The Design Cycle

Taming the DualShock 3 Beast
By Fred Eady
June 2013, Page 54
Taming the DualShock 3 Beast. Get ready to rumble with this Playstation game controller with USB driver code that gives access to all its pushbutton, joystick, and position sensor data.

Controlling Homebrewed Devices With a PS DualShock 3
By Fred Eady
May 2013, Page 54
What can you do with a wireless Play Station controller?

Walking the USB Bridge into Androidville
By Fred Eady
April 2013, Page 60
FTDI gave us the power to easily embed USB functionality into our projects with the FT232RL. The FT311D USB Android host IC enables us to walk across the USB bridge that FTDI built into Androidville.

Herding Data Over Bridges.
By Fred Eady
February 2013, Page 14
This month’s discussion centers on moving data back and forth between a small embedded network and the Internet.

LMX-ISM-242 State of Mind
By Fred Eady
January 2013, Page 52
While you were gone, I managed to get my hands on the official Lemos hardware.

Using the MPLAB X Factor With Data Radios
By Fred Eady
December 2012, Page 72
The PIC18F46J13 was chosen for this project because of its unique capabilities and absence of built-in USB.

Give Your Data Radio the AX8052F100.
By Fred Eady
November 2012, Page 68
There are microcontrollers that specialize in motor control and those that excel in number crunching. In this installment of Design Cycle, we are going to closely examine a microcontroller that was designed to drive RF ICs.

Building an Intelligent Data Radio
By Fred Eady
October 2012, Page
Before we’re done, I am going to show you how to scratch-build a data radio using an RF IC that is melded with a microcontroller.

Putting Basic4android in the Driver’s Seat
By Fred Eady
August 2012, Page 68
I'm a programmer and the Android devices are programmable. If you're interested in plugging into that intelligent Android brick you call a phone, get in the truck.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
June 2012, Page 68
Some IEEE 802.15.4 Transceiver Magic.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
May 2012, Page 52
Control Gadgets With Your Smart Phone.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
March 2012, Page 58
It‘s All About the Uno32 Hardware.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
February 2012, Page 52
CLC Culture.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
January 2012, Page 68
MPLAB's X Factor.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
November 2011, Page 68
You CAN Do It With the chipKIT MAX32.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
October 2011, Page 56
Invasion of the chipKIT Max32.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
September 2011, Page 68
Slaving Away From USB Host.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
August 2011, Page 54
Give Your Bits Some AIR.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
July 2011, Page 52
FlashFly System Gets Stamp of Approval

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
June 2011, Page 60
Pedaling the STC12C5A6OS2 from STC Microcontroller.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
May 2011, Page 16
Riding an RF Energy Harvester.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
April 2011, Page 60
Drive your projects with the SPECTRUM ACE ECS.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
March 2011, Page 18
Fly High With the New SPECTRUM ACE Embedded Control System.

Time for Some RTCC Translating
By Fred Eady
January 2011, Page 50
Our goals this month are to write drivers for the EA DOGM162L-A LCD and the PIC18F47J53’s hardware RTCC (Real Time Clock Calendar).

Still Rockin’ the microSD Card
By Fred Eady
December 2010, Page 54
took a while, but paper punch cards finally bit the dust. Good old RS-232 is in the rocking chair, as well.These days, thanks to the microcontroller industries’ hardware refinements and ready-to-run library code, putting a USB portal online is just as easy as building an RS-232 interface.

A Universal Micro Design
By Fred Eady
November 2010, Page 54
When I’m not writing, I’m soldering. With that, I figure most of you are not looking down the sights of a soldering iron as much as I am. So, instead of subjecting you to soldering up my SERVO-inspired experimental micro-SD card interface, I decided to design a simple and super-low-cost microSD interface card that you can build on your bench.

Thumbs Up for the Vinculum-II Toolchain.
By Fred Eady
October 2010, Page 14
The Vinculum-II embedded dual USB host controller takes all of the hard work out of interfacing and controlling USB devices. In this case the Vinculum-II goes one step further to save us both money and time.

Gettin’ Jiggy with the Vinculum-II Hardware Design
By Fred Eady
September 2010, Page 61
Heat up your soldering iron. It’s time to forge some solder, silicon, ceramics, plastic, metal, and fiberglass into an electronic instrument capable of transferring our ideas to a piece of silicon we know as the FTDI Vinculum-II. The first order of business is to pick up where we left off last month.

Taking USB Downstream
By Fred Eady
August 2010, Page 54
Up to this point, we’ve been working our USB device magic on an upstream connection to a USB host. The time has come to take on USB host responsibilities and originate a downstream connection from the Type A USB connector of a USB host we will design and assemble.

Bringing a USB-to-UART Protocol Converter to Life
By Fred Eady
July 2010, Page 58
Did you know that Microchip offers a USB 2.0 to UART protocol converter? It’s called the MCP2200.

ZeroG Goes USB
By Fred Eady
June 2010, Page 58
The ZeroG - PIC24FJ128GA006 Trainer project sparked quite a bit of Nuts & Volts reader interest.

Shuffling The TCP/IP Stack
By Fred Eady
May 2010, Page 54
This month, in addition to shuffling bits in the Microchip TCP/IP stack, we’re going to perform some soldering iron surgery.

Become a Wiz with Wireless Ethernet Devices
By Fred Eady
April 2010, Page 68
This month, we are going to design and construct the first device of the next generation of embedded wireless Ethernet devices. While we’re at it, we’ll also lay the groundwork for incorporating Microchip’s 16-bit line of microcontrollers into future Design Cycle projects.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
March 2010, Page 60
Making a mesh of things.

Go Nuts with the Kadtronix USB HID API Library
By Fred Eady
February 2010, Page 67
The Kadtronix USB HID API Library was initially designed to support Visual Basic 6 and Visual C++ 6.

SuperPIC to the 32-bit Rescue!
By Fred Eady
January 2010, Page 61
I also have the latest version of the MPLAB C32 Compiler for PIC32 microcontrollers which supports all of the new SuperPIC features. I don’t know about you, but having all of this development stuff in front of me says “Build something!”

Find the HIDden virtues of USB
By Fred Eady
December 2009, Page 49
While we were extolling the virtues of USB as an RS-232 killer, we were totally ignoring one of USB’s greatest strengths: the HID class.

Take An IO-Warrior Into Your Next Embedded Battle
By Fred Eady
November 2009, Page 49
We are all used to stuffing code into a microcontroller to enable our embedded applications.This month, the tables are turned.The microcontroller work has been done for us and we must perform some Bill Gates C++ coding to force bits back and forth across the USB pipe.

The Design Cycle | October 2009
By Fred Eady
October 2009, Page 60
Unlocking a 16-bit USB front end for the new ENC624J600 stand-alone 10/100 Ehternet controller.

USB To Ethernet Using Microchip’s Free Stacks: Part 2
By Fred Eady
September 2009, Page 76
Now that we’ve had a taste of the free Microchip TCP/IP and USB stacks, it’s time to put the chocolate in the peanut butter. As promised, this month we’ll put a Microchip PIC18F14K50 Low Pin Count USB microcontroller in front of a PIC18F67J60 Ethernet microcontroller and put another RS-232 converter IC out to pasture.

USB To Ethernet Using Microchip’s Free Stacks: Part 1
By Fred Eady
August 2009, Page 74
This month, the mountain man is coming to town as the coders at Microchip have put together a brand new TCP/IP Stack to support the new Ethernet ICs and wireless Ethernet modules that are coming out of the pipe.

Kids CAN Love Engineering
By Fred Eady
July 2009, Page 74
This year’s science station consisted of a Lenovo NetBook coupled to a USB-to-CAN bridge. The goal was to introduce the students to a working network they could actually see and touch.

Into the Guts of USB Drivers
By Fred Eady
June 2009, Page 16
When it comes to replacing a Legacy RS-232 Interface with USB, try a Microchip PIC18F14K50 USB Flash microcontroller.

And Now, A Riff From Jeff Beck
By Fred Eady
May 2009, Page 74
Designing a wireless guitar.

The Design Cycle
By Fred Eady
April 2009, Page 15
Older language, newer interface.

Demystifying USB To Serial
By Fred Eady
March 2009, Page 60
It's time to stop talking and start soldering. This month, you have your choice of USB projects.

A Reasonable Replacement For RS-232
By Fred Eady
February 2009, Page 68
I'm going to include USB interfaces on subsequent Design Cycle projects that require serial communications with a personal computer.

Managing The Real World
By Fred Eady
January 2008, Page 82
No matter how powerful a microcontroller may claim to be, a microcontroller by itself cannot do everything in a real-world, I/O-oriented embedded system. For instance, I don’t know of any microcontroller that can directly drive a one ampere resistive or inductive load directly from one of its I/O pins. That means if you’re working on putting together a microcontroller-based system that will interface to motors and relays, a great deal of your design time will be expended on the I/O interface...

Introducing the 32-bit PIC!
By Fred Eady
February 2008, Page 82
I can still remember fiddling with my very first PIC project, which was based on (at that moment in time) the brand new and unbelievable PIC16C54. I don’t recall ever complaining about the size of the PIC16C54 SRAM or its 1 µs instruction cycle time. And, I don’t recall ever filling up a PIC16C54’s program memory as we all programmed in assembler back then. As time passed, I quickly “outgrew” the PIC16C54’s limited I/O system (12 I/O lines) and moved up to using the “bigger” PIC16C55 device...

PIC32MX Internal Addressing
By Fred Eady
March 2008, Page 76
I recently saw a sign that read, “Everything is hard until you figure out how to do it.” As an adversary of all things complex, I grinned to myself as I passed the sign by on the highway. The PIC32MX is a prime candidate to fall into the spin of the highway sign writer’s sage observation. However,someone on the Microchip PIC32MX team saw that same sign somewhere along the way as the road that leads to the understanding and application of the PIC32MX is paved with easy to use C language macros...

Welcome To the land of CPLD
By Fred Eady
April 2008, Page 77
If you’ve been following Design Cycle, you know that we do lots of neat stuff with Microchip’s family of PIC microcontrollers. When a new variant of the PIC goes public — such as the PIC32 — we most always need to ride the learning curve to figure out what we can do with the new part. That’s what Design Cycle is all about. And, yep. I’m setting you up for something new. And, nope. This time it’s not a PIC...

Building A CPLD Development Kit
By Fred Eady
May 2008, Page 88
Pour some distilled water on that dried up soldering tip cleaning sponge and fire up your soldering station. In this edition of Design Cycle, we are going to tie down that Xilinx XC2C64A CPLD you see in Photo 1 onto the ExpressPCB printed circuit board we’re beginning to put together in Screenshot 1...

Firmware You Can Touch
By Fred Eady
June 2008, Page 16
I can remember as a kid I used to build simple little transistor circuits that would activate a relay when someone touched the doorknob to my room. My “DO NOT ENTER” adventures were far more exciting than the circuitry involved. As I recall, the base of the transistor was hung out to dry and connected to the doorknob with a loop of wire. When someone (my pesky little sister, for instance) injected noise into the transistor base via the doorknob, the transistor would turn on and pass current...

A Discerning Touch
By Fred Eady
July 2008, Page 76
I had the pleasure of taking last month’s Xilinx/Microchip capacitive touch sensing prototype hardware on the road to Abel Elementary School in Sarasota, FL. The occasion was Space Day, which is an annual space-science event sponsored by the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Over 150 fourth and fifth grade fingers touched the tin touch sensor, which was insulated by and tied down to a desk with a piece of cellophane tape I scarfed from a teacher’s desk. Thanks to a CleverScope and my Lenovo laptop...

Up The Logic Food Chain
By Fred Eady
August 2008, Page 79
I was a totally analog teenager. My interests then were centered on tube-based stereo equipment and tube-based guitar amplifiers. I was fat, dumb, and happily analog until I ran across a copy of the GE Transistor manual in the literature section of a local electronics parts store. I had to have it. Everything “electronic” I was reading about at the time was telling me that vacuum tubes were on their way out and transistors were the thing of the future...

Roll Your Own FPGA Design
By Fred Eady
September 2008, Page 67
To really get to know a microcontroller, CPLD, or FPGA, one may take the programming and hardware design knowledge gleaned from a factory-generated development kit and apply it to a unique personal application. We’ve paid our dues with a factory Xilinx FPGA development board. So, our goal this month is to get down and dirty with our own Xilinx XC3S50A FPGA design...

Roll Your Own WiFi Spot
By Fred Eady
October 2008, Page 76
This month, we will build a very useful data communications device that is right at home with just about any of today’s laptops, PDAs, and personal computers. Depending on your intended application, our easy-to-build PIC-based data communications device can transfer data using its serial port or its WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) capabilities. If you prefer to exclude Windows and Linux from your data communications network, the device we’re about to discuss also has the ability...

Moving Past The 2X16 LCD Display
By Fred Eady
November 2008, Page 70
Does your microcontroller project need to convey a bit more information than a standard 16 x 2 LCD can handle? If so, one of the best ways to establish a data communications session between a microcontroller-based deviceand human eyes is to pipe the human-to-device and device-to-human chatter through an RS-232 connection that you establish between the microcontroller’s USART and a personal computer’s serial port...

Avoiding Tuition At USB University
By Fred Eady
December 2008, Page 16
I have a love/hate relationship with USB. I love it because it is convenient and user friendly. I hate it because understanding the underlying processes of USB can be difficult. Think about this. You don’t have to know the down and dirty details of how a PIC ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) works to employ a PIC in a microcontroller-based application. So, why should we have to know so much about USB to put it to work for us?

Chatting Up A Thumbdrive
By Fred Eady
January 2009, Page 72
Using the CDIP2 API coupled with the VDIP2 hardware interface we've designed and built, you should have no problems including USB Flash drives in your Design Cycle.

THE DESIGN CYCLE
By Peter Best
August 2004, Page 0
Think of a number between 0 and 10. Is your number 3? Did I guess right? If I guessed right, would you say that your mind generated a random number and I just happened to be lucky enough to guess what it was? Or, do you have an affinity to the number 3? Do you have three kids? How about three cars? Why did you come up with the number 3? If I missed the guess and your number was something other than 3, how did you come up with that particular number? Was your choice of numbers really random?

The Design Cycle
By Peter Best
October 2004, Page 0
For some, debugging is the not-so-fun part of developing hardware and software applications. Whether you’re designing complex subsystems for fighter jets or putting the finishing touches on that pet microcontroller project in your workshop, be certain that debugging will be part of your design cycle.

A Specialized DSP-Equipped Microcontroller ...
By Peter Best
December 2004, Page 0
To perform DSP (Digital Signal Processing) tasks, you’ll need a bit more than just math and some fancy programming. DSP hardware traditionally came (and still can come) as a dedicated DSP IC, which requires special compilers and debugging tools.

Mastering The Art Of DSP
By Peter Best
February 2005, Page 0
Digital Signal Processing (DSP) is an art that has been applied to most every aspect of our everyday electronic existence. Your stereo’s CD player probably employs DSP technology and, if you own a fancy wireless home telephone, it will also most likely call upon the services of DSP.

A PIC-based Wi-Fi Development Platform
By Peter Best
April 2005, Page 0
Does that new laptop of yours have built-in wireless Ethernet local area network (LAN) capability? How about that new portable digital assistant (PDA) you just purchased? Does it have wireless Ethernet LAN capability, too? It seems that everything these days is wireless — except the things that you really want to be wireless.

Creating a Monster - Micro64 Style
By Peter Best
June 2005, Page 90
Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth (when I programmed my first microcontroller), an embedded programmer working with microcontrollers had very little in the way of program Flash and on-chip SRAM. In fact, the first microcontroller I learned to program only contained 512 bytes of EPROM (that’s right ... EPROM not Flash) and 24 bytes (count them again, 24 whole bytes) of SRAM.

Focus On The Flash (Atmel AT49LV1025)
By Peter Best
August 2005, Page 76
Integrating large FLASH and SRAM into microcontroller designs has become a must-know technique with the advent of microcontroller-based LAN devices. Sometimes an EEPROM just isn’t enough to hold all of those web pages you want to serve from your little PIC-based or AVR-based web server. If you’re collecting data, a large FLASH part is nice in that you can store away those accumulated readings and retrieve them intact, even if the batteries go bye-bye on your microcontroller-based data collection

DIY Easy Ethernet/Frame Thrower
By Peter Best
December 2005, Page 98
If you want to put your favorite microcontroller on a LAN, you’re going to have to provide the microcontroller with an Ethernet interface. The same goes for that little microcontroller you want to talk to over the Internet. It’s relatively easy to design the hardware part of the Ethernet interface, but it’s a bit more complicated to put the logical IP architecture into code behind the Ethernet hardware design.

Weighing In With Freescale’s HC08 Microcontrollers MCUs
By Peter Best
February 2006, Page 78
I like stuff that is easy to use. I also like easy-to-use stuff that is free. Many of you may have received a free copy of Freescale Semiconductor’s CodeWarrior Development Studio for HC08 v5.0 in the mail. If you didn’t, fire up your web browser and go to www.freescale.com/cw5 to download your free copyof the CodeWarrior HC08 Development Studio.

More Fun With Freescale’s Microcontrollers
By Peter Best
March 2006, Page 26
All of the MC68HC908MR16 groundwork was done in the previous installment of Design Cycle, and we’ve got plenty of new MC68HC908MR16 stuff to cover this time around. So, be sure to download all of the MC68HC908MR16 C project files I’ve provided so you can follow along live and in real-time with the text and new MC68HC908MR16 projects I’m about to present. I’ll stop flapping my jaws so we can get to work. Let’s begin by bringing up the MC68HC908MR16’s RS-232 serial port.

Arm Yourself With Philips Microcontrollers
By Peter Best
April 2006, Page 86
This time around, the object of our affection is the Philips LPC2100 family of 32-bit ARM7 micro-controllers. In this text, we will focus specifically on building some LPC2106 and LPC2136 ARM7 hardware from scratch. Once the hardware is assembled, I’ll walk you through some functionality testing and introduce you to some of the hardware and software tools you’ll need to program and debug the ARM7 microcontrollers...

Easy Arm Hardware
By Peter Best
June 2006, Page 88
As promised, this month we’ll combine everything hardware we’ve covered up to now and put an LPC2136 system on a professional printed circuit board (PCB). Once we’ve walked around the building of the ARM hardware, we’ll put on our ARM programmer hats and put that new piece of ARM hardware to work...

The Easiest Internet Protocol Of All
By Peter Best
July 2006, Page 90
RS-232-based serial ports are great data donkeys until you need to move data on an Ethernet LAN or throw it out onto the Internet. Most of the networking email questions I field from Nuts & Volts’ readers concern moving their data transfers away from traditional RS-232 cables and on to an Ethernet LAN or the Internet....

Temperature/Humidity Monitor
By Peter Best
August 2006, Page 74
This month, we’ll explore a useful application that employs the services of UDP to send detailed temperature and humidity data over an LAN in your home or through the routers and hosts that make up the Internet

The Land Of TCP/IP
By Peter Best
September 2006, Page 84
In this edition of Design Cycle, we’re going to march cross-country into the land of TCP/IP. Although the same hardware used to transmit and receive UDP datagrams can be used to transport TCP/IP packets, TCP/IP is a bit more complex to code than UDP. However, that’s not going to stop us from getting a microcontroller version of TCP/IP up on a LAN...

The Dish On DHCP
By Peter Best
October 2006, Page 87
DYNAMIC HOST CONFIGURATION PROTOCOL, OR DHCP, is easily understood by most folks as long as you don't start talking about the code behind it. When you've finished reading DHCP spin of Design Cycle, you'll be able to converse with the best of them about DHCP and how it works under the hood of a microcontroller...

“Discover"ing DHCP Messages
By Peter Best
November 2006, Page 92
I’ll bet that many of you took my advice to heart and read through the DHCP RFC documents. If you did, you now know that there are mountains of rules and recommended procedures for implementing DHCP. The good news is that I’ve sifted through all of that stuff and gleaned only the essential DHCP stuff we’ll need to allow a microcontroller to play in DHCP land. The information that I milked out of the DHCP RFC documents will be used to form the basis of our DHCP source code, which we will...

ZIGBEE For The Evil Genius
By Peter Best
December 2006, Page 88
OOK (On-Off Keying) modulation used in simple AM data radios is also a popular and inexpensive way to move small amounts of data between points A and B. Move up the stairs a few steps and you’ll find 802.11, which comes equipped to utilize the Internet protocols to form and maintain a network. If you’re using simple AM or FM data radios in a network, you’ll have to code most all of the application and network stuff yourself as you’re simply pumping bits out across the airwaves...

The Design Cycle
By Peter Best
January 2007, Page 80
When Rabbit Semiconductor releases a development kit, you can be sure that the electronics within that development kit are aimed at helping you learn about the latest and most popular technology. If you really want to understand how something works,purchase an associated Rabbit Development kit.For instance, I learned about 802.11b by absorbing the contents of their 802.11b development kit...

Using Ethernet Inside A PIC
By Peter Best
February 2007, Page 90
This month, we’ll discuss the virtues of the new Microchip PIC18F67J60 and build up an Ethernet system based on the single-chip Ethernet engine.

Writing Your Own Set Of Drivers
By Peter Best
March 2007, Page 84
The Microchip folks offer a free TCP/IP stack that works very well with the PIC18F67J60. That sets Microchip up a notch in my book, as there’s nothing better than a semiconductor manufacturer that offers a free support firmware package for its products...

In The Shadow Of The 8051
By Peter Best
April 2007, Page 82
I can recall making the “step up” to the eight-bit 8051 from the venerable eight-bit 8048 way back when dinosaurs still roamed the plains and valleys...

Configuration Wizardry
By Peter Best
May 2007, Page 80
If you’re standing up, maybe you want to take a seat. Last time, we started our indepth look at what makes the C8051F120 a premier 8051 drop-in solution. That Digital Crossbar stuff we looked at seemed mighty complicated...

Working With Peripherals
By Peter Best
June 2007, Page 84
All good things must come to an end and this month’s installment of Design Cycle will wrap up our look at the C8051F120 microcontroller.

Rewriting C In PICBasic Pro
By Peter Best
August 2007, Page 14
The C programming language has grown like a creeping weed extending its branches and leaves out from the personal computer (PC) world and into the realm of the microcontroller...

Laying A foundation for PING
By Peter Best
September 2007, Page 88
In the previous edition of Design Cycle, I described the steps that were necessary to “fool” your personal computer (PC) into having a conversation with the Ethernet MINI and the minimal driver code we had completed at that time...

Peter Best Circles The Drain
By Fred Eady
October 2007, Page 14
Peter and I worked together on the EDTP Ethernet MINI C-to-PBP (PICBASIC PRO) conversion project that you have been reading about in this series of Design Cycle episodes...

16 Bits Equals Twice The Fun
By Fred Eady
November 2007, Page 82
Over the years,I’ve designed most of my really serious embedded projects around eight-bit PIC microcontrollers.As for the physical sizes of the eight-bit PICs I’ve used, I’ve done eight-bit microcontroller projects with the tiny six-pin 10F PIC devices...

Ordering Drinks Over The ‘Net
By Fred Eady
December 2007, Page 76
If you’ve been keeping up with Design Cycle, we’ve been implementing Internet protocol code with PICBASIC PRO and in the rush you have been exposed to a variety of the Internet protocols and the PICs they run under.

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