Embedded Systems

Sometimes we want to individualize a piece of hardware.  We don’t want to recompile the whole program (because then it’s hard to verify that it is the same program), and we don’t want to [...]

One of this year’s projects was taking a CC2540 and making an interactive iBeacon with it.  This turned out to be more difficult than expected… which may explain recent design trends [...]

2015 was a busy year.  The project that I had the most fun with was a bit off the beaten path compared to what I normally do.  This started off as a fun project for a friend.  It started off [...]

The TI TCA6408A is a wonderful little chip when you need a few more I/O. It’s simple to program and use… so why did pressing the button attached to one of the pins cause the chip to [...]

I’ve been working on a new project that involves the creation of an iBeacon.  For those not familiar, an iBeacon uses a Low Energy Bluetooth (BLE) advertisement to tell devices, “you [...]

I took a look at capacitive touch sensing on the MSP430 in 2011 and it was a little… lacking. I had another project come up and had a chance to play around with it again a couple months [...]

This is just a quick snippet of code for you if you happen to be using a Blackfin BF51x processor and have some space and pins on an external FPGA to spare.

I’ve noticed recently that the number of bits available in an ADC is slowly creeping up.  That makes me excited… until I look at the system accuracy. 

I had an interesting problem show up when I was working on a project at the beginning of the year.  It involved an Analog Devices Blackfin 51x series processor.  We went to transition to their [...]

I previously wrote my review of the Freescale KL25.  Since then I’ve finished my first design with the KL25. The second spin of the board will see several of the peripherals and pins [...]