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| Online Course Covers IoT Embedded Systems STMicroelectronics has announced the availability of the online "Introduction to Embedded Systems with SensorTile" course. With a curriculum developed by Professor William Kaiser at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and used to teach his freshman engineering class, the online course resources provide a foundation to understand the fundamentals of a sensor-based Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled embedded system. Professors at other universities are also encouraged to adapt and contribute to the course. The introductory course of 8 self-paced tutorials is designed around ST's SensorTile, a real-time IoT-enabled embedded system on a postage-stamp-sized module. The tiny 13.5 mm x 13.5 mm module combines a high-performance, low-power STM32 Arm-Cortex-M-core microcontroller, a Bluetooth network processor and 5 valuable MEMS sensors. The MEMS sensors include an inertial sensor containing an accelerometer and gyroscope, an eCompass, a pressure sensor, and a microphone. A kit with the module, cables, cradle and a battery is available from major resellers for about $80.
Touch-Sensor Development Kit for ESP32 The ESP32 Sense Kit is a touch-sensor development kit produced by Espressif Systems. It can be used for evaluating and developing the touch-sensing functionality of ESP32. The ESP32-Sense Kit consists of one motherboard and several daughterboards. The motherboard is made up of a display unit, a main control unit and a debug unit. The daughterboards can be used in different application scenarios supported by the ESP32-Sense Kit such as a linear slider, a duplex slider, a wheel slider, matrix buttons or spring buttons. Users can even design and add their own daughterboards for special use cases. The photo shows an overview of the ESP32-Sense Kit. The wheel slider, linear slider, duplex slider, motherboard, spring buttons, and matrix buttons, are shown in a clockwise direction.  The ESP32 SoC offers up to 10 capacitive I/Os that detect changes in capacitance on touch sensors caused by finger contact or proximity. The chip's internal capacitance detection circuit features low noise and high sensitivity. It allows users to use touch pads with smaller area to implement the touch detection function. Users can also use the touch panel array to detect a larger area or more test points. |
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TRACE32 Extends embOS Awareness to Renesas RH850 Lauterbach has announced that it has extended the kernel awareness for the embOS RTOS from SEGGER Microcontroller to the RH850 Family of microprocessors from Renesas Electronics. TRACE32, the debug tools from Lauterbach, already support embOS on ARM, PowerPC, RX, SH and NIOS-II families and this technology has now been extended to include RH850. The embOS awareness plugin for TRACE32 allows the developer to visualise RTOS resources and objects such as task lists, mailboxes, timers and semaphores. Developers are free to investigate interrupt routines, drivers and application code all from within the familiar environment of TRACE32. When the awareness is configured, extra features become available, for instance the setting of task aware breakpoints.  All MPUs of the RH850 Family provide dedicated counter registers which can be accessed non-intrusively by the TRACE32 debugger. These can be configured to display minimum, maximum and mean runtimes for a user marked block of code or the runtimes of various tasks in the embOS system. If the target provides off-chip trace capabilities, TRACE32 can record processor cycles and can be configured to collect data on task switches. Using this information, a detailed analysis of the program history, including task switches, can be viewed. Win a Free Subscription to Circuit Cellar Magazine! This week's newsletter raffle is for a 1-year free subscription to Circuit Cellar! Drawing ends at midnight this coming Friday. Circuit Cellar is the premier media resource for professional engineers, academic technologists, and other electronics technology decision-makers worldwide involved in the design and development of embedded processor- and microcontroller-based systems across a broad range of applications. And congratulations to last week's raffle winner, Fred B., who won a 2017 archive CD of Circuit Cellar magazine. Thanks to all who participated! |
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SiFive has launched the industry's first Linux-capable RISC-V based processor SoC. The company demonstrated the first real-world use of the HiFive Unleashed board featuring the Freedom U540 SoC, based on its U54-MC Core IP, at the FOSDEM open source developer conference. During the session,  SiFive provided updates on the RISC-V Linux effort, surprising attendees with an announcement that the presentation had been run on the HiFive Unleashed development board. With the availability of the HiFive Unleashed board and Freedom U540 SoC, SiFive has brought to market the first multicore RISC-V chip designed for commercialization, and now offers the industry's widest array of RISC-V based Core IP. The Freedom U540 is the first RISC-V based, 64-bit 4+1 multicore SoC with support for full featured operating systems such as Linux. The HiFive Unleashed development board is expected to help spur open-source software development using RISC-V. The underlying CPU--the U54-MC Core IP--is ideal for applications that need full operating system support such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, networking, gateways and smart IoT devices. Wireless Microcontrollers are Bluetooth Mesh Certified Cypress Semiconductor has announced its single-chip solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT) are Bluetooth mesh connectivity certified by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) to a consumer product. LEDVANCE announced the market's first Bluetooth mesh qualified LED lighting products, which  leverage Cypress' Bluetooth mesh technology. Three Cypress wireless combo chips and the latest version of its Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices (WICED) software development kit (SDK) support Bluetooth connectivity with mesh networking capability. Cypress' solutions enable a low-cost, low-power mesh network of devices that can communicate with each other-and with smartphones, tablets and voice-controlled home assistants-via simple, secure and ubiquitous Bluetooth connectivity.
Previously, users needed to be in the immediate vicinity of a Bluetooth device to control it without an added hub. With Bluetooth mesh networking technology, the devices within the network can communicate with each other to easily provide coverage throughout even the largest homes, allowing users to conveniently control all of the devices via apps on their smartphones and tablets.
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