• ARM
• ARM11
• Assembly
• LED
• Mbed
• Mechanical Design
• Programming
• Raspberry Pi
• Robots
• Test

We are a team of Undergraduate Engineers embarking on an exciting journey into the embedded realm of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Development. Follow us on our facebook fanpage at https://www.facebook.com/coconutpi or stay up to date as we post our fortnightly blog updates to Designspark! Our team is also open to suggestions and opinions from the Designspark Engineering community. You can either comment on our blog posts or just scroll through our daily pictures and updates on our facebook page and leave a helpful comment or suggestion for us to consider in our development process!

• Accelerometers
• Development Kits - Electronics
• Education & Learning Applications
• FPGA
• LED
• Programmable Logic
• Programming
• Verilog

Chip Hack was a two day workshop that ran over the weekend of 20th and 21st April and provided an introduction to FPGA programming for complete beginners.

• Assembly
• Mbed
• Memory
• PIC
• PIC24
• Test

The title of this blog could be compared to The Curse of the Mummy (Tutankhamen) for the engineers that work on Microchip PICs but they are so comical that it’s more like the Curse of the Were-Rabbi

• Arduino
• ARM
• Cortex-M
• Development Kits - Electronics
• Display & Lighting
• Ethernet
• FLASH
• Mbed
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• PIC
• Power
• Robots
• Test
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)

There can’t be many people who don't know about the ARM mbed. This has been right up there with the Arduino as the standard for development boards for some time now. However over the last year we ha

• Human Machine Interface
• Memory
• PIC
• Raspberry Pi
• Research Phase
• SERIAL
• Standards
• Test
• Wired

One of the ways the Raspberry Pi keeps costs low is by omitting a real-time clock (RTC) chip. When connected to the Internet system time can be set from NTP servers, but when you don't have Internet a

• Communication
• Enclosures
• Ethernet
• FRAM
• Memory
• PIC
• Raspberry Pi
• RS232
• SERIAL
• Test
• Wired

In a blog post last month I looked at how a Raspberry Pi can be used to emulate a formidable IBM mainframe, and in this post I describe how a pair can be used to emulate VAX computers

• Analogue
• ARM
• Capacitors
• Circuit Design
• Communication
• Cortex-M
• DSP
• FLASH
• Functional Test
• Human Machine Interface
• Interconnect
• LCD
• Mbed
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Research Phase
• Resistors
• Serial Peripheral Interface
• Test
• Trial & Evaluation

There are different ways for a system to interact with the real world. Starting with the use of a simple LED that describes the state of a process and going all the way down to complicated graphic LCD

• Analogue
• Capacitors
• Circuit Design
• Communication
• Display & Lighting
• DSP
• dsPIC
• EEPROM
• Ethernet
• FLASH
• Functional Test
• GAL
• Human Machine Interface
• Interconnect
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• PIC
• PIC24
• PIC32
• Power
• Programming
• Research Phase
• Resistors
• RS232
• RX
• SERIAL
• Serial Peripheral Interface
• Solder
• Test
• Trial & Evaluation

An Internet connection would be a valuable addition to many projects, but often designers are put off by the complexities involved. The ‘NetWorker’, which consists of a small printed circuit board

• FLASH
• LASER
• Memory
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Raspberry Pi
• Test

As I turned my head, a blackboard rubber travelling at what seamed 100mph whooshed past my ear leaving a trail of chalk dust. Luckily I wasn't the target, and it was a good job too, as the origin of t

• Arduino
• Capacitors
• Circuit Design
• Display & Lighting
• Human Machine Interface
• LCD
• Manufacture
• Memory
• PCB
• PIC
• Power
• Resistors
• SERIAL
• Test

  Introduction The requirement was to add a digital readout to an otherwise manually bend roller machine so that we could accurately monitor the amount of material fed into the machine. Th

• ARM
• Assembly
• Development Kits - Electronics
• FLASH
• Interconnect
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Raspberry Pi
• Robots
• RX
• SERIAL
• Solder
• Test

This post is not about Raspberry Pi. Sorry about that; I thought I'd take a break from all that heady stuff about HD graphics and ARM processors to look at a similar sized and priced beginners' computer board, but located towards the Arduino end of the processor power spectrum. It comes as a kit of parts and you have to solder it together yourself.

• Accelerometers
• ARM
• Beagle
• Coldfire
• Communication
• Cortex-M
• Development Kits - Electronics
• DSP
• dsPIC
• Freescale
• Interconnect
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• PIC
• PIC32
• Power
• Programming
• Raspberry Pi
• Research Phase
• Robots
• Sensors
• Serial Peripheral Interface
• Test

As I wrote this blog Raspberry Pi exploded on the scene taking everyone by surprise with the sheer volume of people wanting to buy it. Many readers will have to wait a while to get their hands on one so why not use the time to investigate rather more interesting projects than just writing games? How about giving a humanoid walking robot some Artificial Intelligence…

• ARM
• FLASH
• FPGA
• FRAM
• Functional Test
• GAL
• GSM
• Human Machine Interface
• Memory
• PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect)
• PIC
• Research Phase
• Test

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas Steill's group's OpenBTS setup at Fachhochschule Kaiserslautern

• Analogue
• Capacitors
• Ethernet
• Memory
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Raspberry Pi
• Research Phase
• Standards
• Test

Over the weekend I took home one of the Raspberry Pi prototypes. From the moment I took the first byte of the Pi, memories came flooding back...

• Development Kits - Electronics
• Display & Lighting
• FLASH
• Functional Test
• Mbed
• Memory
• PIC
• Power
• Research Phase
• Test
• Trial & Evaluation
• x86

For the hardware engineer, software is regarded as a necessary evil; totally unintelligible and the root cause of most system crashes. The software engineer on the other hand, views the hardware as a

• Analogue
• Circuit Design
• Development Kits - Electronics
• Display & Lighting
• EEPROM
• FLASH
• Human Machine Interface
• Mbed
• Memory
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Research Phase
• RS232
• Sensors
• SERIAL
• Serial Peripheral Interface
• Solder
• SRAM
• Test
• Trial & Evaluation
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)
• Wireless

The GA144 from GreenArrays is a highly novel 144 core processor that combines high performance with low power consumption. This post covers initial experiences with breadboarding the GA144 and using t

• Analogue
• Mbed
• Memory
• PIC
• PIC24
• Power
• Programming
• Test
• VHDL

While some people are throwing more and more powerful micro’s at problems or starting to use RTOS in embedded systems some of us are looking to use smaller and smaller micros and push down power usa

• Batteries
• Communication
• Display & Lighting
• DSP
• dsPIC
• Ethernet
• GPS
• Human Machine Interface
• Mbed
• Memory
• MiWi
• PIC
• PIC24
• Power
• Scientific Applications
• Serial Peripheral Interface
• Test
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)
• Wired
• Wireless
• Zigbee

Yesterday, anyone following me on Twitter will have seen that I attended the 2010 Microchip EDF (Embedded Design Forum) at RS Components in Corby. As an engineer it’s important for me and my employe

• 8051
• FLASH
• Human Machine Interface
• Memory
• PIC
• Robots
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)

These awesome robots contain two TI systems-on-chips (SoCs): the CC2511F32 radio transceiver, 8051 MCU, 32-kilobyte (kB) Flash memory and full-speed USB interface in the body of the toy; and the CC2

• ARM
• Cortex-M
• Freescale
• Functional Test
• H8
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• Microprocessors
• MIPS
• PIC
• Power
• RENESAS
• Safety Testing
• SuperH
• Test
• Wireless

This is an extract from an article in the latest eTech MagazineThe general-purpose microcontroller, or MCU, is now a commodity product. Perhaps this is an overstatement. But in one sense, at least, it

• Accelerometers
• Circuit Design
• Development Kits - Electronics
• Display & Lighting
• DRAM
• Enclosures
• FLASH
• FRAM
• Interconnect
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Sensors
• Temperature Sensors
• Test
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)

There has been a lot of buzz and stories going around about the first micro to have FRAM (Ferroelectric memory). FRAM has been talk about it not only here on DesignSpark but on element14 and was comme

• 720
• Beagle
• Communication
• Enclosures
• Ethernet
• FLASH
• Interconnect
• Memory
• PIC
• Power
• Raspberry Pi
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)

Priced between the Beagle Board and the Raspberry Pi, the new kid on the block is Via Technologies APC 8750.  It runs on a preinstalled custom Android Operating System and includes a basic s

• Analogue
• Arduino
• ARM
• ARM11
• Development Kits - Electronics
• Display & Lighting
• FLASH
• H8
• Human Machine Interface
• Interconnect
• Manufacture
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Raspberry Pi
• Research Phase
• Robots
• Sensors
• SERIAL
• Serial Peripheral Interface
• Test

A major highlight of a week of activity at the Sci-Fi London festival was the Horizon Spectrum event at the BFI Southbank celebrating 30 years of the Sinclair Spectrum 'home' computer. I attended the

• ARM
• Circuit Design
• Communication
• Functional Test
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• PIC
• Power
• Research Phase
• Safety Testing
• Test

Texas Instruments have recently launched a new range of ARM-core microcontrollers called Hercules. They contain redundant circuits to detect and deal with faults when used in safety-critical applications. Specifically, two Cortex R4F cores run a common program in lockstep and a comparator unit makes sure they produce the same outputs.

• Analogue
• Batteries
• Communication
• Display & Lighting
• Functional Test
• Human Machine Interface
• LCD
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• Oscilloscopes
• PIC
• Power
• SERIAL
• Serial Peripheral Interface
• Test
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)

Signals within electronic systems are becoming faster, more numerous, and more complex. The ability to capture fleeting glitches, instability or other signal errors puts ever more demanding requiremen

• Mbed
• Memory
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Raspberry Pi
• Research Phase
• Robots
• Test

Miles Berry is Chair of the National Association of Advisers for Computers in Education, Subject Leader for ICT Education at the University of Roehampton, and a consultant and frequent speaker and aut

• ARM
• Batteries
• Communication
• Cortex-A
• Cortex-M
• Cortex-R
• Development Kits - Electronics
• DSP
• Enclosures
• FLASH
• Freescale
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• Microprocessors
• MIPS
• PIC
• PIC32
• Power
• Reliability Testing
• Research Phase
• Robots
• Test

There was a time when deciding which microprocessor to use for a new project was pretty easy: there weren’t that many to choose from. Who remembers the Intel 8080, Motorola 6800 or the CBM 6502? The

• Display & Lighting
• FIFO
• FLASH
• Functional Test
• Mbed
• Memory
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Research Phase
• Serial Peripheral Interface
• Test
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)

The mbed has a hidden I2S port, it is only now that they are making it fully public on the new demo board, soon to be released by RS Components. I investigate with the TLV320AIC23B Audio CODEC.

• FLASH
• Interconnect
• Memory
• PIC
• Power
• Raspberry Pi
• Test

Like my colleague at RS, I had a chance to play with one of the first Raspberry Pi boards in the UK. My remit was to see how easy it is for someone unfamiliar with Linux to get a system working.

• Development Kits - Electronics
• Enclosures
• FPGA
• Functional Test
• Human Machine Interface
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• PIC
• Power
• Research Phase
• Test
• Trial & Evaluation

Roughly ten years ago, the embedded world was a simpler place (or at least it seemed to be), and the development kit off ered an excellent starting point for an embedded design project. Like the prove

• 802.11b
• Arduino
• ARM
• Beagle
• Cortex-M
• Development Kits - Electronics
• Ethernet
• Freescale
• Functional Test
• Interconnect
• LCD
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• PIC
• Research Phase
• RS232
• SERIAL
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)
• WiFi

An extract from an article in Etech issue 9 by Dr William Marshal, Twiiter @WilliamMarshal1The competition for hearts and minds in the opensource embedded development community continues apace with mi

• Arduino
• Development Kits - Electronics
• EEPROM
• FLASH
• FPGA
• Human Machine Interface
• Interconnect
• Memory
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Test
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)
• Verilog
• VHDL

Over the last few months I’ve been trying out a number of low cost FPGA development boards with the view to how easy new people can get involved. FPGAs and the languages like VHDL and Verilog are no

• Memory
• PIC

They saw that there is nothing new under the sun , and I think this proves it. Commodore USA are about to release a C64 !!   Yes a real, genuine Commodore 64 ... well sort of. Actually

• Analogue
• Ethernet
• FRAM
• Memory
• Oscilloscopes
• PIC
• Power
• Raspberry Pi
• Research Phase
• Serial Peripheral Interface
• Test

So, a few people in the office have started to receive their Raspberry Pi's. Normally when we see new gadgets around the office we take it apart but there's no case on the Pi so we thought we'd 'scope

• Development Kits - Electronics
• Enclosures
• Mbed
• Memory
• PIC
• Programming
• Raspberry Pi
• Research Phase
• Robots
• Serial Peripheral Interface
• Test

It’s extraordinary:  the release of a new piece of computing technology has generated a huge wave of nostalgia for 30 year old kit such as the Sinclair ZX81, ZX Spectrum and the BBC Micro.

• ARM
• Enclosures
• FLASH
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• PIC
• Programming
• Test

I've been using the Keil uVision 4 development system to produce test programs and drivers for EDP recently. Fortunately the free code-limited version ARM-MDK can handle all the EDP MCUs apart from PI

• Arduino
• Communication
• Display & Lighting
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Raspberry Pi
• Research Phase
• SERIAL
• Test
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)
• WiFi

I was fortunate enough to receive a Raspberry Pi board for review (Thanks, DesignSpark!) a couple of days ago and I have been playing with it pretty much non-stop ever since. (More photos availab

• Memory
• PIC
• Programming
• Test

Multitasking sound like one of them grand things that only big 32bit micro’s do, right? Wrong! I want to talk about using multitasking methods in small micros like on a 8bit machine.

• Display & Lighting
• Ethernet
• FLASH
• Functional Test
• LCD
• Mbed
• Memory
• PIC
• Serial Peripheral Interface
• Test
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)

After getting a few LED’s to flash in a pattern, it was time to go all out and try what others had tried before. Something so complex that Windows crashed multiple times before I got it working… &

• ARM
• Cortex-M
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• PIC
• Power
• Test

Electronic compoments move in classical and readily defined phases none more pronounced than the evolutions and revolutions of the MCU. The industry has already entered its latest phase, "Peripheral C

• Development Kits - Electronics
• Interconnect
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect)
• PIC
• Power
• Research Phase
• Test
• Trial & Evaluation

From the release of the first PC by IBM back in 1981, engineers have found more and more creative ways of using this system architecture.  True, many things have changed over the years, but execu

• Development Kits - Electronics
• FLASH
• FRAM
• Functional Test
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• Memory
• Microcontrollers
• MSP430
• PIC
• Power
• Reliability Testing
• Research Phase
• Test
• Trial & Evaluation

What’s the difference between, FRAM, F-RAM and FeRAM?, Well it’s the same thing!, it's Ferroelectic RAM.  Texas Instruments (TI) are among the first to offer a family of Microcontrollers with

• Display & Lighting
• FLASH
• FRAM
• Human Machine Interface
• Mbed
• Memory
• PIC
• RS232
• Scientific Applications
• SERIAL
• Test
• Wireless

Each year the ESC survey, LinkedIn discussions and papers such Cravotta, R., Shedding light on embedded debugging, 2008, show statements such as “test and debug continues to consume the largest slic

• ARM
• Ethernet
• PIC
• Programming
• Raspberry Pi
• Research Phase
• Test

Being one of the few Linux users at RS towers I have had the enviable task of taking home one of our Raspberry Pi's to put it through it's paces and I am absolutely amazed.

• Display & Lighting
• Human Machine Interface
• Manufacture
• Mbed
• PIC
• Robots
• Test

(Home made quadrature encoder wheel)When I first started working on the rover, I had little knowledge of how you could get a wheel to rotate a certain distance. I started off just with trial and error

• ARM
• Bluetooth
• Ethernet
• LCD
• PIC
• Power
• Raspberry Pi
• Research Phase
• Test

Raspberry Pi running Debian/LXDE and displaying the DesignSpark homepageExcitement surrounding the Raspberry Pi has reached fever pitch as enthusiasts, engineers, and software developers and hardware

• Communication
• Enclosures
• FPGA
• Functional Test
• GSM
• PIC
• Research Phase
• RX
• Test

This post takes a look at custom hardware that can be used with open source GSM network software to enable the creation of extremely low cost mobile network infrastructure

• Display & Lighting
• PIC
• Test

 We would like your helpWe (Motiv8) are pulling together a programme of short technical presentations (approx 20 mins) and workshops (approx 50 mins) for our  1 day LED & Light

• ARM
• Batteries
• GAL
• PIC
• Power
• Raspberry Pi
• Research Phase
• Test

A fun project to see if a solar powered Raspberry Pi could be used to help in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.SETI@home allows individuals to donate idle computer time to analysing radio

• Beagle
• Capacitors
• Display & Lighting
• Ethernet
• FLASH
• Human Machine Interface
• MIPS
• PIC
• Power
• Programming
• Raspberry Pi
• RX
• SERIAL
• Solder
• Test
• USB (Universal Serial Bus)
• Wired
• Wireless

The TL-WR703N is a 3G travel router that has become a hit with the hacking community due its low cost, compact size and the ease at which it can be re-purposed. This post covers initial experiences wi