hanzibal's Content

#50744 Strange AnalogInput readings

Posted by hanzibal on 23 June 2013 - 09:44 PM in General Discussion

So you mean the pull-down I suggested for the open analogue pin was the one thing that helped?

#50243 Static or Instance

Posted by hanzibal on 04 June 2013 - 09:30 AM in Netduino Plus 2 (and Netduino Plus 1)

I'm with NooM here, try and keep classes as self-contained as possible. Avoid scattering bits and pieces as statics in the main class. Gather and isolate things that belong together. In my opinon, the more globals, the worse the code in terms of clarity, change management, maintainance, porting, scalability, generalizantion, scalability, etc. Be aware of the limited amount of system resources, primarily RAM and processing power (your code is being interpreted at run time, there's no JIT here). Create late and destroy early. Be clever and figure out more efficient ways of doing calculations etc than you perhaps normally would. Optimize, use hash tables. Keep it short, lean and mean. Whenever possible, use event driven constructs (interrupts) rather than polling. Avoid tight loops as much as possible. Use multithreading concepts like producer/consumer relations between threads employing sempahores and mutexes. The scheduler does a really excellent job, sometimes almost magical. If you must do tight stuff, remember to yield once in a while in favor of other threads. Other than that, at least I don't take any particular explicit actions for memory management. In general, the GC normally does a better job when left in peace. Personally, I don't care much for IDispose. I mean, if you for example instanciate a driver class for an LCD, a switch or something like that - would you dispose of it run time? I know I wouldn't. Naturally, transient objects should be disposed of early, don't allow stuff to "build up" over time. EDIT: Of course, don't apply all of the above per s� but selectively when necessary, sensible and justified.

#50658 start a new line in a TXT file

Posted by hanzibal on 20 June 2013 - 12:17 PM in Netduino Plus 2 (and Netduino Plus 1)

I usually use newline 'n' only and not vertical tab 'r' and as far as I remember, it should work.

Of course, when all else fails, you can always issue multiple calls to WriteLine().

#50726 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 22 June 2013 - 10:03 PM in Netduino Mini

hmm, could be usable for development at least. won't win any 'sexy dev board of the month' contests, but hey its a dev board.

It's much smaller than it looks but it's abviously designed as an add-on for some TI general eval platform. You only need to connect SPI bus, power, gnd and the enable pin so it's quite simple.

...at the outset it might be too much for a managed 'driver'. well maybe. maybe not! I say this only because its' interrupt driven and I was concerned about latency, but then if it's handling the network stack, then it is also handling acks and retries so the host may be able to be more leisurely about servicing requests.

Exactly, the module handles most or all of the protocol level stuff internally so I'd expect a managed driver to perform ok or at least better than any UART based module.

...anyway I know the various ghi boards in dip form factors do, so it should be doable from a layout perspective.

Yes, I have a couple of those boards and as I recall, the design makes pretty good use of the PCB space as it is bit I suppose one could always add a couple of layers.

...ps hanzibal, I have been meaning to do your oscilloscope art, but I haven't been able to get to it yet, haha

I can imagine you'd display graphics or even video ;-)

#52252 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 21 August 2013 - 07:57 AM in Netduino Mini

Wow!

#51208 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 08 July 2013 - 02:14 PM in Netduino Mini

Sure, you'll all be able to have you're saying about it and yes, I can put the Eagle files on CodePlex or elsewhere later on. Just so that you know though, in couple of days I'll be going away for a week and I'm pretty sure the design won't be ready until after I get back.

#50695 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 21 June 2013 - 03:17 PM in Netduino Mini

I got one and I think baxter has one too. Mine is this one:

http://www.lsr.com/d...ts/330-0086.pdf

What do you need to know?

Too bad there's no F4 in 48 pin package. I don't really see the point in talking to the Spark Core over UART, there are simpler and/or cheaper ways of doing that:
http://imall.iteadst...m130522001.html

#51186 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 08 July 2013 - 05:26 AM in Netduino Mini

That is some great work there!

I saw your other post about LEDs and there will be plenty of time to change the design before manufacture.

#51139 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 06 July 2013 - 03:08 AM in Netduino Mini

Extremely off topic now: The triangle of binomial coefficients, a.k.a. the triangle of Pythagoras perhaps? But what about monday... EDIT: I'm so stupid, 29 as in your nick will go lay down now. A miscalculation, sleep well! EDIT: Nope, wrong again I think. I actually came to think about the tower of Babel and then found out about Ziggurat: http://en.wikipedia....urat_at_Babylon It was not until I saw the tower that I realized that your avatar depicts it. The number 29 according to the formula has probably something to do with the dimensions of the tower structure. This does not solve the riddle but interesting never the less. I have to give this some more thought and a bit of reading. I find these kind of things highly interesting. Sorry for all the off-topic stuff here guys.

#51247 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 09 July 2013 - 07:38 AM in Netduino Mini

Have you measured the actual power consumption of the the [color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]CC3000EM while it's fully running?[/color]

[color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]I blew my [/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]CC3000EM[/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;] but a new [/color][color=rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;]CC3000Boost arrived the other day [/color]

#50745 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 23 June 2013 - 09:49 PM in Netduino Mini

A $20 wifi board is great value, especially for a single unit!

#55431 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 17 January 2014 - 01:43 AM in Netduino Mini

Great work guys! If of interest to anyone at this point, as part of another project, I somehow ended up making a simple breakout board for another pretty darn cheap, yet powerful wifi module. It too has built-in a tcp/ip stack (but with a much more simplified interface) and I made the PCB so that it supports both the UART and SPI versions with on-board ceramic antenna or uFL socket for connecting an external antenna of your own choosing. Please let me know, should anyone be interested and I'll make a post about it.

#50882 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 27 June 2013 - 08:48 PM in Netduino Mini

Sorry to hear that, have you tried the Texas E2E community?

They are very helpful and you usually get help directly from TI employees working within the very field in question. At one point they even called me on the phone and that without me having pretended to be a big shot with 1k+ units planned for production

#50988 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 01 July 2013 - 03:16 PM in Netduino Mini

I did try the dead chicken routine but nothing in particular happened (other than our old parrot arising from the dead which was kind of freaky btw).

I too have a Bus Pirate laying somewhere, still untouched since I use the scope instead, it works pretty ok for me.

Vdd is 3V3 but I might have accidentally applied 5V logic at some point effectively killing the pin (I'm using my own USB explorer board, not a Netduino).

Btw, are you also using the older TiWi-SL eval board from LS Research?

I soldered short wires onto pins 7 - 12 on both the J4 and J5 headers (and left all other pins unused), then stuck it down a regular breadboard.

#51146 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 06 July 2013 - 02:50 PM in Netduino Mini

Anyway, I started working in Eagle yesterday but didn't get much farther than removing removing mosfets and moving some passives closer to each other. Naturally, you'll get to give your input when I get something to show. Oh and also, I removed the proto area.

#51072 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 04 July 2013 - 05:07 AM in Netduino Mini

@Valkyrie-MT: Great to learn you've joined this party!

I was under the impression those structures were actually pretty well documented.

http://processors.wi...Interface_(SPI) http://processors.wi...ogramming_Guide

...or am I missing the point here?

EDIT: At the time of writing, I noticed that the TI wiki seems to be having some problems but the links have worked before so it's probably just a matter of time before the problem is solved.

EDIT: Links are ok again

#51200 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 08 July 2013 - 09:06 AM in Netduino Mini

Don't worry, I won't use anything smaller than 0805 or I can't solder by hand. I suppose the CC3000 will require re-flow but even so, placing will be done manually.

#51077 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 04 July 2013 - 08:38 AM in Netduino Mini

You can usually ignore those warnings, vendors typically stress such things on samples to maximize the probability of users achieving success in evaluating the part. I'm pretty sure you can leave the bag open for years and it will still work and yield an ok product for hobby purposes.

#51236 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 08 July 2013 - 11:06 PM in Netduino Mini

Thanks, it's a family holiday in the greek archipelago.

#51092 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 05 July 2013 - 12:32 AM in Netduino Mini

Looks like a nice board!

Yeah, the 5 x MOSFETs translate to and from 3V3 and Arduino 5V respectively. For Netduino projects they're not needed at all but there are hex converters if Arduino compatibility is required. There are some alternative pin routing that can be omitted as well.

Personally I wouldn't be soldering stuff onto such a fairly expensive board so I would put a standard 0.6" DIP24 IC holder for you know what (with the corresponding pins routed) instead of that prototyping area.

I don't see a 2.1 mm barrel connector for external power and I'd like to be able to use an external antenna so a uFL connector could be added.

If you guys like, I could tinker with a slightly different board incorporating the modifications suggested above or differently if you think otherwise would be better. I'm no RF designer but the mods would be quite small except for maybe the uFL connector.

#52061 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 09 August 2013 - 08:46 PM in Netduino Mini

thx 4 the fish.

What, are you leaving this world for another planet so soon? ;-)

#51131 Spark Core (TI CC3000) Porting for Super WiFI Mini?

Posted by hanzibal on 06 July 2013 - 12:25 AM in Netduino Mini

Great, those are some really good guide lines!

Admittedly, I haven't read your posts all that thoroughly yet (it's late over here) and surely there are things to be discussed but just to be clear that I was merely picturing a really basic (yet powerful and versatile) Wifi board for the common Netduino user to benefit from, not the next "Wifi �bershield" :-)

Primarily, I was thinking a Netduino specific board with header layout to match. Heck, the world is overwhelmed by Arduino stuff as it is, and it's not like we would be making a zillion unit thing with a technical height that could withstand more than a week on eBay given every little peace of additional hardware adds to overall costs in terms of time and consequently that of gold.

Basically making a few simple mods to that github board (undoubtedly nice work) in order to get a cheap, quick and dirty wifi board for the whole Netduino family of boards (not excluding the mini) with a managed driver to go as I know of which the ancient lady warrior being extremely resourceful when it comes to the latter of things :-)

@ziggurat29: Have you ever considered politics or have they perhaps already got to you? SMD.

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