Blogs about Microcontrollers

• Sending and Receiving SMS Messages with mbed

  Andrew Back

  Thanks to a library created by Vodafone R&D only a few lines of code are needed to send and receive SMS messages with mbed.

• Progress on the Renesas/Eco Solar Breizh solar race car

  Bill Marshall

  The next World Solar Challenge car race takes place in October 2013. The race involves purpose-built vehicles being driven from the north to the south coast of Australia powered by energy which must come from the sun or be recovered from the kinetic energy of the vehicle itself. Here is the third post in a series charting the development of one entrant sponsored by Renesas Electronics.

• FORTHdsPIC gets its compiler & more ‘Bare-Metal’

  Bill Marshall

  In a previous post I introduced my latest project which started out as an exercise in familiarisation of PIC24/dsPIC assembly language programming but morphed into the development of a FORTH interpreter/compiler. Version 0.1 saw a working interpreter with a limited number of FORTH ‘words’. The compiler and a fairly standard word set are now operational with Version 0.2.

• HKUST ROV Team shone in Asia Regional IET/MATE Underwater Robot Challenge 2013

  GordonSin

  The ROV Team, a sub-team of HKUST Robotics Team, shone in the Asia Regional IET/MATE Underwater Robot Challenge 2013 held on 13-14 April 2013. 9 university and 24 high school teams from 8 countries around Asia competed in two categories, Ranger Class and Explorer Class, respectively. The HKUST ROV Team won the Champion Award in the Explorer Class, and they will represent Hong Kong to join the International MATE ROV Competition 2013 Explorer Class in USA in June 2013.

• Engineering education is going CubeSat shaped....

  Bill Marshall

  First it was the home computer, then the mobile phone: now it’s your own earth-orbiting satellite. Alright, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but about 5000GBP will buy you a kit of parts for the latest high-tech gadget, sorry, valuable research tool that no self-respecting technological university will want to be without...

• PiGo Sneak Preview

  Andrew Back

  A first look at the upcoming modular expansion system for Raspberry Pi.

• Going FORTH - Some 'Bare-Metal' Bashing

  Bill Marshall

  My posts last year on the old Jupiter Ace computer and the more recent FIGnition kit provoked some interesting reactions to their use of the Forth programming language. Some loved it, others hated it. I dug out a version I wrote many years ago for the 8085 microprocessor and overcome with nostalgia decided to port it to a more modern platform. This post covers the initial stage of this less-than-logical process involving processor selection and first attempts at programming. For that authentic 'vintage' feel note the Toshiba Tecra laptop running the terminal emulator under Windows 3.11.

• Kit Review - Renesas Promotional Board for RL78 Series Microcontrollers

  jkvasan

    YRPBRL78G13 – Renesas Promotional Board for RL78 Series Microcontrollers  YRPBRL78 is a humble-looking yet power packed development board released by Renesas.

• Exploring mbed with the Application Board

  Andrew Back

  A first look at the mbed platform and the recently launched Application Board.

• A Vintage Year

  Bill Marshall

  This year 2012 has seen a massive reduction in the cost of microelectronics development tools and maybe the start of a new industrial revolution. Bit of a shame if it really is the end of the world tomorrow.