Category Archive: computers

Feb
09

Freescale KL25 Cortex M-0+ Review

One of the projects I’m working on I chose to use one of the new Freescale KL25 MCUs.  They have an ARM Cortex-M0+ core and lots of peripherals to boot, including ones specifically designed for low power usage.  Below are some of the reasons why I chose it, and what my experiences with it have …

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Permanent link to this article: http://blog.curioussystem.com/2013/02/freescale-kl25-cortex-m-0-review/

Dec
11

Editing PIC .hex files

… or how to edit a .hex file instead of recompiling it for every option. I had a product a while back where the customer needed to program it, but we didn’t want them to have to hassle with compiling it for every (10,000+) permutation.  I had a whole build system set up when this …

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Permanent link to this article: http://blog.curioussystem.com/2012/12/editing-pic-hex-files/

May
19

The Case of the Random Lockup

We had a bug that just wouldn’t go away. Sometimes it would show up quickly, sometimes it would show up after the code had been running for a few days… but it would show up. What’s the programmer to do?

Permanent link to this article: http://blog.curioussystem.com/2012/05/the-case-of-the-random-lockup/

Feb
06

Two clicks to program a PIC

Sometimes you end up having to program a device with many different types of firmware. For a project I’ve used PICs on, this was the case. Here’s how to setup things so that all it requires is two clicks to load the firmware from windows explorer.

Permanent link to this article: http://blog.curioussystem.com/2012/02/two-clicks-to-program-a-pic/

Feb
04

Multithreading, Python and passed arguments

Recently I’ve had a project that required precompiling the firmware for a device so that the end user could program the device, but not have the source code. We’re not talking about a few versions of the code, but almost 1000. This is something that no person would want to do, especially since it would …

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Permanent link to this article: http://blog.curioussystem.com/2012/02/multithreading-python-and-passed-arguments/

Jan
07

Of embedded black boxes

Over the last few months I’ve been working on projects using PIC microcontrollers. At first I had a rather negative view of the PIC processors. Since I started coding on them, I have come to realize that it is the compiler that I have issues with much more than the hardware. The compiler we’ve been …

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Permanent link to this article: http://blog.curioussystem.com/2012/01/of-embedded-black-boxes/

Jan
07

Cleaning up filenames for transfer to windows

For those of you run multiple operating systems, you may have run across the problem where the filenames on one are not valid on the other. Specifically I’ve had that problem when using NTFS filesystems between Linux and Windows. The NTFS3G drivers on Linux will allow characters in the file names that windows doesn’t like. …

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Permanent link to this article: http://blog.curioussystem.com/2012/01/cleaning-up-filenames-for-transfer-to-windows/

Jul
07

Using the Python HTMLParser library

When writing a script to download files off a site, I figured there was an easy python library to do that. Well, sort of. I chose to use the HTMLParser library.  The documentation is not the best, so I thought I would add a bit of what I found.  If I had to do it …

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Permanent link to this article: http://blog.curioussystem.com/2011/07/using-the-python-htmlparser-library/

Jul
05

Automating Dreamhost backups

We here at Curious System Solutions use dreamhost as our hosting provider.  One of the nice things they give us is a nice, tidy, backup every month, if we ask for it.  It may take a few days if you ask at the beginning of the month, and it is easy to forget to download.  …

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Permanent link to this article: http://blog.curioussystem.com/2011/07/automating-dreamhost-backups/

Jun
14

Capacitive Touch Sensing on the MSP430

One of the projects I’m working on involves using capacitive touch sensing (CTS) on the TI MSP430.  TI has been pushing their touch sensing capabilities recently and has even released a library that helps in implementing touch sensing on the MSP430.  I decided to give it a try.  The short story is that there is …

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Permanent link to this article: http://blog.curioussystem.com/2011/06/capacitive-touch-sensing-on-the-msp430/

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