development

46 Articles

Bare-metal Programming On The Teensy 3

April 14, 2014 by 40 Comments

Teensy

The Teensy 3.x series of boards are amazing pieces of work, with a tiny, breadboard-friendly footprint, an improbable number of IO pins, and a powerful processor, all for under $20. [Karl Lunt] loves nearly all the features of the Teensy 3, except for one: the Arduino IDE. Yes, the most terrible, most popular IDE in existence. To fix this problem, [Karl] set up a bare-metal development environment, and lucky us, he’s chosen to share it with us.

[Karl] is using CodeBench Lite for the compiler, linker, assembler, and all that other GCC fun, but the CodeSourcery suite doesn’t have an IDE. Visual Studio 2008 Express is [Karl]’s environment of choice, but just about every other IDE out there will do the same job. Of course a make utility will be needed, and grabbing the docs for the Freescale K20 microcontroller wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

The end result is [Karl] being able to develop for the Teensy 3.X with the IDE of his choice. He was able to quickly set up a ‘blink a LED’ program with the new toolchain, although uploading the files to the Teensy does require the Teensy Loader app.

The Story Behind Developing The Sifteo From An Engineer’s Perspective

December 5, 2012 by 12 Comments

how-the-sifteo-was-developed

The video game industry must be one of the most secretive sectors when it comes to developing the electronic hardware used in the gaming consoles. The big guys don’t want to give anything away — to the competition or to the hackers who will try to get around their security measures. But it seems Sifteo doesn’t share those secretive values. We had a great time reading about the bumpy ride for the developers bringing the gaming system from concept to market. [Micah Elizabeth Scott] wrote the guest post for Adafruit Industries. She was brought on as an engineer for the Sifteo project just after the first version of the interactive gaming cube was released. From her narrative it seems like this was the top of the big hill on the roller coaster ride for the company.

What’s seen above is one gaming cube. The system developed in [Beth’s] story puts together multiple cubes for each game. The issue at hand when she joined the company was how to put more power in the hardware and rely less heavily on a computer to which it was tethered. She discusses cost of components versus features offered, how to deliver the games to the system, and all that the team learned from studying successful consoles that came before them like the long line of Nintendo hardware. It’s a fascinating read if you’re interesting in how the sausage is made.

Come See What’s Cooking In The Arduino Kitchen

August 3, 2011 by 6 Comments

arduino_labs

The crew that brought you the Arduino is always hard at work trying to bring the community closer together and to foster collaborative development. They recently rolled out a new feature on their site that is sure to be of interest to Arduino veterans and neophytes alike.

Arduino Labs is a platform which the team plans on using as an incubator of sorts, for projects that are underway, but not fully baked. Currently, they have highlighted two in-progress initiatives, including the Arduino Mega ADK, as well as a GSM/GPRS shield that the team has been developing in collaboration with Telefonica I+D.

As of right now, the site looks to be a one-way information outlet for the Arduino team to the community, but they stress that their aim is to create a more open development process within the Arduino project. While there is no official statement on the matter, we hope that the site will eventually allow members of the community to offer both their feedback and lend manpower to forthcoming projects.

[via Adafruit blog]

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LED Build Monitor Helps Keep An Eye On Your Servers

April 12, 2011 by 7 Comments

In his line of work, Hackaday reader [Pedantite] often has to monitor the build status of several continuous integration servers throughout the day. One afternoon, he got the idea to install a set of stop lights in the office in order to monitor the status of the servers, but filed it away as a “wouldn’t it be cool if…” project.

After some time had passed, he was bitten by the idea bug again and decided he would build a physical device to display the status of his build processes. This time around, he brainstormed on a smaller scale and the result is the “Indictron” you see above.

He built a simple LED board made up of four rows of four LEDs to display the build processes. Different LEDs are lit depending on the project’s current build status as well as the results of the previous build. The board uses an ATmega88, and interfaces with a compiler watchdog application using a virtual USB package made specifically for AVR micro controllers.

The end result is a simple, yet useful status board that “just works”. He does not seem to have code or schematics posted on his site at the moment, but we’re pretty sure he would share them upon request.

If you’re interested in a bit more of [Pedantite’s] work, check out his “Good Times” parental timer we featured last week.

What Development Board To Use? (Part Two)

February 14, 2011 by 43 Comments

We asked for responses to our last Development Board post, and you all followed through. We got comments, forum posts, and emails filled with your opinions. Like last time, there is no way we could cover every board, so here are a few more that seemed to be popular crowd choices. Feel free to keep sending us your favorite boards, we may end up featuring them at a later date!

Continue reading “What Development Board To Use? (Part Two)” →

What Development Board To Use?

February 1, 2011 by 173 Comments

Here at Hackaday, we see microcontroller based projects in all states of completion. Sometimes it makes the most sense to design systems from the ground up, and other times when simplicity or a quick project completion is desired, pre-built system boards are a better choice. We have compiled a list of boards that we commonly see in your submitted projects, split up by price range and with a little detail for reference.

After reading our list, sound off in the comments or on this forum post, and we may include your board in a follow-up guide at a later date. We will also be giving away 10 Hackaday stickers to the most insightful, the most original, and most useful advice given on the forum, so if you haven’t registered yet, now would be a perfect time. Winners of the sticker giveaway will be selected from the forum thread, and the final decision for prizes will be judged by the wit and whim of the Hackaday writing team. More prize details to follow in the thread. Read on for our guide based on past project submissions.

Continue reading “What Development Board To Use?” →

C Sharp Development 101 – Part 2: Toolbox Controls

October 15, 2010 by 29 Comments
In this tutorial we are going to start finding out more about the toolbox we utilized in the previous tutorial.  The Controls available in the toolbox are quite extensive and allow users to simplify a variety of everyday tasks such as manually creating and instantiating a textbox on a windows form.  At the end of this tutorial you should be comfortable finding Controls in the Visual Studio Toolbox, alter or produce code to link tools together using event handlers and ultimately get a better sense of Visual Studio, it’s layout and how to easily navigate it.