Great presentations Fred. I am not able to listen live because my great IT support said it would take 3 - 4 days from them to give me special rights for streaming audio, Lol.. So I come home and listen after work. This is very interesting stuff, even though I don't have an application right now, I might down the road and this will be helpful. Looking forward to the last two days. Thanks again, Steve.
Again, thanks to everyone for joining our discussion today. And, thanks for the feedback on what you're currently working on and what you would like to see in this classroom.
Be sure to get your copy of the Bootloader schematic from http://www.edtp.com/dsn/microSD-Bootloader.pdf
I would say another "Con" is an opening for unauthorized modification. I have not looked ahead to see if you will address validation of the HEX file for security.
Got interruptd right at the end - use NXP Cortex M0/3 offerings. Fortunately many of the principles apply. Unfortunately we can't afford the board space to put an SD card on them (nor a display) so some of the princilpes will have to be modified. Think wall light switch with motion detector not a candidate for fancy interfaces.
Great lecture, Fred! Have you ever worked with the Freescale tower system? Some of those boards include a resident SD card slot. I'm also trying to learn about the TI MSP430 system.
@ctrlfreek: No I haven't. Sounds like it might be interesting to look at.
Is there a way to fail over to another hex file or another image (perhaps the last known good image) if BootApplication() fails?
@N3WWN: Yes..It's a simple matter of programming :-) For simplicity, I loaded a single .hex file to the microSD. You can have multiple files on the microSD all with differing images.
Instead of just collecting the one expected file, you could scan for them all and select the one you wish to load. If BootApplication() failed, you have had a catastrophic error occur and the NUKE button (ABORT) would have to be brought into play.
Well, Fred it will be interesting to see a presentation / project of a 32 bit MCU of any make with touch screen and SD bootloader card. State machine menu driven file system to bootload any of the many programs stored at the SD card. Thanks a bushel :)
@cmpatel: Most of them are contained in the Microchip Application Libraries. I'll supply the homegrown ones as a download. Download the MAL from the Microchip site.
Where can I find what TRISxxxx and LATxxxx are doing? I'm using them but have no idea what I'm doing.
@Kentj: Basically, TRIS determines if the I/O pin is an input or output. A 1 means the port pin is an input. A zero makes the port pin an output.
LAT is short for LATCH. LAT is always associated with an output pin. For instance, you write to LATDbits.LATD0 and read from PORTDbits.RD5. You set LATDbit.LATD0 to an output by writing a zero to TRISDbits.TRISD0. Conversely, you assign RD5 as an input by writing a 1 to TRISDbits.TRISD5.
Great lecture, Fred! Have you ever worked with the Freescale tower system? Some of those boards include a resident SD card slot. I'm also trying to learn about the TI MSP430 system.
Fred, since you answer all the questions together at the end of the lecture it's sometimes hard to figure out what question goes with the answer. It might be easier if you cut/pasted the question into the answer.
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Now that solar and wind harvesting technologies are a thriving market, researchers are seeking other environmentally related energy sources for which they can create harvesting devices.
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