Philipp

Thanks for your kind words and nice ideas guys, your feedback is awesome! :clap:
Are any apple users here who can tell me how OSX handles ClearType Fonts like Consolas?
I have to ask because Energia hast different font presets for Linux/Windows and OSX.
 
Just another piece of 'fanart':

How do you like this splashscreen? Is there any interest in changing this, too, or do you want to keep the original one, energia?
 
@energia: I attached the theme below, so you can preview it on your installation. Simply place the content of the archive in your energia folder or a copy of it, overwrite all, and run energia. You should get the exact same results as in the screenshot I posted before. The editor font is likely still 'Monospaced', to change this you have to delete the 'preferences.txt' In 'C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\Energia' and run energia again.
blue's energia theme.zip
If you do not want to overwrite the preference.txt in the energia folder, just edit three lines of it:

editor.font=Consolas,plain,12 editor.antialias=true console.lines=5
 
Cheers, Philipp

I truly appreciate all the support from everyone. @@xpg, USPS and China postal have agreed on transferring their postal numbers. Tracking from China->US will work, but not the other way... and probably Denmark has the same or work with USPS' API and continue tracking the parcel.
 
@@Philipp, 
 
 
Did I send you a tracking number. If I did not, I haven't sent it. I'm not at home for the weekend. Once I get back, I'll catch up with you.
 
As per suggestions, I'll be adding a FedEx option soon. I'm not sure I'll be able to customize it as domestic or international... but I think it will be a worthwhile addition.

First off, I'll like to thank Bluehash for the 43oh store and the fact that he does international shipping (I'm located in Europe).
It's sad that Paypal always parts with the buyer when there is no end-to-end tracking. When I buy something over the Internet I'll usually consider if tracking is worth it or not, which really depends on the value of the purchase.
Offering more expensive shipping options such as Fedex would be a good way to let people decide for themselves if they want tracking or not. However, if people still order USPS and raise Paypal claims, I do understand that international shipping prices go up. I hope that it will still be possible to have international shpping in the future.
 
International tracking just happens to be expensive. From Denmark to USA, a 100g letter is 5.8USD, while a registered 100g letter is 19USD. I don't understand how it's possible to get tracking on $5 packages from China, but maybe people are so used to it that they expect that from everyone and everywhere.

Dumpster diving is illegal here. Lots of people put useful items by the curb with a free sign. I used to put free stuff on Craigslist but that attracts to many hoarders. Now I put a price and don't take any money when someone values item enough to pick it up.

you have to take taxes into account, incl. tax it should be 38$

It's the Chronos for $38. $20 off retail.
 
TIDeals is down. TI Facebook page is up.

It will be the Chronos Watch again, for 38$.


Funny that they post it on their Facebook page before the deal even goes live..

EDIT: bluehash was faster

43oh Store  Link
43oh Doc/Wiki Link
 
This is a LiPo BoosterPack I have been working during my downtime . I named it Booster since it is a power pack  ;-) This should be perfect for  wireless projects or for those times you need to be away from a PC.
 
First, features:
* USB connector for charging
* Sits over the MSP430 Launchpad and below the Stellaris/C2000 Launchpad with pass-through(excluding inner row for C2000/Stellaris) for all pins including power. 
* Switch to turn power on/off when in battery mode. When shutdown via a switch, power consumption by the LDO is 0.1uA typical.
* Charges LiPo battery to 4.2V. Support for one cell.
* Onboard LDO Microchip MCP1252. Provides 3.3V, 120mA output. 
* Lipo charger is based around Microchip MCP73831
* Charge status LED
* Spans the length of the Launchpad to accommodate different LiPo battery sizes.
 
The battery needs to be charged through the Booster's USB connector, as there is no way I can pass 5v from the Launchpad to the Booster board. The battery does charge when the usb connector is plugged in. I tested it using the OLED board when connected to the USB port. Also, stacking headers are used for stacking boosterpacks.
 
I'm having trouble with the charge status LED. It still remains on when the battery reaches 4.2v... still some debugging to do. I have 8 PCBs which I can give away at cost in a GB. If anyone is interested , let me know. I have a few extra batteries too.
 
Battery vendors:
Any 3.7v LiPo should work.
Syma S107 3.7V, 240mA

43oh_BP_Booster.pdf

This is my recent project, ready for board fab.
It is a MSP430G2553 running the bbUSB stack, and talking to the controller circuitry like my other 1.2 boards.  but this one runs the USB into a 2 port hub chip, and the other port is connected to a micro-SD card so ittl show up as a memory card when you plug the controller in to the PC. there are 4 RGB leds showing out the top of the controller as a battery level bar chart, or whatever I want to use them for.  It has a 1000maH lithium battery in it, with a charge manager chip. as well as the RX/TX Lines to wire in a HC05 into the USCI_B port.  I put a buck/boost regulator in it so it can maintain its voltage off the battery as it drains, the battery charge IC automatically goes to sleep when VBUS is lower than the battery voltage, and since I'm running the + side of the battery through a shottky, it will be when running from battery, but not when plugged into USB, so it will charge the battery on its own when plugged in
 
overall I am proud of myself, this is easily the most complicated project I've done so far, but I can definitely say I enjoy doing hardware more than software...  hehe
 
I am surprised that all the traces could be connected, I kinda ran outta room.   the overall board is 35mm x 25mm, 2 sided


 
the only thing I couldn't implement was a push button to wake up the controller from sleep, but I can wake up periodically and poll a controller button. I just ran out of board space, 6mm of button takes up a huge footprint here.
 
the charlie-plexed RGB led's were the toughest to fit and route.
 
Its sad when your hobby starts to feel more like work, but this took a lot of my time the last few days.
 
here was the original plan on the system I wanted.  I still have the optional reciever board to build, but its gonna be dead simple.

it looked so simple then, all nice and neat

there it is:


pretty hefty price tag for a TI Deal, although the discount is 100$..

more details on http://tideals.com/

Well,
kinda impressive that TIDeals is coming back to life and they did not even fix this annoying scrolling error..

Well,
kinda impressive that TIDeals is coming back to life and they did not even fix this annoying scrolling error..

Fixed. Also good project!
 
Fixed.

Open Source Hardware Summit?
don't qoute me on that, but I think OSHS is it's common abbreviation.
http://2012.oshwa.org/

Larissa, thanks for taking the time to explain some of the background info to us. Communication effort on the part of the manufacture is greatly appreciated and shows us your listening!



I'd say 43oh.com & its awesome members are quite decent partners to have for making the 430 ecosystem grow & even in the educational realm. Do note that the majority of us have no interest in making mega bucks off the msp430 and we all were certainly okay with that. Were all in this simply because its fun. Many of us enjoy working on a MCU development platform that was sub par to none in terms of price point. The price point of this platform inspired us to teach other members, write documentation for it, and create boosterpacks...ect. While you may gain some members with this move you will certainly lose others. Because as many members have already mentioned, more than doubling the price simply isn't competitive with what already exists out there. Don't forget your original member base! There was something significantly novel about you and your friends being able to develop on micro controllers for just $4.30.
 

I'm a little afraid that I'll step into a big pile here, but I wanted to offer a couple of nuggets *please keep in mind that I usually only deal with University Partners, so I come from a slightly unique perspective. 
 
The LaunchPad has pretty much changed TI's place in the Microcontroller market and especially in Education. 
For me, I've been able to open up a lot of educational doors with the price point and what the kit could offer. However, the past year I've been watching it slow down a bit as the "4.30" on it's own isn't as compelling. The requests started to come in that I find ways to bundle the LaunchPad + Breadboard + Wires or , LaunchPad + BoosterPack combo or LaunchPad + Book + Training material... 
So, I went to look and see how I could get some of these requests fulfilled. 
Turns out--
The eStore can't do much than stock TI Standard kits, nor can they really bundle. 
DigiKey, Mouser, Newark -- have bundling options, but it's horrific to set these up, let alone have to manage the paperwork associated with the bill backs for services. 
I didn't even try with Arrow and Avnet because they weren't interested in anything that didn't generate serious money (e.g. Big Customers)...
 
So, I turned to some of the "hobby" distributors (e.g. Sparkfun, some local ones in India and Europe), went to a couple of conferences, met with some of the decision makers...
and asked them, "What can I do to get you to stock LaunchPads and offer "bundles" and trainings/services.?" All of them were interested, but when they saw that they would be buying the LaunchPad at the same price that TI was selling it for... backed out. 
There was absolutely no money in it for them. 
It costs money to inventory, stock, manage paperwork-- and time. (that's not even developing training and marketing) Sure, some universities would pay for value added services, but what was incentivising someone to buy from them (person providing the service)? Plus, the amount of effort + the pay out... for most of them wasn't worth it. 
I talked to no fewer than fifteen different educational distributors... and got a similar story. It started to become really clear that TI was indirectly competing against the same people that we needed to offer more/better services (at least in Education). 
 
To make sure I didn't give up on the 4.30 model... I tried a few things. (A little lengthy story, but I think this illustrates the best one)
I donated the entire LaunchPad inventory to a few of my partners (IEEE groups who were doing ebay purchases and bundles). 
Great for the first semester, but come re-order time-- I had run out of budget. 
So, the IEEE group had to switch and instead used the Arduino... and found students were willing to pay the 50.00 (when the previous was 24.00). 
When semester came around and I had budget, I called asked them if they wanted to try again... and they declined me. They would rather set up the store to not have to manually switch everything over just because I couldn't donate the kits!
So, I asked, how about buying them? I'll make sure that you can always purchase them at a discount, (which was almost nothing because $4.30 was pretty much rock bottom). 
Declined again-- with the Arduino the IEEE group was able to get them at 21.00 and reselling the boards for 30.00. That was 9.00 of extra margin they could use, if I wasn't giving them the LaunchPads free... all the time, there was absolutely no incentive for them to move over. (Insert "using Industry tools blah blah blah" argument, still couldn't switch them over). 
 
Granted, one IEEE group is NOT everyone else, but the concerns were similar. 
It showed me (at least in my space) that the only way I could push LaunchPad was through my program-- which is limited by my budget and what other things that I wanted to accomplish that year. The only way that I could grow LaunchPad in Education--> was increasing the level of service and offerings around LaunchPad--> which was beyond what TI could do on our own and  I could only accomplish by getting good partners-->and the only way to get good partners... was frankly-- help them make money. Successful Partner with LaunchPad meant Successful TI University Program. 
 
So, although it sucks right now, I really see this as a good idea-- for a long term strategy. 
We really could have done a much better job communicating the price change... it is never fun to find out on your own. 
There were always be TI Deals, half off coupons, Tech Day incentives.... heck, come visit me at any of my University visits, write a request, or our trade shows and you will be able to get a LaunchPads for free or a discount. We owe a lot to the community and want to continue to support it, but at the same time we're fairly realistic that a community is a lot more than just cheap hardware, that's what got us up and running and started, but now we really need to focus on enabling the very people that helped build it up-- enabling them to potentially create a business model around all the work that is being put in. Take a look at the Arduino, it was an open sourced hardware, intuitive user experience platform (the LaunchPad is also Open Hardware and now has Energia), but what really differentiates the Arduino from LaunchPad is the fact that people can make money by being part of the ecosystem-- through their own Hardware, Software contributions, Training, Bundling... etc. etc. 
 
I'm by no means the official LaunchPad communication channel,  but I'm a rather large constituent of it-- we're working hard on the next few steps we need to take on finding ways to grow -- and how honest, vocal and engaged everyone is critical for that (WE ARE Listening), so please keep letting us know what you think. 
 
Anyways, that's just my 2 cents... 
-Larissa

It is, you can tell by the number of triacs and by the labeling of the 5 pin header (2nd image) which reads Ch1-Ch2-GND-0xOut-Vcc.
 

I have a new version of this board and there are 2 major differences.
 
1. AC input & two AC outputs
2. Zero crossing detector 
 
 

Sorry about the down time. I got locked out of my admin account and still am. I was able to call them and pay the bill over the phone. Remote areas of NZ has no phone connectivity, hence the downtime. 
 
All normal now. Thanks to all those who reported.

I am starting this topic for those interested in DMX lighting.
My first example is a simple DMX controller, which can be used to test DMX devices.
You will need a RS-485 transmitter to make it work (I will start another topic about that.)
 
 
#include "msp430g2553.h" typedef unsigned char u_char; typedef unsigned int u_int; #define DMX_OUT_PIN BIT2 void configMSP(); void sendDMX(); #define DATA_LENGTH 12 u_char dmxData[DATA_LENGTH] = { 0x55, 0x55, 0x55, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0x0F, 0x0F, 0x0F, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF}; // 4 RGB sets u_int dataStart = 0; u_int numberOfChannels = 3; u_int dataEnd = 0; u_int counter; void main(void) { WDTCTL = WDTPW + WDTHOLD; configMSP(); while (1) { _delay_cycles(1600000); // send DMX every 100ms counter++; if(counter == 20) { // switch data every 2s counter = 0; dataStart += numberOfChannels; // next data set if(dataStart == DATA_LENGTH) dataStart = 0; dataEnd = dataStart + numberOfChannels; } sendDMX(); } } void sendDMX() { u_int c = dataStart; UCA0CTL1 |= UCTXBRK; UCA0TXBUF = 0; while (c < dataEnd) { while (!(IFG2 & UCA0TXIFG)) ; UCA0TXBUF = dmxData[c]; c++; } } void configMSP() { // DCO BCSCTL1 = CALBC1_16MHZ; DCOCTL = CALDCO_16MHZ; P1SEL |= DMX_OUT_PIN; P1SEL2 |= DMX_OUT_PIN; UCA0CTL0 |= UCSPB + UCMODE_3; // 2 stop bits UCA0CTL1 |= UCSSEL_2; UCA0ABCTL |= UCDELIM0 + UCDELIM1, UCA0BR0 = 0x40; // 16MHz/64 = 250k UCA0BR1 = 0; UCA0MCTL = 0; UCA0CTL1 &= ~UCSWRST; } In the code above, BREAK is only 52us, so if that causes problems, use the code below, which generates 100us BREAK.
 
#include "msp430g2553.h" typedef unsigned char u_char; typedef unsigned int u_int; #define DMX_OUT_PIN BIT2 void configMSP(); void sendDMX(); #define DATA_LENGTH 12 u_char dmxData[DATA_LENGTH] = { 0x55, 0x55, 0x55, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0x0F, 0x0F, 0x0F, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF}; // 4 RGB sets u_int dataStart = 0; u_int numberOfChannels = 3; u_int dataEnd = 0; u_int counter; void main(void) { WDTCTL = WDTPW + WDTHOLD; configMSP(); while (1) { _delay_cycles(1600000); // send DMX every 100ms counter++; if(counter == 20) { // switch data every 2s counter = 0; dataStart += numberOfChannels; // next data set if(dataStart == DATA_LENGTH) dataStart = 0; dataEnd = dataStart + numberOfChannels; } sendDMX(); } } void sendDMX() { P1SEL &= ~DMX_OUT_PIN; P1SEL2 &= ~DMX_OUT_PIN; _delay_cycles(1600); // 100us P1SEL |= DMX_OUT_PIN; P1SEL2 |= DMX_OUT_PIN; _delay_cycles(160); // 10us u_int c = dataStart; UCA0TXBUF = 0; while (c < dataEnd) { while (!(IFG2 & UCA0TXIFG)) ; UCA0TXBUF = dmxData[c]; c++; } } void configMSP() { // DCO BCSCTL1 = CALBC1_16MHZ; DCOCTL = CALDCO_16MHZ; P1OUT &= ~DMX_OUT_PIN; P1DIR |= DMX_OUT_PIN; P1SEL |= DMX_OUT_PIN; P1SEL2 |= DMX_OUT_PIN; UCA0CTL0 |= UCSPB; // 2 stop bits UCA0CTL1 |= UCSSEL_2; UCA0BR0 = 0x40; // 16MHz/64 = 250k UCA0BR1 = 0; UCA0MCTL = 0; UCA0CTL1 &= ~UCSWRST; }  
In the next post, I will show how to use SPI instead of UART, so that UART could be used to communicate with PC or another device.

Admin here:
First, welcome to the forum, Eried and thanks for sharing your contribution here.
 
A couple of points about this sub-section:
1. Energia has a good group of developers keeping it synced with the Arduino fork.
2. 43oh offered Energia a place for people to ask questions since it already was a community growing around the msp430.
 
 
A few things I'd like to bring up:
1. You are a relatively new user here. Putting up your modded Energia release with a donate button will surely rustle up feathers. It is expected.
2. Not being clear on how it will be synced up with energia releases aggravates the community a bit because this forum is highly support based. Any ther variable added to the mix confuses beginners alot. You may already know it.
 
 
Things I want to do to get this resolved immediately:
1. You may keep your thread with the modded energia release. Feel free to maintain it, but keep it to your thread.
2. You are free to create an external link to a webpage or github in your first post description.
3. You will have to remove the donate button, unfortunately as it is not currently community conducive. You are free to place the donate button on your external page or github. Also, there is a place in your profile where you can add your repository link.
4. I'd like to encourage you to work with the Energia developers and this goes to the Energia developers too. I'm sure they will be glad to have your expertise on the team.
 
 
I think the terms are reasonable where everyone wins. No hard feelings.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the fact that you made enhancements and I am sure that others like them too. That's why I would have rather seen that you had contacted us so we could have worked something out to pull them into Energia main repository where possible. The changes have to work on all windows versions though (XP, 7 and 8) . If the installer is something that helps users with getting up and running even faster then I am even open to hosting that flavor as a download along side the traditional one. I'll send you a private message so that we can continue our discussion over e-mail and figure out how to go about getting your stuff into the main branch. I would prefer to see that you pull the download for the time being.

Fixes in the the msp430 c++ framework. 
Fixes in the way the compiler arguments are ordered for the stellaris compile.
 
Do you even have an msp430 to test? How can you release a "Mod Energia Enhanced" without even testing the framework it uses?

Some of you have workstation areas that I am absolutely jealous over lol. 6 screens ? Unfortunately, we're solar powered here, and running a desktop with even one screen is a no go. I run two laptops, one which is my "dev machine" that is (cough) *infected* with JRE,. Where the other is my main system that does everything *else* but run JRE ( including RDP into the dev machine. ). In case it is not obvious already, I am not a big fan of anything Java.
 
On the electronics workbench stuff, my buddy has an electronics "area" that spans 3 rooms. Each room being roughly 12' x 40' +. One room dedicated to electronic parts alone. One room for arcade board repair / boards to be repaired. The other room being kind of his living quarters / workstation area. Most people who come and visit do not say much other than "holy ****!". I'll take some pictures and post them up when i get the chance.

Yesterday, I cleaned out my project drawers. I donated a trash bag full of samples, circuits, pcbs and dev boards to a high school kid on Craigslist. 

 
Mostly de-cluttering the house in preparation for a move. Any of you guys in the Indianapolis area? www.gwdeveloper.net Sent from Tapatalk...