Here we have a good example of how a requirement for a simple tool spirals out of control and spawns a project that takes months to complete and ends up dwarfing the project that it was originally expected to facilitate. You see, some time ago I was fiddling around with a project, something to do with data logging, probably, I’ve actually forgotten what I was up to. Said project would have used an MCU to acquire and timestamp data over an extended period of time and I quickly realised that the oscillators and quartz crystals used to generate the clock tree inside an MCU are not accurate enough to track wall-clock time over extended...
Nanocounter is an accurate frequency counter using an FPGA, STM32 and a bluetooth android app
posted by Andy
USB HID device development on the STM32 F042
posted by Andy
The STM23 F042 series is ST’s cheapest route into USB device programming for the F0 series of STM32 microcontrollers. In hacker-friendly units of one you can buy an STM32F042F6P6 (48Mhz, 32Kb flash, 6Kb SRAM, TSSOP20) for £1.47 at Farnell today. STM32F042 TSSOP20 0.65mm pitch...
A development board for the STM32F042 TSSOP package
posted by Andy
It’s been a while since I posted a new article, a delay at least partly due to me herniating a disc in my neck which left me completely unable to look downwards for any length of time and as you’ll know all too well you can’t work on circuit boards without peering down at...
Filtering the 5V USB power supply line
posted by Andy
I’m currently working on a new project that contains sensitive analogue components and have rediscovered what many before me already know, that is that the VUSB 5V line that comes out from your computer’s USB hub is noisy. In fact I was surprised at just how noisy it is....
An android reflow controller that anyone can build
posted by Andy
The story so far Welcome to the never ending saga of Andy and his reflow controllers. About a year ago I published a project writeup showing how I built a PID-based reflow controller. It featured a 640×360 graphical LCD from the Sony U5 Vivaz mobile phone and was all-surface mount. It...
Cheap China ATMega8 investigation: counterfeit or just great value?
posted by Andy
I was recently working on an all through-hole project and for prototyping purposes I’d bought myself an ATmega328P microcontroller from Farnell; you know the one, you can find it on every Arduino Uno board. The general idea was that I’d write the firmware with the luxury of 32Kb...
PCB Fail: Andy bitten by manufacturing defect
posted by Andy
Regular readers of this blog will be aware that when I want to get a batch of PCBs made I use the low-cost prototyping services available from the Chinese houses such as Seeed Studio, ITead Studio or Elecrow. It doesn’t really matter which one you choose because I’m convinced that...
From zero to a C++ STM32 development environment
posted by Andy
It’s been a while since I wrote an article about my stm32plus C++ library for the STM32 series of MCUs so I thought I’d combine a long overdue catchup with a step-by-step tutorial that will show you how to set up a completely free and unrestricted STM32 development environment from...
avr-gcc 4.9.2 and avr-libc 1.8.1 compiled for Windows
posted by Andy
It’s been about 3 years now since I last compiled up avr-gcc and avr-libc for Windows and it proved surprisingly popular with you so I’m now bringing you the latest, as of March 2015, versions of avr-gcc and avr-libc. I’ve also included avrdude 6.1 for completeness even...
Modding the STM32 F4 Discovery with a 25MHz clock
posted by Andy
In this article I’m going to show you how to do a straightforward modification to the STM32 F4 Discovery board that will change the onboard oscillator from 8MHz to 25MHz. Why do this Probably the main reason to do this is ethernet. If you’re prototyping an MII ethernet PHY then...
Arduino Uno R3 graphics accelerator shield uses no pins
posted by Andy
Hello and welcome to another in my series of unique hardware projects designed to bring you something useful that you’ve hopefully never seen before and at a price point that any hobbyist can afford. This project brings together the knowledge that I’ve gained over the last few years to bring you a graphics accelerator for the Arduino Uno R3 based on an ARM Cortex M0 core attached to a 640×360 LCD from the Sony U5 Vivaz cellphone. In previous articles you’ve seen how I’ve reverse engineered the Sony LCD and then used it in reflow oven and FPGA graphics accelerator projects. Introduction TFT LCD shields for the...
PCB soldermask colours: which one should you choose?
posted by Andy
I’m sure that all electronics hobbyists have, by now, noticed that anyone can get their PCBs printed at the online Chinese services such as Seeed Studio, ITead Studio and Elecrow. Many of you will have even used those services. I have, and I’ve used them often. Introduction When...
Exploring the KSZ8091RNA RMII ethernet PHY
posted by Andy
In my previous two articles (here, here) I’ve provided schematics and Gerbers for a breakout board that supports the Micrel KSZ8051MLL ethernet PHY. The KSZ8051MLL is an MII PHY manufactured in a reasonably easy to work with 48 pin quad-flat package. One of the burdens of MII is that it...
Hacking the HP Z800 Xeon motherboard into a standard case
posted by Andy
About four years ago now the company I work for were investing in some new servers for a project that we were working on and what turned up were quad LGA1366 socket Xeons with support for up to 192Gb of memory. In most cases two sockets were populated with Intel Xeon X5670 CPUs, hex core...
ST-Link v2. One programmer for all STM32 devices
posted by Andy
Over the last few years I’ve amassed quite a collection of STM32 development boards. Third party boards dominate my collection for the F1 series whilst I have official ST discovery boards for the F0, F4 and F1 Value Line. We’ve been lucky with the official ST discovery boards...
An FPGA sprite graphics accelerator with a 180MHz STM32F429 controller and 640 x 360 LCD
posted by Andy
A very warm welcome to my most ambitious project to date. In this project I’m going to attempt to design and build a sprite-based graphics accelerator that will function as a co-processor to an MCU. Using cheap off-the-shelf components I’m hoping to achieve a level of gaming performance that compares well to popular commercial hand-held gaming consoles. I’m hoping that I’ll learn a few new tricks along the way, and, if the ideas currently zinging around inside my head all land the right way up and in the right order then I should be able to write a demo or two, maybe even a small game as a proof of concept. Naturally...
An open-source Cortex-M0 halogen reflow oven controller with TFT LCD
posted by Andy
Introduction It’s been so long since I had the idea for this project that I can’t remember why I had the idea in the first place. At least I blame it on the passage of time although this engineer is getting on a bit now so it could easily be memory rot on my part. So here we are then, a reflow oven controller. Let’s quickly recap what a reflow oven is for those that are new around here. The two main processes used in industry to build printed circuit boards are wave soldering and reflow using a very large industrial oven that you probably can’t afford and if you could afford to buy it you probably couldn’t...
The KSZ8051MLL Ethernet PHY revisited
posted by Andy
It’s been more than a year now since I brought you my design for an ethernet PHY based on the Micrel KSZ8051MLL. The design was an unqualified success and I’ve been using it successfully with both the STM32F107 and the STM32F4 series MCUs coupled to the TCP/IP stack that I wrote...
