Tag Archives: mbed

mbed Development – USB Programming Forever

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I’m still fiddling with my mbed. Although, I haven’t put it to real use yet. I’ve got some ideas, but I just don’t have the time these days. One of the nice things about its programming system is that if I do have to step away for a while, it’s easy enough that I don’t have to go through any kind of learning curve again. The plug-and-go USB programming and online IDE is that easy.

Contrast that to one of my little PIC based boards. I recently wanted to do something with one that I hadn’t used for a while. I dug it up and pulled out my programmer. I somehow ended up with two different versions of the programmer software installed on my computer, and I had to try both. My programmer uses the FTDI USB/serial chip, so I had to try and guess which COM port to set my programmer software too.

Six permutations later, I had that figured out. I then loaded up an old known-working hex file and took my best guess at what the fuse settings needed to be and guessed wrong. Tried again and guessed wrong. Tried a dozen different combination and gave up and dug up the PDF of the data sheet. Once I found the setting and translated them to the language used in my programmer’s software, I finally figured it out and got it all working.

Granted, if I were using this every day, I wouldn’t have forgotten all those silly little details, but think about someone learning for the first time. Or, consider a hardware engineer that rarely uses microcontrollers. Once a year or so, some design does need a controller and some programming. I’m a big fan of PICs, but the programming system for many of them seems pretty archaic compared to a product like the mbed.

Duane Benson
I need gravy for the mashed potatoes in yesterday’s post

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/

Ye Hardware Engineer on Quest for Firmware

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I’ve been spending some time with the mbed here and I’m convinced that there are a lot of good uses for this little thing. One in particular popped in to my head with a lot of vigor.

Back in December of 2008, I listed 10 (Octal) things to do to help get through a lousy economy (read #3). If you’re pretty much a pure hardware engineer, now might just be a good time to develop some firmware skills.

In my mind, one of the biggest problems going from hardware to firmware isn’t the programming itself. That’s not really as tough to pick up as you might think. But it’s the environment. The tool chains. The configurations. Make files, environment variables, linked libraries, boot loaders, ICSP, flag bits… There’s a load of ancillary junk that gets in the way. Some micros require purchased proprietary compilers. Some use open source. Should you use C or C++ or ASM? Too many choices.

Well, here’s something that gets rid of all of that extra junk. Plug in an mbed and in minutes you can be experimenting with C programming on an embedded micro controller. Use the onboard LEDs and sample programs to get instant gratification. Plug in some external LEDs or a sensor of some type (maybe from sparkfun) as you get a little more versed in the language. Save the data to the FLASH and graph it in Excel or something.

My personal feeling is that a hardware engineer is much more employable these days with the ability to write firmware. I haven’t found a better way to get started then with an mbed. You can worry about all of the other details later, but use this little guy to teach yourself to code.

Duane Benson
It’s been a soft day’s night, and I’ve been coding like a frog

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/