[Andy Brown] has been working on a series of tutorials revolving around the STM32 processor family. He’s using the STM32plus development board, with an STM32F1 ARM Cortex M3 processor to drive a couple of different full color graphic LCD screens. His latest installment shows how to read from the touch screen included with both displays.

After the break we’ve embedded the video from which this screenshot was taken. As an example, [Andy] has programmed a painting program to show off what the touchscreen overlay is capable of. It starts off with the calibration routine we’re all familiar with, then drops to this screen with a virtual control panel and blank canvas.

This hardware uses the Texas Instruments ADS7843 controller, which [Andy] says is extremely common and that several other manufacturers use the same communications protocols. He discusses how to communicate with the controller, and how to incorporate the data into your program. Included is an open source library which you can use in your own projects.

We’ve got to admit, we’re pretty much cheapskates when it comes to buying electronic bits online. Whether its microcontrollers or PCBs, we hate to part with money. So, we were pretty excited to hear that Texas Instruments is dishing out deals two weeks at a time to hackers, makers, and the like.

Several of you wrote in to tip us off to TI’s new site: TI Deals. Basically, they are deeply discounting various products, changing the lineup every two weeks. Now, we were expecting something like 20%-25% off certain items, but so far the TI Deals look pretty sweet. Right now, they are offering the Chronos watch kit for 50% off – which is a pretty nice discount. We’re definitely interested to see what sorts of other things will go on the chopping block in the future.

Thinking of picking up a Chronos watch? Let us know what sort of project you have planned.

If you are on the fence and need a little inspiration, check out these Chronos-based projects we have featured in the past:

Printable gripping rover is wristwatch controlled

Google two-factor authentication in a wristwatch

Wireless Sniffing and Jamming of Chronos and iclicker

Texas Instruments watch claims it’s a computer mouse

This year, students working for Texas Instruments as part of their Co-op program were challenged to construct a project around the company’s MSP430 microcontroller. A team of three students, [Max Thrun, Mark Labbato, Ian Cathey] decided to build something that would fit perfectly in any college student’s dorm room – an RGB LED coffee table.

We’ve covered RGB LED tables in the past, but as far as we can tell this is the first MSP430 based unit we’ve seen. Microcontroller aside, the table features a lot of items that are considered “standard equipment” when it comes to these sorts of living room LED installations. The trio installed 128 RGB LEDs into their table, isolating each one using a wooden grid, and used some frosted glass to diffuse the display a bit.

What really makes this table stand out is the software. The team wrote an application that creates a Fast Fourier Transform of whatever music is being played, in order to find beats and generate real-time visualizations for their table. The result is a pleasing display that’s sure to be a hit at parties.

Check out the video below to see their creation in action.

Cheap things come to those who wait. If you’ve had your eye on a TI Experimenters Board (MSP-EXP430FR5739) now’s the time to pull the trigger. You can use the coupon code MSP430_FRAM to get 50% off. This pulls the total price down to $14.50 plus shipping with several readers reporting free shipping.

The board features an upgraded MSP430. Instead of using flash memory, it’s got  ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) which boots the power savings of these aready lean-mean chips.

We’ve posted a few deals from Texas Instruments before, like the announcement of the Launchpad which was just $4.30, as well as a coupon-deal gone awry with the evalBot. There were huge threads in those posts reporting back how long shipping took, as well as how well the codes worked. So feel free to share your thoughts on this deal by leaving a polite comment.

Of course if you get one, we want to see what you do with it. Don’t forget to write up your projects and send in a tip.

Texas Instruments just released a product they call the Capacitive Touch Boosterpack which is basically a touch-sensitive shield for the Launchpad. The video after the break shows an unboxing and demonstration of the product which TI is launching with a $4.30 limited-time price tag. The red PCB itself has a capacitive touch button in the center, surrounded by a touch-scroll wheel, which is centered in a proximity senor that takes up the rest of the board. There are also nine LEDs which look like they’re soldered on the underside of the board, through routed holes that mount them flush with the top surface. The pack also comes with a new MSP430 microcontroller, the G2452, which has 8 KB of flash memory and takes care of calibrating, reading, and processing signals from the board thanks to the software package that goes along with the add-on kit.

Looks quite nice. There’s a heck of a lot of information in the documentation for this hardware. We do wish it was a bit easier to find board layout information, but we’re sure it’s there somewhere.

[Thanks t11r via Four-Three-oh!]

In case you missed it, Texas Instruments sells a little robot called the Evalbot as a development platform for ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers. Since its release we’ve seen a few hacks on the hardware; the image above is a proof of concept for developing for the device under Linux. We have criticized TI in the past for not natively supporting Linux with their IDEs. We’re not sure how it will play out, but they have added new software package options to go along with the hardware. You’ll notice on their PR page that there is now an option to use CodeSourcery. It is a trial of the full version, but at least it is a step in the GNU direction from their previous offering.

The Hackaday team has been talking off and on with TI about the hardware. We’re happy to say that they’ve been listening to the Internet community about their likes and dislikes; following various online groups that have sprouted up to talk about Evalbot projects. It sounds like they’re thinking about hosting a contest using the hardware. So maybe you want to get your hands on one so that you can familiarize yourself and hit the ground running if/when that contest starts. You’re in luck, we can help save you a few bucks.

The first time that Texas Instruments tried out a $125-off coupon code the deal got away from them. It had been meant for attendees of the ESC Boston conference. They honored the deals that went through before the proverbial run-on-the-bank got shut down. This time around they’re using serialized deal codes to limit the number of give-aways. We’ve got 200 of them just waiting for our loyal readers to use. One code will let you purchase one Evalbot for just $25 (instead of $150).

Please take a moment to decide if you actually want (and will use) one of these robots, and decide if you are willing to shell out the $25 to order it. You see, we don’t want this deal going to waste. If you decide this is for you, send an email requesting a code to:We’re all out! We’ll dish out the deal on a first-emailed-first-served basis. We will update this post when all 200 have been claimed.

We will not tolerate anyone gaming the system and so we reserve the right to disqualify any email submission for any reason in an attempt to maintain some semblance of fairness. Also… if you’re planning to pick this up just to resell it for cash you’re a loser.

[update: Those who emailed us requesting a code should begin receiving replies this evening or tomorrow.]

[Update 2: here is the specific bot you should be trying to buy. ]

TI has recently been fighting to gain traction in the market of low-cost microcontroller development platforms with products such as the MSP430 Value Line Launchpad.  In order to meet the needs of a rapidly growing customer base and appeal to a broader market they have recently released Grace beta Graphical Peripheral Configuration Tool. Grace is a plugin for TI’s own Code-Composer Studio (CCS) IDE that allows users to graphically control many aspecst of MSP430 development and is compatible with all MSP430F2xx/G2xx MCUs.

Utilizing a simple “wizard-like” interface, Grace allows users to quickly and efficiently control peripherals such clocks, timers, OpAmps,  ADCs, GPIOs, comparators, and even more advanced features such as serial communications or the configuration of low-level register settings. Once everything is configured as desired, Grace outputs standard C code that can be debugged and handled as if it were hand-written.

Although Code-Composer Studio is not free, there is a 30-day full-featured trial available as well as other (restricted) free licensing options as well. Since CCS is based on the Eclipse open-source  software development framework, perhaps we will see other similar development tools in the near future. Although not an apples-to-apples comparison, we could imagine that such a tool might provide many novice users with a simple and cost-effective alternative to the Arduino IDE.

The questions then becomes: If a later incarnation were to raise the MSP430 line to “Arduino-killer” status, would it be rejoiced as such or would it simply then become a new target for those die-hard microcontroller purists who love to shout “overkill” on the forums at the slightest provocation? Of course we would love to hear your take in the comments below!

We have some beefs about how Texas Instruments does things, the biggest of which is their lack of support for development under Linux operating systems. But if they build it, someone will try to get Linux involved in one form or another. This time around, [BLuRry] put together a guide to developing for the Evalbot under Linux. He got a shove in the right direction from the code package that went along with that nunchuck-controlled Evalbot. Picking apart that example to the bare essentials he wrote up the process of setting up the cross-compiling toolchain in a virtual machine so as not to clutter your system. From there he details how to set up and use Eclipse when starting a new project. What what did he choose for a Hello World experience? Well a plain “Hello World” was first but right on its heels is the “Hello Hack-A-Day” seen above. So if you’ve got one of these on hand get out there and start coding for it.

At the beginning of the Month we came across a coupon code for a free eZ430-F2013 development stick. TI has given these things now and again so we took the opportunity to acquire one. It arrived yesterday and we’ve spent just a bit of time looking it over. Above you can see the first project completed; Hello World on a salvaged Nokia cell phone screen. Join us after the break for our thoughts on the device, as well as more pictures and details.

The development board comes as a USB dongle. But this isn’t the extent of the packaging. It came in a DVD case, along with a CD that has User’s Guides and “web resources” on it. We don’t need this, but okay. But wait, that’s not how it shipped. The DVD case came inside of a 9″x9″x10.5″ box that was shipped priority overnight via FedEx. That seems a bit wasteful, especially considering that we didn’t pay a dime for the hardware or the delivery. A manila envelope would have sufficed, but if it’s free we don’t get to make the decisions about this stuff.

Inside you’ll find the mainboard with a USB connector that makes up the programmer itself. The hind-end is small detachable board that hosts the F2013 microcontroller. The case was a bit finicky to remove but a little bit of prying does the trick.

0451:f430 Texas Instruments, Inc. MSP-FET430UIF JTAG Tool

When plugged in an LED on the daughter board happily blinks away as the example firmware intended. We were pleased to see that dongle was recognized by Ubuntu 10.04 as a UIF device that MSPdebug, the software we used to program with the Launchpad, can talk to. Time to make this little guy do something.

Here’s the microcontroller board. Note the small-pitch 4-pin socket for connecting to the programmer board. Also note the unpopulated 0.1″ pitch pads.

Here’s the underside of that board after adding two 7×1 pin sockets. This is where we discovered a nice design consideration. Since we didn’t have any IDC sockets that are this large (to plug into a pin header on is board) we went with the pin socket and will just insert jumper wires. Now that they’re installed we realized that the pin-out from the bottom is the same as the chip would be from the top; pin 1 in the upper left and pin 14 in the upper right. Time to hook this up to something and start coding.

We pulled out an old Nokia 3595 LCD screen that we’ve used in the past because it uses 3.3V which is the upper end for this chip. Porting the code over was a snap since it was already used with another MSP430 chip. A few minutes later out pops ‘Hello World’. To review: it was free, works with Linux tools, and it seems like the code works across several different chips. Win!

Our Thoughts on the Hardware

So what do we think about this as a development package? If it’s free, great! We’re a little baffled because it seems to be disposable hardware. No thought has gone into using the programmer for anything other than TI’s daughter boards that have the fine pitch connector. We’ll most likely end up gluing a pin header to the plastic case and soldering those pins to the proper connections to make this more robust. We do get the feeling that one hand doesn’t know what the other’s doing over there because the Launchpad feels like superior hardware. That being said, neither of the development boards have made it easy to program and debug off-board so for now we consider both of these as novelties.

You do have to give them credit though, by giving it away for free we now have an MSP430 chip already on hand for the next time we’re prototyping a small project. And this might be just the thing to use the 1.8V serial EEPROM we ordered a few years back thinking we were getting the 5V version.

Resources

It’s nothing special, and probably of no use to anyone, but here’s the git repository for the hello world code.

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These calculators are networked together, able to pass information and play games on a multi-screen playing field. All of this is thanks to [Christopher Mitchell's] work on a package called CalcNet. This networking software takes advantage of [Christopher's] shell and GUI for TI calculators called Doors CS. To demonstrate the high reliability and throughput of his network he wrote NetPong, a multi-calculator version of the popular game that you can watch in a clip after the break.

This is definitely an instance where asking ‘why?’ is the wrong question. We’re more interested in the how, a question you can answer for yourself by reading the whitepapers he provided in both of the links above. [Christopher] knows what he’s doing, he proved that with his face-recognizing augmented reality.

[Chris Muncy] just received his EvalBot from TI and took some pictures of the assembly process. He was one of the lucky folks that picked up the kit for just $25 using a short-lived coupon code. Seeing the kit makes us wish we had ordered one. There is some assembly required but as you can see, it’s pretty much just mechanical assembly of the wheels and the front bumper arms.

We think the wheel design is quite good. It consists of two small gearhead motors mounted on the rectangular PCB parts that you can see on the right portion of the image above. Those mount to the circular mainboard using metal L brackets. The wheels themselves are three circular pieces of PCB, one with a smaller diameter sandwiched in between its two larger cousins. This creates a channel that is perfect for a neoprene O-ring to give the wheel traction. The main board uses an optical sensors and a hole through all three parts to function as a rotation counter.

It’s a fancy piece of hardware and we can’t wait to see what you can do with it! If you’ve got one, we want to hear about your adventures.

When you see $125 off something you probably assume it cost several times that to start with. Nope, this drastic discount leaves just $25 plus shipping. Use coupon-code: 2JLP-R4XRT3 when ordering the little rover. There’s a quick video snippet of it embedded after the break.

What you’ll get is a Stellaris ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller on a board with a bunch of goodies.

• MicroSD slot
• USB host and device connectors
• I2C audio with speakers
• Ethernet connector
• 96×6 OLED display
• Motors
• Optosensors
• Bump detectors

As always, we want to hear about the hacks you come up with once you have this little guy in hand.

[update, the code is now expired]

[final update -- Someone from TI explains what is going on.]

—-  from the comments.

As some posts already note, the coupon code is only available to ESC Boston attendees. That said, we’re psyched about all of your interest and understand there seems to have been some confusion, so TI plans to fulfill all of the finalized orders to date. We’re working on some logistics in getting the code up and running again for ESC Boston attendees, but proof of ESC registration will be required. Stay tuned.

We hear you about the e-store and are working as quickly as possible to avoid issues in the future. Thanks for your patience.

Bottom line – we’re glad to see the excitement around EVALBOT and look forward to checking out your projects! We encourage you to share them on our e2e Forums at http://e2e.ti.com/

-Jean Anne Booth, Texas Instruments

——-

[Thanks GDM]

Wanting to use my TI Launchpad as more than just a development board I thought I’d do a few experiments using it as an in-system programmer. After a few tripping points I was able to get it working and then some. It seems that the device is not limited to just the value line of microcontrollers it was intended to support. In the image above I’m using it to program an MSP430F2272 which is a pretty powerful little chip with 32 KB of program space. Click through the break for more information on the setup.

I started by etching a breakout board for the 38TSSOP package so that I had something usable. Drag soldering to the rescue, this turned out to be easier than I had expected.

Once I had access to the pins it was just a matter of checking out the connections used on the Launchpad board and hooking up the f2272. It turns out you only need three; TEST, RST, and GND. You can power the circuit externally or make a fourth connection to the voltage. I was sad to see that the jumper header doesn’t have GND on it so in addition to using an IDC cable, you can see in the image at the top that there’s an orange jumper wire going to the ground-pin breakout from the chip socket.

But I didn’t quite have it working yet. I had problems reliably connecting to and talking to the chip. After studying the schematic (ZIP) I realized I was being plagued by a floating reset pin. I grabbed a 4.7k resistor as a pull-up to volatge and communications are now perfect. For my test code I’m building a small version of pong using a Nokia 3595 LCD screen.

I’m using 100% open source tools for this which means I’m not limited to a 2k code output. You can setup these tools for yourself by following our TI Launchpad on Linux tutorial.

[Brandon Wilson] came up with a way to exploit the Play Station using a TI84 calculator. This uses the same PSGroove open source code that we looked at last week. That package was running on the Teensy, which is currently sold out (we’d guess because people want to run the exploit). There’s a video demonstration of this new trick after the break. The calculator connects via a USB A to USB mini-B cable which comes with the calculator and is also used to charge the PS3 controllers. Once the connection is made, launch the software on the calculator, power cycle the PS3, and turn it on with the familiar power-eject button presses. The only problem with the system is that the calculator needs to be connected every time you boot.

[Thanks Scott]

[Michael Vincent] turned his TI-84 Plus into a spectrum analyzer. By running some assembly code on the device the link port can be used as an I2C bus (something we’ll have to keep in mind). After being inspired by the cell phone spectrum analyzer he set out to build a module compatible with the calculator by using an I2C port expander to interface with a radio receiver module. Now he can sniff out signals between 2.400 and 2.495 GHz and display the finds like in the image above.

[Thanks Cecil]