Category: Blog Posts

STM32, Mac, and VSCode

As I am searching for debuggers and possible future replacements for PSOC5 (since Infineon appears to dislike Cypress innovation), I stumbled across STMicro. STMicro has a development environment called STM32CubeIDE. There is also a STM32CubeMX application. Get both of them. On the Macintosh, you can download that from st.com...

J-Link Musings — Official is Good

Using a J-Link with VSCode / VSCodium (vscodium.org) works for many folks. The Segger folks have a web page about it: https://wiki.segger.com/J-Link_Visual_Studio_Code If you have a clone, it might work. I have found even a manufacturer specific J-Link version not targeted for your device will tend to work if...

Quicklogic Quickfeather Unbricking Success / Gotchas

I have started on the path of working with the QuickFeather board from SparkFun. There are some gotcha’s I was able to solve along the way that might baffle some people. My solutions may not be ideal, but here they are. I found that reading the quickstart guide was...

Geopolitics Cheap Debug, OpenOCD, ETC.

The study into acquiring a cheap debug environment for *any* arm processor is complex and confusing. I previously wrote about using a SEGGER, but that was not ideal. The reason is cost. One can be had for about $90, but it is iffy to use as a debugger at...

Infineon XMC(tm)-Link And QuickFeather

Just received the $90 XMC-Link. The 0.05″ connector cable is ARM specific. The larger 0.1″ connector cable is XMC specific. As a bonus, it is DC Isolated, 1KV, so you can debug processors at different grounding points than your computer. I plugged it into my Macintosh, ran JLinkExe that...

BlackMagic Probe, Blue Pill

Because the PSOC5LP is not readily available for the Weekend Engineer (no CY8CKit-059 boards available now), I have had to look elsewhere. The EOS S3 has caught my attention, but it is in the early stages, and I am not certain how much effort QuickLogic will put into it....

Segger J-Link, Clones, QuickFeather, Thoughts

To be perfectly clear, if a manufacturer provides good support for their product, you should buy from them, regardless of the cost. However, if you are scraping by on less than optimum wages, that is sometimes not possible. Period. In that case, people often turn to Chinese knock-offs. In...

QuickLogic QuickFeather

Since Infineon has made the PSOC5LP parts and dev kits unobtainium, I am having to look at other products for low volume production at work, and for SocMaker Weekend Engineering. QuickLogic has a processor that combines a tinyFPGA with an M4F processor and a 12 bit A/D. SparkFun has...

ADC’s — High Temperature And FreeRTOS

I am a proponent of the PSOC5. If the PSOC6 had as many UDB’s in it, I would be on that bandwagon. If it worked at high temperature (not yet tested), at the office we would switch to it ASAP, even though it is NOT 5 volt tolerant. The...