output pins) for time. Every 7-seg display requires 8 outputs (the 7 segments and usually either a decimal point or a...
How to make a heap profiler
We'll see how to make a heap profiler. Example code for this post makes up heapprof, a working 250-line heap profiler for programs using malloc/free.
It works out of the box on Linux (tested on "real" programs like gdb and python). The main point though is being easy to port and modify to suit your needs. The code, build and test scripts are at github.
Why roll your own heap profiler?
- It's easy! And fun, if you're that sort of person. What, not reasons enough? OK, how...
Lost Secrets of the H-Bridge, Part IV: DC Link Decoupling and Why Electrolytic Capacitors Are Not Enough
Those of you who read my earlier articles about H-bridges, and followed them closely, have noticed there's some unfinished business. Well, here it is. Just so you know, I've been nervous about writing the fourth (and hopefully final) part of this series for a while. Fourth installments after a hiatus can bring bad vibes. I mean, look what it did to George Lucas: now we have Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and
Unit Tests for Embedded Code
I originate from an electrical engineering background and my first industry experience was in a large, staid defense contractor. Both of these experiences contributed to a significant lack of knowledge with regards to software development best practices. Electrical engineers often have a backwards view of software in general; large defense contractors have similar views of software and couple it with a general disdain for any sort of automation or ‘immature’ practices. While there...
Implementing State Machines
State machines are a great way to design software but they can be difficult to implement well.To illustrate this I’ll develop a simple state machine then increase the complexity to demonstrate some of the difficulties
We’ve all washed dishes before - it’s easy isn’t it? Scrub, rinse, dry, scrub, rinse dry. Scrub the dish until all of the gunk is off of it, rinse until the soap is off, put it in the drying rack. If you want to design software to implement this you have options. You...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Interrupts
It's Too Soon To Talk About Interrupts!That, at least, could be one reaction to this chapter. But over the years I've become convinced that new microcontroller programmers should understand interrupts before being introduced to any complex peripherals such as timers, UARTs, ADCs, and all the other powerful function blocks found on a modern microcontroller. Since these peripherals are commonly used with interrupts, any introduction to them that does not...
C++ on microcontrollers 1 - introduction, and an output pin class
This blog series is about the use of C++ for modern microcontrollers. My plan is to show the gradual development of a basic I/O library. I will introduce the object-oriented C++ features that are used step by step, to provide a gentle yet practical introduction into C++ for C programmers. Reader input is very much appreciated, you might even steer me in the direction you find most interesting.
I am lazy. I am also a programmer. Luckily, being a lazy...
VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench
In an earlier article I walked through the VHDL coding of a simple design. In this article I will continue the process and create a test bench module to test the earlier design. The Xilinx ISE environment makes it pretty easy to start the testing process. To start the process, select "New Source" from the menu items under "Project". This launches the "New Source Wizard". From within the Wizard select "VHDL Test Bench" and enter the name of the new module (click 'Next' to...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Timers
Timers - Because "When" MattersComputer programs are odd things, for one reason because they have no concept of time. They may have the concept of sequential execution, but the time between instructions can be essentially any number and the program won't notice or care (unless assumptions about time have been built into the program by the programmer). But the real world is not like this. In the real world, especially the real embedded world,...
MSP430 LaunchPad Tutorial - Part 3 - ADC
In this new episode of our journey into MSP430 I will explain the basics of Analog to Digital Conversion on the MSP430G2231.We will write a program that will read an ADC channel and will toggle some leds based on the result of the conversion.
We start as usual with the inclusion of the header file for the MSP430G2231, the leds stuff and with the definition of a variable that will store the result of the conversion. We also declare a function that will initialize the ADC...
How to Build a Fixed-Point PI Controller That Just Works: Part I
This two-part article explains five tips to make a fixed-point PI controller work well. I am not going to talk about loop tuning -- there are hundreds of articles and books about that; any control-systems course will go over loop tuning enough to help you understand the fundamentals. There will always be some differences for each system you have to control, but the goals are the same: drive the average error to zero, keep the system stable, and maximize performance (keep overshoot and delay...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Buttons and Bouncing
What Is A Button?To your hardware, that is. As discussed in Introduction to Microcontrollers - More On GPIO, a button (or key, or switch, or any form of mechanical contact) is generally hooked up to a microcontroller so as to generate a certain logic level when pushed or closed or "active," and the opposite logic level when unpushed or open or "inactive." The active logic level can be either '0' or '1', but for reasons both historical and electrical, an...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Hello World
Embedded Hello WorldA standard first program on an embedded platform is the blinking LED. Getting an LED to blink demonstrates that you have your toolchain set up correctly, that you are able to download your program code into the μC, and that the μC and associated circuitry (e.g. the power supply) is all working. It can even give you good evidence as to the clock rate that your microcontroller is running (something that trips up a great many people,...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Further Beginnings
Embedded Programming BasicsThis tutorial entry will discuss some further embedded programming basics that you will need to understand before proceeding on to the LED blinky and other example programs. We will do this by looking at the general organization and types of instructions found in most microcontrollers, and how that organization and those instructions are reflected (or, in some cases, ignored) by the C programming language.
Basic CPU...VHDL tutorial - Creating a hierarchical design
In earlier blog entries I introduced some of the basic VHDL concepts. First, developing a function ('VHDL tutorial') and later verifying and refining it ('VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench' and 'VHDL tutorial - combining clocked and sequential logic'). In this entry I will describe how to...
How to Read a Power MOSFET Datasheet
One of my pet peeves is when my fellow engineers misinterpret component datasheets. This happened a few times recently in separate instances, all involving power MOSFETs. So it’s time for me to get on my soapbox. Listen up!
I was going to post an article on how to read component datasheets in general. But MOSFETs are a good place to start, and are a little more specific. I’m not the first person to write something about how to read datasheets; here are some other good...
C++ on microcontrollers 1 - introduction, and an output pin class
This blog series is about the use of C++ for modern microcontrollers. My plan is to show the gradual development of a basic I/O library. I will introduce the object-oriented C++ features that are used step by step, to provide a gentle yet practical introduction into C++ for C programmers. Reader input is very much appreciated, you might even steer me in the direction you find most interesting.
I am lazy. I am also a programmer. Luckily, being a lazy...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Further Beginnings
Embedded Programming BasicsThis tutorial entry will discuss some further embedded programming basics that you will need to understand before proceeding on to the LED blinky and other example programs. We will do this by looking at the general organization and types of instructions found in most microcontrollers, and how that organization and those instructions are reflected (or, in some cases, ignored) by the C programming language.
Basic CPU...Understanding and Preventing Overflow (I Had Too Much to Add Last Night)
Happy Thanksgiving! Maybe the memory of eating too much turkey is fresh in your mind. If so, this would be a good time to talk about overflow.
In the world of floating-point arithmetic, overflow is possible but not particularly common. You can get it when numbers become too large; IEEE double-precision floating-point numbers support a range of just under 21024, and if you go beyond that you have problems:
for k in [10, 100, 1000, 1020, 1023, 1023.9, 1023.9999, 1024]: try: ...VHDL tutorial - A practical example - part 2 - VHDL coding
In part 1 of this series we focused on the hardware design, including some of the VHDL definitions of the I/O characteristics of the CPLD part. In part 2, we will describe the VHDL logic of the CPLD for this design.
With any design, the first step to gather the requirements for the job at hand. From part 1 of this article, I have copied two sections that address some of the requirements for the CPLD design.
The data acquisition engine has the...
Byte and Switch (Part 1)
Imagine for a minute you have an electromagnet, and a microcontroller, and you want to use the microcontroller to turn the electromagnet on and off. Sounds pretty typical, right?We ask this question on our interviews of entry-level electrical engineers: what do you put between the microcontroller and the electromagnet?We used to think this kind of question was too easy, but there are a surprising number of subtleties here (and maybe a surprising number of job candidates that were missing...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Interrupts
It's Too Soon To Talk About Interrupts!That, at least, could be one reaction to this chapter. But over the years I've become convinced that new microcontroller programmers should understand interrupts before being introduced to any complex peripherals such as timers, UARTs, ADCs, and all the other powerful function blocks found on a modern microcontroller. Since these peripherals are commonly used with interrupts, any introduction to them that does not...
VHDL tutorial - Creating a hierarchical design
In earlier blog entries I introduced some of the basic VHDL concepts. First, developing a function ('VHDL tutorial') and later verifying and refining it ('VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench' and 'VHDL tutorial - combining clocked and sequential logic'). In this entry I will describe how to...
Arduino robotics #1 - motor control
Arduino Robotics
Beginner robotics is a series of article chronicling my first autonomous robot build, Clusterbot. This build is meant to be affordable, relatively easy and instructive. The total cost of the build is around $50.
1. Arduino robotics - motor control2. Arduino robotics - chassis, locomotion and power3. Arduino robotics - wiring, coding and a test run4.How to Build a Fixed-Point PI Controller That Just Works: Part I
This two-part article explains five tips to make a fixed-point PI controller work well. I am not going to talk about loop tuning -- there are hundreds of articles and books about that; any control-systems course will go over loop tuning enough to help you understand the fundamentals. There will always be some differences for each system you have to control, but the goals are the same: drive the average error to zero, keep the system stable, and maximize performance (keep overshoot and delay...
