Archive

Archive for the ‘Development boards’ Category

STM32 Nucleo – a new mbed platform

February 17th, 2014 4 comments

A lot of you probably both know the STM32 devices maybe even from our blog as we tend to use it a lot. You probably also know the mbed board that started as an NXP LPC1768 equipped microprocessor development DIP-like module.

Now ST Microelectronics has decided to join the adventure of the mbed world by making their own mbed development board series and adding support for 4 different STM32 devices in the mbed online compiler environment!

STM32 Nucleo

STM32 Nucleo

Read more at here:

Categories: ARM, Development boards, News, STM32 Tags:

How to stream video and audio from a Raspberry Pi with no latency

June 4th, 2013 62 comments

I have finally finished my last exams, so now I have more time to focus on some of my own projects. It has been a while since our Kickstarter campaign was successfully funded, but we are still working on making the experience better for the final users.

After the campaign ended we sent out a survey to all our backers with several questions about there address, profession and so on, but we also asked them if they had any suggestions for improvements or extra features they would like to see added to the Balanduino. A lot of people asked if we could enable wireless streaming for it.
I was personally very excited about that since I have been playing with the thought for quite a while, so when the official camera module for the Raspberry Pi became available I bought it straight away.

Raspberry Pi camera module

Read more…

LPC4350 board – which parts would you like to see reviewed

March 3rd, 2013 7 comments

We have just recently bought a one of the latest evaluation kits from Hitex, featuring the new dual-core LPC4350 from NXP – the LPC4350 Evaluation Board.

LPC4350 Getting Started Kit

LPC4350 Getting Started Kit


The processor consists of two cores, an ARM Cortex-M0, as the low-level processor and the high-end ARM Cortex-M4. Even though the two cores are of a different kind and with independently different features, they both run at a frequency of up to a stunning 204MHz.
Read more…

Categories: ARM, Development boards Tags:

Drive LCD TFT displays with an FPGA

February 22nd, 2013 17 comments

FPGA’s can be very advanced to get started using, especially if you are used to microcontrollers.
But when you first get the right feeling and the proper mindset you will soon see the endless possibilities with the programmable logic.

One of the great aspects of the logic is the speed and the full control of what happens at every single clock cycle.
With this full control it doesn’t takes many lines of code to generate a very time-critical signal such as a video signal.

In this short post I will walk thru our current test setup with an FPGA, the Spartan 3E, controlling a 18-bit 7″ 800×480 TFT display.

Spartan 3E controlling a 800×480 TFT LCD

Read more…

Categories: Development boards, FPGA, Guides Tags:

Raspberry Pi GPIO control

September 8th, 2012 13 comments

We have been working with the new Raspberry Pi board for a while but didn’t show it to you guys before now.
Many of you might already have seen and read plenty of videos and articles about it so I thought it would be more appropriate to make a tutorial on how to use the GPIO’s, and especially on how to speed up the GPIO’s.

In this video I walk you thru all the steps from installing the Raspbian image which is based upon Debian. This is by far the most complete and well working image I’ve discovered.
Together with a complete X-window system it also comes with many different developer tools preinstalled such as Python and GCC.

So go watch the video while to set up your own Raspberry Pi for GPIO control.

Read more…

Ethernet on STM32F4DISCOVERY using external PHY

August 24th, 2012 193 comments

For you who have read about the STM32F4 Cortex-M4 processor you might know that this processor family includes a 10/100 Ethernet MAC with dedicated DMA that supports supports IEEE 1588v2 hardware, MII/RMII.
This means that the only electronics needed to enable the ethernet capability is an external PHY and the Magjack connector.

On the STM3240G-EVAL evaluation board the DP83848 PHY is used and luckily for us we were able to find a simple breakout board for this chip on eBay.

DP83848 Phy breakout board


To hook up this Phy to the STM32F4DISCOVERY board a slight change in the pins, compared to the connections on the evaluation board, had to be made. Because the STM32F4DISCOVERY board only contains the 100-pin version some of the full MII pins are missing so we have to use the PHY in RMII mode.
Read more…

Categories: ARM, Development boards Tags:

mikroElektronika ARM development tools

May 28th, 2012 No comments

Recently mikroElektronika has been so kind to send us a couple of samples of their latest ARM development tool series.

The latest mikroElektronika ARM development tool series


mikroElektronika is known for their broad range of development boards especially in the PIC series where the most common board is their EasyPIC board. Now they have done it again and come up with a new product line – the ARM series.
Read more…

Categories: ARM, Development boards, Reviews, Tools Tags:

Review: ChipKIT Uno32

May 26th, 2012 11 comments

Name: ChipKIT Uno32
Distributor: Farnell
Price: £18.94 ~ $30

Evaluation Type: Development Board, PIC32
Application you used the part in: Arduino form-factored development/prototyping
Was everything in the box required?: The box only contains the board itself, nothing else
What were the biggest problems encountered?: Shield compatibility with other Arduino shields (should be 3.3V compatible)

Read more…

Categories: ARM, Development boards, Reviews Tags:

NXT Shield Library

April 18th, 2012 5 comments

After several questions on how to use the NXT Shield I decided to create an Arduino library. All the code is available at github: https://github.com/TKJElectronics/NXTShield.
The library is pretty easy to use, I have provided three examples witch demonstrates all the libraries functionalities.

I works with all official Arduinos including Arduino Mega. To use the ultrasonic sensor with an Arduino Mega, one have to connect pin 20 (SDA) to A4 and pin 21 (SCL) to A5. A new revision of the shield might use the two extra SDA and SCL pins that are near to the AREF pin on r3 versions of the new Arduino boards.

Below are some photos of the NXT Shield:
Read more…

Review: STM32F4-DISCOVERY

April 6th, 2012 43 comments

Name: STM32F4-DISCOVERY
Distributor: DigiKey
Price: ~$20

Evaluation Type: Development Board, ARM Cortex-M4
Application you used the part in: QuadCopter
Was everything in the box required?: The box only contains the board itself, nothing else
What were the biggest problems encountered?: It is hard to find a good but inexpensive or free compiler

Read more…

Categories: ARM, Development boards, Reviews Tags: