Review Blogs

Tektronix 3 Series MDO - Part 1: First Impressions

three-phase

Unboxing Paperwork supplied Passive Probes Digital Probes Build quality of oscilloscope Start-up Scope Probe Compensation Insulation Tester Measurements RF Measurements USB Analysis HDMI Output and remote LAN operation Transpor...
- 17 Dec 2019
Renesas Envision Kit RX65N Roadtest Part 6 - Getting the Display Working

Andrew J

In this post, I'm using the ADC and I2C features to finalise the display and show the board/MCU interfacing with the external world. I'm particularly interested in how much more complex this is than, say, something like an Arduino which is well...
- 16 Dec 2019
Renesas Envision Kit RX65N Roadtest Part 4E - Analog to Digital Conversion

Andrew J

Limitations for my RoadtestThe RX65N MCU operates at a voltage from 2.7V to 3.6V. The 12-bit ADC analog input pins voltage is AVss <= Vpin <= AVcc. AVss and AVcc do not need to be tied to Vcc. On the Envision board, VCC = AVcc...
- 11 Dec 2019
Renesas Envision Kit RX65N Roadtest Part Four D - Removal/Re-instatement of the LCD Panel

Andrew J

I need to solder on some headers to the board and this requires that the LCD is removed. It has two connections: one for the LCD itself and one for the touch panel:In close-up, sorry for the picture quality: I’m not sure how these disconnect as...
- 10 Dec 2019
Renesas Envision Kit RX65N Roadtest Part Five - Static Setup of the GUI

Andrew J

My Road test is to test out the development tools and features of the board in building out a version of the HMI I created for my power supply (and then extend the functionality using other board features.) TL;DR;I’m aiming these posts at those ...
- 7 Dec 2019
Raspberry Pi 4 is awesome!

segnini75

Well, I want to talk about my experience with the raspberry pi 4, from the pint of view of practical - production small server. Wait a moment... have I said Production? Hell yes, is a little bit risky but let's create some awesome with our a...
- 6 Dec 2019
Renesas Envision Kit RX65N Roadtest Part Four C - Segger emWin Introduction

Andrew J

EDITED 10/12/19: Resolved issue with the base build. See below. This is just a brief note on getting started with the Segger emWin gui development tool which is available free to all Envision kit users. It is necessary to register wi...
- 5 Dec 2019
Renesas Envision Kit RX65N Roadtest Part Four B - User Fit Parts

Andrew J

There are DNF positions on the Envision Board for users to extend the capability with Ethernet, SD card and a joystick. The User Guide details these with a set of part numbers and they are tracked up to pins on the MCU so it should just be a ca...
- 3 Dec 2019
Renesas Envision Kit RX65N Roadtest Part Four A - Brief note on Smart Configurator

Andrew J

I want to get another simple program working that requires more effort on my part in utilising the tools available. In this brief note, it is to create a Blinky app (similar to the tutorial that failed in part 3) whilst utilising the Smart Conf...
- 2 Dec 2019
Renesas Envision Kit RX65N Roadtest Part Three - Development Software

Andrew J

In this instalment I’m going to cover downloading, installing and setting up the development software: TL;DR;I’m aiming these posts at those who are not familiar with MCU development to give them a feel of what they will go through. I know...
- 30 Nov 2019
Renesas Envision Kit RX65N Roadtest Part Two - Getting Going

Andrew J

In this instalment I’m going to cover how easy it is to get to grips with the board:Setting up a Renesas accountUpdating the firmwareUndertaking the e-learning providedChecking out support options for probable future useI’ll apologise for it being a ...
- 29 Nov 2019
Renesas Envision Kit RPBRX65N Roadtest Part One - Introduction

Andrew J

I applied to road test the RX65N MCU EV kit for two reasons:I thought that I could test the product by re-producing the HMI (Human-Machine Interface) that I created for my last project - a bench power supply - which uses a 4Duino from 4D Systems.&nbs...
- 27 Nov 2019
Exploring another RSL10-SENSE Board Example

BigG

1.0 Introduction 2.0 The "On−board Sensor Tests" Example 2.1 Loading project into IDE 2.2 Flashing the RSL10-SENSE board 2.3 Exe...
- 10 Nov 2019
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Review

dougw

I was one of the lucky ones who received a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B in the 10th Birthday Celebration.What I wrote back then was:Pi4 - The Window on the WorldWhen they designed the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, they read my mind about what new features I woul...
- 21 Sep 2019
Particle.io Wi-Fi/Thread Mesh Bundle - Hopping on board the Mesh Network "Express". Next stop Argon then Xenon.

BigG

Getting Started ... with Argon ...and Xenons Finally, the console screen Having read the brochure and the product information online, I took the plunge, and after a short wait to receive my bundle of well packaged goodies I was re...
- 10 Sep 2019
Stepper Motor Driver Kit + Motor - Stall Guard

Workshopshed

For my last part of this road test I'm looking at the stall guard function. This works by sensing the current through the motor coils so my first step was to look at the datasheet chapter 9 on sense resistors. Thanks to jancumps for reviewing the...
- 26 Aug 2019
Stepper Motor Driver Kit + Motor - Positional Accuracy

Workshopshed

The next test for the TMC5161 was positional accuracy. This is where my test rig came in. I fixed the motor to one bracket and attached the 3D printed drum. A waxed cotton thread was wrapped around the drum twice for grip and then fed around the idle...
- 24 Aug 2019
Stepper Motor Driver Kit + Motor - Position Encoder

Workshopshed

To test the accuracy of the stepper driver I am using a large test rig with a pointer to indicate the position. There is also an optical encoder mounted on the back of the stepper motor and the TMC5161 chip can read the pulses from this and make it&#...
- 19 Aug 2019
PYNQ-Z2 Dev Kit - Tiny-YOLO Object Detection

ralphjy

The next neural network that I'm going to try is a variant of Tiny-YOLO. The You Only Look Once (YOLO) architecture was developed to create a one step process for detection and classification. The image is divided into a fixed grid of...
- 18 Aug 2019
PYNQ-Z2 Dev Kit - ImageNet Classification

ralphjy

Before I move on to object detection I thought I would try one more example of object classification using a more complex neural network based on the Multi-layer offload architecture. The network used is a variant of the DoReFa-Net and uses the...
- 17 Aug 2019
PYNQ-Z2 Dev Kit - CIFAR-10 Webcam revisited....

ralphjy

After my previous blog post it was pointed out to me that the amount of whitespace (or other non-object pixels, i.e. background) that I had in my captured image was affecting the accuracy of the classification. I did a quick inverse test that w...
- 15 Aug 2019
PYNQ-Z2 Dev Kit - CIFAR-10 Webcam continued....

ralphjy

In the previous blog PYNQ-Z2 Dev Kit - CIFAR-10 Convolutional Neural Network , I verified the 3 hardware classifiers against the reference "deer" test image. Now I'm going to see how the classifiers perform with captured webcam im...
- 14 Aug 2019
PYNQ-Z2 Dev Kit - CIFAR-10 Convolutional Neural Network

ralphjy

The first neural network implementation that I'm going to look at is for CIFAR-10 (Canadian Institute For Advanced Research). CIFAR-10 is a computer vision dataset used to train and test neural networks for object recognition. The CIFAR-1...
- 13 Aug 2019
My introduction to the Keysight DAQ970A

three-phase

Introduction What is a Data Acquisition System? Market Review Cost of Ownership Module Types Build Quality Power Consumption Tests Performance Tests Operation with the BenchVue software. Summary Introduction This is my openin...
- 6 Aug 2019
Getting started with Particle Argon and Photon

ruchir1674

Introduction As Particle introduced their third generation of hardware. The Particle Argon, Boron, and Xenon are Particle’s latest offering in the world of IoT dev boards, and this time they add mesh networking. The three new boards are all buil...
- 3 Aug 2019