This article describes a simple networking system that supports multiple slave devices connected to a single serial port on the host system. The microcontroller side only requires a UART and can be implemented with a minimal amount of code. Background Almost two years ago I designed and built a small multi purpose bench testing tool to help with fault finding my electronics projects. The goal was to make it easier to measure voltages and currents at multiple points in a circuit without a desk full of multimeters. I wound up with a workable unit (workable enough for me to use at least) but the…
The competition I originally started working on the Bench Testing Tool is now over (see this post for details) but the project is far from complete and I would like to finish it off - mainly so I can use it myself but also because a number of people have expressed interest in building (or buying) their own in the future. I'm currently enjoying a few weeks break so I've had a bit of time to think about how I want to move ahead with the project and what changes I should make to the current design to improve performance and usability. I also have to give some thought to making it a bit easier to…
Yesterday was the Brisbane Makes Makercamp at Hackerspace Brisbane and the culmination of the Make Anything competition I had entered. It was a very full day - the number of interesting people and interesting projects was incredible. The chance to talk with such a large group of like minded people was amazing - by the end of the day my voice was a bit croaky from talking so much but it was price worth paying though for such a great experience. It was also an opportunity for the Hackerspace to show itself at it's best and it did it great job of it - the number of people who turned up to look ar…
The past weeks worth of work on the Benchtool Project has been focused on the firmware for the sampling module. I've used a Stellaris Launchpad for this part of the project. This update is just a quick rundown on how things have progressed so far. Developing for the Launchpad I've been very impressed with the Launchpad - building a set of make files and build scripts to compile and deploy the code turned out to be very useful. Rather than use the IDE provided by TI I chose to build up a GCC toolchain and use that instead. The process was not overly difficult - I followed the guides found here…
Here is a sample of the Benchtool UI: This is a simulated view, I'm using my QuickUI library with the VNC driver and the Java window manager library. Inputs are being simulated - it's not talking to any real hardware at this stage. It's not exactly the prettiest UI around but it's functional enough to be useful. A lot of the look and feel can be changed by updating some static icon images and the palette. The interface is touch driven so you won't see a mouse cursor. It gives you the option to save the current samples (the floppy disk icon), record data (the circle icon) and the ability to see…