zeke

I found this website that seems to have unvarinshed, honest reviews of hosting services:
   http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting
 
This guy reports that DO is reasonable.
 
I just need some courage to spin up something called a droplet. Weird.

Analog.io runs on Digital Ocean, as does my Phant server.  Luke @ Analog.io set it up for me, so I don't really manage the dashboard piece of things.  I will say their pricing is pretty cheap in comparison to azure.  Not sure about Amazon.  I've only had one issue where they had a big DNS failure - but my server was up and running the whole time - I just didn't have the IP to get into it for a few hours.  So I don't have a ton of info on admin - but it's been pretty fool-proof so far.

Not using them atm (using atlantic.net when they had a $1/mo promo option available) but I do know someone who works for digitalocean fwiw.

The Ikea clock is the light diffuser. It's installed in the second video.
 
These pcb's were made in China. The Korean board house was on a very long holiday when I wanted them to make them. So I jumped to a different fab house because I was under pressure to get them done before a deadline.
 
The Canadian flag is just me showing my pride. It's staying on there.

The Ikea clock is the light diffuser. It's installed in the second video.
 
These pcb's were made in China. The Korean board house was on a very long holiday when I wanted them to make them. So I jumped to a different fab house because I was under pressure to get them done before a deadline.
 
The Canadian flag is just me showing my pride. It's staying on there.

Nice! the white PCBs are a good choice.
 
Are you still planning to use a diffuser over the PCB? Those LEDs look very bright to me. (maybe that's just the camera)
 
I'm curious about the "Made in Canada" given that you mentioned the PCBs were made in Korea.

Well done!  Always nice to see things work as expected
 
Made in Canada, USA, Korea, etc? (USA - TI MSP430)

The Ikea clock is the light diffuser. It's installed in the second video.
 
These pcb's were made in China. The Korean board house was on a very long holiday when I wanted them to make them. So I jumped to a different fab house because I was under pressure to get them done before a deadline.
 
The Canadian flag is just me showing my pride. It's staying on there.

Here's a brief update.
 
I've been working on the layout for the display board.
 

 
I rearranged the LEDs so that they could be properly soldered by hand (if that is needed).
 

 
Now, I must make some design decisions:
- Should I include an on-board buck power supply on this Alpha design?
- Should I include an on-board CPU on this Alpha design?
- Should I include an off-board interface (set of pins) for an off-board CPU daughter board?
 
To overcome my decision fatigue, I might have to include everything, test it, delete from the design all that doesn't make sense then create a Beta PCB design.
 
Oh, also, it was a challenge but I managed to procure an adequate supply of LEDs for the prototypes that need to be assembled.

 
How many do you see here?

 
 

I believe I have my first version pcb designs completed for the Marquee clock.
 
Power Supply

 
CPU

 
Front side ring

 
Backside ring

 
Stand alone port

 
User buttons

 
I was hoping to get these boards fabbed in one week but my favorite Korean pcb shop is on national holidays.
;-(
 
Anyone know of a quick turn pcb shop that has excellent pricing?

Hi Everybody!
 
Woo hoo! I am excited tonight. 
 
I got my pcb's back from the fab house last week.
 

 
Tonight, I took the opportunity to assemble one of the clock ring boards.
 

 
Here are two videos of the earlier pattern tests running on the new ring board.
Marquee Clock PCB Test #1 Marquee Clock PCB Test #2 Pretty cool, eh?

Hi Everybody!
 
Woo hoo! I am excited tonight. 
 
I got my pcb's back from the fab house last week.
 

 
Tonight, I took the opportunity to assemble one of the clock ring boards.
 

 
Here are two videos of the earlier pattern tests running on the new ring board.
Marquee Clock PCB Test #1 Marquee Clock PCB Test #2 Pretty cool, eh?

Here are the files for my PCB Exposer/Printer, it is the complete package including mechanical design files.
 

The printer itself.
 

Example - a power control PCB for Raspberry Pi - 40 x 40 mm.
 
Code includes driver for MCP4725 DAC, buffered serial port driver, stepper motor control and command parsing for the MSP430G2553 used as the main controller.
 
Code and design files:
 
PCB Exposer - controller code for MSP430G2553.zip
PCB Exposer - desktop application.zip
PCB Exposer - mechanical design files in Vectric format.zip
PCB Exposer - schematics and PCBs.zip
 
Desktop application is coded in C#, schematics and PCBs in KiCad format.
 
There is some more information to be found in this tread:
http://forum.43oh.com/topic/4990-what-are-you-doing-right-now/page-5
 
Terje
 
 

5528 does right, that's what's on the eZFET.

I wished that TI had something like an ATtiny85 so I could make simple USB gizmos.

I wished that TI had something like an ATtiny85 so I could make simple USB gizmos.

I wished that TI had something like an ATtiny85 so I could make simple USB gizmos.

Now at this point, unfortunately, I found myself outside my element with respect to CCS and debug configurations et al.  For some odd reason, I don't have a valid Debug configuration when I create a new Tiva GCC project.  So I had to figure out how to create one (although I don't think I have the procedure correct yet)-
 
Go to Debug configurations-

 
Under "Code Composer Studio" I didn't have any, so I created one (default name "New_configuration"):

 
Apparently you need a .ccxml file.  I just browsed to my TivaWare install and found one from the ek-tm4cgxl board examples:

 
Looked like I was on the right track, showing CORTEX_M4 for the target:

 
I'm guessing it needs to know about my project so it knows what to upload:

 

 
I found out the hard way after a lot of banging my head that you should have it reset the CPU on program load:

 
By default, it will auto-run but breakpoint at main, which is the typical behavior:

 
And to use this new config, for some reason I can't use it when I just hit the debug button.... but if I add it to the "favorites" I can select it in the debug icon's dropdown menu:

 
I hope to revise this post once I figure out WTF was wrong with my initial project creation process, or see if there's a "correct" way to redo the debug config.

Now let's make FreeRTOS actually run.
 
FreeRTOS requires the use of several hardware interrupts/peripherals to function, notably the SysTick feature for its RTOS tick and the software interrupt calls SVCall and PendSV for its internal operation (or rather, how RTOS tasks perform system calls of the kernel).
 
First off, what functions does it provide for these interrupts?  Check the portable port.c file:

 
All ARM projects include a special .c file for the Interrupt Vector Table and C init runtime functions (reset vector, Fault, NMI, etc).  This is "tm4c123gh6pm_startup_ccs_gcc.c" in our case.
 
Let's declare those interrupt handler functions with the "extern" keyword in our vector table file:

 
Then, place those function names (pointers to those functions) in the correct slots in the interrupt vector table itself:

 
With the interrupt vector table properly configured to be FreeRTOS-aware, we now point our efforts at main.c:

 
Our simple main.c includes the FreeRTOS.h and task.h files (so it has access to the Task-related function prototypes), and for our first task, we create an instance of a dummy function that just continually sleeps (but in an RTOS-aware way, using vTaskDelay() which allows the RTOS to "swap out" our task and execute others in its absence).
 
At this point, it should build:

@@phenyl, I did not get your pm. My pm mailbox was full. It should work now.

@@phenyl,
 
I just checked out pcbway and I am stunned at the low price. 
 
Is it too good to be true?
Is there work good or bad?

@@phenyl,
 
Those boards look excellent!
 
With my short deadline and your photos, I think I am going to give them a try.  
 
Thank you!
 
BTW, isn't that the IO card for the agilent scope?

@@phenyl
 
Ha!  It's the split in the board edge connector and the resistor divider that give it away to me.
 
Cool!  I have a x3024a here. Is it worth the effort?

Yeah, I've been sitting on this design way too long.  It's time to fab some boards.
 
 
 
Dev Support board with LiPoly power and USB UART IO

 
DS Backside

 
One Wire Master is able to be both a Booster board or a master board

 
OWM backside

 
One Wire Temp sensor board that has various Dallas Semiconductor footprints

 
One Wire Thermocouple board

 
 
 
Anyone know of a quick turn pcb shop that has excellent pricing?

Yeah it is  
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