Microcontrollers

This page focuses on my projects that use Texas Instruments' Stellaris ARM Cortex M4F, MSP 430 and Atmel's AVR microcontrollers.

STELLARIS LAUNCHPAD:

I was lucky enough to grab one during the first batch release from TI which came at a promotional price of $4.99 !! Power packed with numerous peripherals and decent memory space, we cannot get a better bargain for a ARM cortex M4F development tool.

MSP 430 Microcontrollers:

MSP-430G2 Launchpad is the simple 16-bit development board with many features. If you don't have one, you can grab one at TI's estore for $9.99.

ATMEL AVR Microcontrollers:

This 8-bit chap is pretty known to many of the hackers and hobbyist community in its pseudo name "Arduino". I have worked on basic gcc programming as well as Arduino platform; both has its own merits & demerits though I prefer GCC.

The following is the list of projects implemented using above microcontrollers in my blog.

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Shell Scripting to Display Bar Graphs in Linux Terminal

This week was quite hectic for me with course assignments and their merciless deadlines. One such assignment in Advanced Computer Architecture was simulation of various benchmarks in alpha architecture in simplescalar , a well-known computer architecture simulator. I was supposed to run a total of 4 benchmarks with different configurations of cache memory, instruction issue widths, commit widths, in-order execution modes, etc and I had to plot the required performance parameters for every benchmark. A conservative estimate would be around 40 plots! Since the simulation platform was Linux, I could breathe a sigh of relief since most things can be automated using a powerful tool called shell. Scripting made my life easier here since I can automate a bunch of simulations without having to keep an eye on each and every simulation which would take anywhere from 20 minutes to 20 hours. The problem arose when it came to plotting the performance results. Becau...

Programming STM32 ARM microcontrollers in Arch Linux

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the 8-bit microcontrollers were ruling the hobbyist embedded world. But today, the 32-bit ARM Cortex Microcontrollers are so inexpensive and power efficient that there is no good reason to ignore them. Here, let us see how to program a STM32 ARM cortex Microcontroller in Linux environment. The specific microcontroller used here is an STM32F103C8 (ARM cortex M3) programmed in Arch linux. Components Generic STM32F103 board (blue pill) STLINK-V2 (STM32 programmer) Female-Female connectors All the above components can be bought from ebay for less than $10 total. The STLINK-V2 is optional since you can use any of USB-SERIAL converters like FT232, CP2102, PL2303, CH340 and the built-in UART bootloader of STM32 chip to program. So if you already have any of the above serial converters, you don't really need STLINK to program the STM32F103 microcontroller. But STLINK helps if you plan to use in circuit debugging functionalities. Software The...

RTL Design & Implementation of a RISC- Single Cycle Processor -Part I

Low cost FPGA development platforms and Hardware Description Languages like Verilog & VHDL have not only made lives of Front-end VLSI Engineers easier but also hobbyists' . I have been experimenting with a 40$ Xilinx FPGA development board for couple of years and its real fun. And now, a part of my project for ASIC Design Lab course at University of Minnesota requires me to design and implement a microprocessor. Armed with my FPGA board and a new-found enthusiasm amidst my busy schedule at the U of M, I sat up to design a minimalistic CPU in Verilog. Tools Used: Verilog/VHDL Simulator (ModelSim, Icarus Verilog, Xilinx ISE,etc) A decent Code Editor (VIM) A Xilinx FPGA board (optional) ARCHITECTURE: I chose Load/Store Architecture for my microprocessor design since most RISC machines like ARM, MIPS,etc are based on this architecture. Besides that, quicker prototyping and better understanding of computer architecture was on top priority in my list...

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