Atmel‘s official toolchain for programming its AVR devices is AVR Studio. AVR Studio 5 is Windows only, but uses the gcc as its C compiler which is open-source. A viable option for Mac users is to use CrossPack, which contains precompiled versions of everything you need to develop for AVR devices, but it does not always use the latest version available.
As I’m planning to use the new ATxmega128B1 I need a newer version and so I wanted to compile everything by myself. This article gives a brief overview how to compile everything. continue reading »
Last week my DSOX3EMBD software upgrade for my Agilent DSO-X 3014A oscilloscope arrived, which enables serial triggering and analysis for the I²C and SPI procotol. In this article I want to give a brief overview what is possible with the upgrade and how it looks like. continue reading »
Rhino 4200
Vor ein paar Tagen habe ich bei
Reichelt elektronik das Beschriftungsgerät
Rhino 4200 von
DYMO entdeckt. Statt 89,95 € kostet es im
Angebot in der Promotionszeit bis zum 30. März 2012 nur 79,95 € und es gibt noch Lithium-Ionen-Akku und Netzteil gratis dazu, so dass man keine sechs
Mignon Batterien benötigt. Da ich in nächster Zeit einige Kabel verlegen und aufräumen möchte, war ich sehr angetan von der Möglichkeit Schrumpfschlauch zu bedrucken und auch spezielle Modi für Kabelfahnen und Schellen zu haben und habe gleich zugeschlagen.
Der Ersteindruck ist gut: Ein großes Display und die QWERTZ-Tastatur machen die Eingabe sehr komfortabel. continue reading »
Many sensor chips use the I²C bus, sometimes called TWI or SMBus, for communication. Most microcontrollers support I²C also natively and if not I can be implemented easily in software. Connecting I²C devices to a PC is much more difficult as soldering them onto the mainboard (where a SMBus can be found usually) is not a viable solution. Up to now I usually used a Atmel AVR microcontroller in teamwork with a FT232R (a standard USB↔RS232 converter).
The USB 2.0 successor of the FT232R, the FT232H, has a Multi-Protocol Synchronous Serial Engine (MPSSE) included which is designed to support serial interfaces such as I²C, SPI or JTAG at speeds up to 30 Mbps. This sounded to me as an interesting option to test I²C and SPI devices directly from my PC. continue reading »
When I was at the Apple Store Munich yesterday, some people where “drawing” a picture of Steve Jobs out of Post Its on the glass front of the Apple Store. You can find some information on the event on Apfeltech, MacRumors and a Facebook Page. Today, I came back to make some pictures of the finished picture. So enjoy: continue reading »
