While I was on sabbatical from York University I had the opportunity to teach twice at the University of Applied Sciences in Karlsruhe, Germany (Hochschule Karlsruhe, a.k.a HsKa). I had been invited to do so by Professor Klemens Gintner, a colleague and friend who I had hosted during his sabbatical in Toronto in 2015. It […]
This is a little different. Apparently, the LPC802 board SDK / BSP is already installed in MCUXpresso, but you can't compile anything beyond the simple printf example. Anything that requires the LPC8xx.h file won't compile. So I reimported the SDK like I did for the KL25 and KL43. That means that you see two versions […]
While testing out the PIC16F88 replacement for the PIC16F84 on the INSA microcontroller teaching board I ran into issues with two things not working as per the standard sources of examples (e.g. Microchip's Developer Wiki): Interrupt Service Routines Bit setting, clearing via structures These examples appear to have been written for versions of XC8 prior […]
After a few months twiddling PIC16 bits in simulation I need to get three, three-hour lab sessions written up for the PIC16F84. The school has provided me with two versions of their PIC16F84A boards, one designed for Mechatronics students and one for EE students. The board designs date to the dawn of the Arduino era […]
Introduction Here we're going to "kick the tires" on examining a simple example program, using three 8-bit microcontrollers: the classic PIC16F84A, it's updated cousin found on the Microchip Curiosity Board, the PIC16F1619, and the ATMEGA328P made famous by the Arduino UNO. We'll be using a "debugging first" approach to programming that is intended to enable students […]
How bad and outdated is Assembler? For many of us, Assembler is the Latin of programming languages. Below, I talk about my changing perspective on this. In preparation for the embedded systems course I'll be helping to teach at the INSA in Strasbourg I'm reviewing my PIC-based teaching material, mostly based on the PIC32. This […]
As of MPLAB X 5 (v 5.05 and XC8 v2 compiler tested) you can develop projects for 8 bit MCUs like the PIC16, PIC18 and 8 bit AVR ATMEGAs. You can even reprogram your Arduino UNO board using the new Microchip PICKit 4! Here I'm going to have a look at using at the Assembler […]
The How-To Guide to Gender Equality Every Workplace Needs | A Review I once sat in on a faculty leadership meeting where bets were taken as to whether a female professor would come back from sabbatical pregnant so that she could take “more time off”. All I did in the moment was bite my cowardly […]
“Home Security and Automation” Project Description [What the project is to achieve, a half to one page. Please describe the educational component of the project.] Home security projects are relatively common for engineering and computer science students. They typically focus on a superficial and limited technical implementation. The objective of this project is to learn […]
I don't like Assembler programming. I was forced to use it in 1997 in EE 380 on the Motorola 68000 with Prof Nelson Durdle at the University of Alberta. Ditto, for C++. My C professor, Prof. Martin Mintchev, in EE 445 convinced me that it was bloated and terrible. So, since that time, I've been […]