First Meeting of Humboldt Microcontrollers Group

So I figured the first meeting of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group (which was tonight, May 15, 2014) would be a pretty quiet one, likely just Nick and me, maybe one or two others.

It turned out that instead of two or three people, we ended up with nine people participating in the kick-off meeting for the group! If we have nine people, or more, show up at the biweekly meetings (next one is May 29, put it on your calendar), well have to figure out a bigger meeting area. But having lots of people show up is a good problem...

Tonights meeting was mostly a meet-and-greet, finding out what each persons experience with electronics was (if any) and what will make it worthwhile for them to participate in some, most or all of the groups future meetings. The interests ranged from just learning about microcontrollers and how to make one do simple things, all the way up to making a tracking mechanism for a radio telescope.

For the May 29 meeting, the current plan is to start out with a short discussion and demo on one of the topics covered in the 4th Jeremy Blum Arduino video tutorial. We wont repeat what is done in the video, but Nick will pick one topic from the video, and hell go a little more in-depth about that, or show and explain some aspect of the topic that Jeremy didnt include in the video.

After Nick does a short show and tell, well split up into a learner group and an advanced group. The learner group will discuss the topics and exercises in the 4th video, and make sure all the learners are up to speed on that, then go back over anything in the first three videos that people might not have had a chance to ask questions about tonight. Nick will facilitate the advanced group in working on a project or designing a future project, or hell come up with some other way to get the advanced microcontroller people learning, teaching or just having fun making something with microcontrollers.

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Microcontrollers In Grades 7 12

A recent TechCrunch post highlights what the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group (HMG) can help bring to the middle school and high school students of Humboldt County.

The post, titled "These Kids Are 3D-Printing Their Education," explains that:

"A group of junior high and high school students in Cambridge, Mass., are part of an experimental education program that aims to prove they’re capable of solving real-world problems early with the help of 3D printers, Arduino and group collaboration. Co-founders Saeed Arida, David Wang and Saba Ghole started NuVu Studio as a way to apply their dissertation theory, which claims that kids as young as 13 are capable of working on design and engineering projects normally reserved for those at the master’s level. By the looks of several projects involving medical devices, a game that helps you lose weight and a modular telepresence robot you can control from far away, the theory seems to be correct...The program does more than just teach kids 3D printing, design and engineering principles, although Arida admits there’s probably not a single project that doesn’t incorporate the use of Arduino at some point..."

It would be fun to help Humboldt 7th - 12th grade students get involved with microcontroller projects that many college students dont get the chance to work on in school. After the HMG has more experience helping beginners learn the basics of Arduino, we should contact local schools to see if theres interest in collaborating on student microcontroller workshops or projects.

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Skateboards and Microcontrollers

Because you can regularly see skateboards on the streets of Humboldt, the recent article in Gizmag about the Syrmo motion tracker caught my eye.

Miniaturization has made it possible to put sensors and embedded computers just about anywhere these days, including on skateboards. As it says in the Gizmag article:

"...A group of skaters from Buenos Aires, Argentina feel theres much to gain by tracking flips and spins and have developed Syrmo, a motion tracker that fits discreetly underneath the trucks to gauge everything from air time to the force of your ollie...With an accelerometer, gyroscope, microcontroller and Bluetooth 4.0 module built-in, the device is designed to replace the riser, a pad that some skateboarders will place underneath the trucks to make the board a little higher off the ground. Adding just 1 mm to the height of the board and weighing 50 g (1.7 oz), the company is confident riders wont notice a difference when riding with the device attached to their board..."

The Syrmo team recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to help them finish the software and to move from the prototyping stage to full scale manufacturing.

As expected, a Google search showed there are other skateboard+microcontroller projects out there.

Heres one with a PIC microcontroller and some LED headlights and taillights.

The E-Skate project has a detailed eight page pdf describing a college senior project to design and build an electric skateboard. The project presented in the E-Skate pdf used an Atmel ATmega328p microcontroller. The Arduino Uno also uses an ATmega 328 MCU. Maybe an HSU student will read the pdf and decide to build an E-Skate to zoom around the streets of Arcata. The picture to the right is a University of Central Florida electric skateboard senior project from a couple years ago from this video.

If someone wanted to design and build an electric skateboard in our area, Im sure the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group would have fun providing assistance with the microcontroller part of the project.

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Learn The Basics Of Using Microcontrollers

This blog post is for everyone who knows or sort of knows what microcontrollers (MCU) are and wants to learn the basics of using them.

There are three essential parts to using MCUs:

1. Connecting the hardware (the electronic and mechanical parts of your MCU project).
2. Writing and / or loading the software to operate the MCU.
3. Figuring out how to use the MCU to accomplish something of interest to you.

If you live in the Humboldt region of northern California, the best way to learn the basics of using microcontrollers is to come to the regular meetings of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group every other Thursday evening from 6 to 8 PM in The Link coworking space at 1385 8th Street, Arcata, California, USA. One of the primary goals of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group is to help people new to MCUs learn how to use them.

Regardless of where you live, below are several suggestions about resources for learning the basics of using microcontrollers. To really learn about MCUs with any of the methods listed below, you will need to buy or borrow electronic components, and youll need to write the software (or firmware) programs for the MCUs.

1. Use online video tutorials.
2. Use learn Arduino or learn microcontrollers books (do web search to identify those types of basic tutorial books).
3. Use online text tutorials.
4. Build MCU projects, either from kits or from scratch.
5. Buy electronic and mechanical components, use books or websites to figure out how to hook the components together, and use MCU info websites and MCU online forums to help with issues you cant figure out by yourself.
6. If your area has a makers group, library or other organization that puts on basics of microcontrollers or basics of Arduino classes or workshops, participate in those activities.

If you come to the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group biweekly Thursday evening meetings, learning the MCU basics will consist of:

1. Buying the basic hardware parts (a future blog post, and a Humboldt Microcontrollers Group wiki page, will discuss what parts are needed for learning about MCUs with the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group).
2. Watching the appropriate video tutorials for learning MCU basics (a future blog post, and a Humboldt Microcontrollers Group wiki page, will discuss what videos to watch).
3. Doing the MCU exercises in the videos (connecting and programming the MCUs) before each biweekly Thursday meeting.
4. At each biweekly Thursday meeting, discussing any problems or questions you had when doing the exercises for that meeting.
5. At the Thursday meeting, also discussing any other MCU questions you have and getting help from others at the meeting to answer, or figure out how to answer, your questions.
6. After you learn the basics of MCUs, participating in the non-beginners activities of the Thursday meetings, picking a project that involves using an MCU, buying and connecting the hardware for that project, writing the MCU code and working on the project at Thursday meetings.

So now you know how to learn the basics of using microcontrollers...

If you live in Arcata, Eureka, McKinleyville, Fortuna, Trinidad, Blue Lake, Ferndale or any of the other fine parts of the Humboldt region, please consider coming to the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group activities to learn the basics of using microcontrollers. Check the Humboldt Makers Group website or the Humboldt Makers Group Facebook page to find out the date of the next meeting.

Hope to see you soon at a Thursday night meeting!

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Blum 6 Arduino Video Tutorial Humboldt Microcontrollers Group Meeting

Tonights post is a quick look at the #6 Arduino video tutorial from Jeremy Blum, which is the main topic for the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group meeting this Thursday, June 26.

The #6 video tutorial, Serial and Processing takes a look at how to use an Arduino for communicating with the computer via a serial connection and using a programming language called Processing to visualize information from an Arduino on your computer screen.

For the serial communication between the Arduino Uno and the computer, the 0 RX (receive) pin and the 1 TX (transmit) pin on the Arduino are used. You connect the Arduino to your computer via a USB cable, which has 4 pins in it. One is power and one is ground. The other two are the serial transmit and receive pins. The USB transmit pin from the computer connects with the receive (RX) pin on the Arduino, and the computers USB receive pin connects to the Arduino transmit (TX) pin.

Jeremy runs through a number of Arduino programming examples for learning how to use the serial communication features. If you go through the #6 Blum video and feel you still want a little more background on serial communication with Arduinos, here are three other resources to look at:

1. The Arduino.cc reference page for serial communications
2. An Arduino tutorial from Ladyada about serial communications
3. A guide from Instructables on Serial Communications with Arduino

After he does the serial communications exercises, Jeremy covers a little bit about the programming language Processing. You start out by going to the website for Processing. The home webpage for Processing says its an open source language that:

"has promoted software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within technology. Initially created to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach computer programming fundamentals within a visual context, Processing evolved into a development tool for professionals...there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production."

In addition to the presentation and exercises with Processing that Jeremy Blum has for you in the video, if you want a better understanding of the language, you can spend some time going through some of the tutorials on the Processing website. If those tutorials arent your cup of tea, take a look at these resources for learning the basics of Processing:

1. The intro page from Arduino.cc for the Processing language
2. A SparkFun intro called "Connecting Arduino to Processing"
3. An Instructables session on "How to control LEDs with Processing and Arduino"

Mark your calendar for this Thursday, and plan to be at 1385 8th Street, Arcata, California, from 6 to 8 PM for the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group meeting!

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Microcontrollers Beer World’s Smallest Beer Lagering Device

One of the news articles I saw today was about the BrewJacket, a beer-brewing device which uses a microcontroller (MCU).

Yesterday I did a little research on aquaponics and MCUs. Josiah, a participant in the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group, is not only interested in aquaponics, he also enjoys brewing his own beer. Which seemed to indicate tonights blog post should take a brief look at microcontrollers and beer.

The BrewJacket is described as a lagering device. Never heard of one of those before, although I guess beer has to become a lager-type beer somehow. The article I saw puts it this way:

"BrewJacket, Inc has built the world’s smallest beer lagering device. Dubbed

Immersion, it allows space constrained home and professional beer brewers to create true lager style beers without a traditional refrigerator. Immersion is a solid state cooling device and is capable of taking a fermenting beer down 35º F below ambient in a matter of days, and measures just 8” wide. BrewJacket, Inc. launched their Kickstarter on April 10th 2014 and as of today has raised $93,831, more than 200% of the asking amount...“Lagers have always been the most challenging beer style for home brewers to create since it requires either a dedicated beer refrigerator or a climate cold and stable enough to maintain lagering temperatures. Many brewers convert old refrigerators to lagering chambers, but for many of us space-constrained brewers, that’s simply not possible.” Immersion is comprised of a cooling engine attached to a microcontroller that maintains a specific temperature set by the user..."

The BrewJacket Kickstarter campaign raised nearly $100,000, more than twice its funding goal. Almost makes a brewmeister want to come up with another niche homebrewing device that uses an Arduino just to be able to launch a Kickstarter campaign.

When I unleashed Google on the scent of microcontroller-brewed beer (the only true micro brew?), there were, as expected, quite a few search results for the topic. A Make magazine article titled "Homebrewing and Arduino: the perfect recipe" made it clear that MCU-beer is a global craft. The article author lives in Italy, so naturally his system uses an Italian product -- the Arduino. His article also mentions an Australian who has a similar Arduino-based brewing system.

Another non-USA Arduino-brew system was the BrewBot on Kickstarter, a project based in Belfast, UK. The BrewBot team was able to generate £114,368 and are merrily continuing working on their product. According to this project update, theyre having a great time and enjoying the limelight. This Gizmag article gives a pretty good overview of the BrewBot project. On the BrewBot website, they describe the product as "the worlds smartest personal brewery." Their system looks quite well designed.

Ill close todays post with two Hackaday links about MCU-beer. The first one is "UberFridge helps keep beer production going through the dog days of summer," and this Arduino-brew project kept the brewing equipment cool, as described below:

"...when things got too hot over the summer, he had to suspend his ale making for a few months. Not wanting to have to put production on hiatus again, he modified an old refrigerator into an awesome fermentation unit he calls the UberFridge. The refrigerator features two temperature sensors, one that sits in the fermenting beer, and one that measures the temperature of the fridge. This dual probe setup offers him the ability to closely monitor the fermentation process, which he does via a sharp-looking web interface..."

The second Hackaday link is to "Arduino Controlled Beer Brewing Machine!" A couple college students built the probably-popular-on-campus system as a project to help get their degrees. Their set-up, shown at the right, doesnt look nearly as polished as the BrewBot, but as long as it made great-tasting beer and they got a good grade on the project, the students probably werent concerned about whether it looked like a store-bought system.

Maybe over the next year Ill have the opportunity to work on a beer-brewing system with a microcontroller or two. If Josiah doesnt already have Arduinos assisting in his beer production, well have to see what reasonable cost upgrades we can design. And if he already has microcontrollers at work on his fine microbrewery, well have to figure out whether another one would make the beer taste better or the brewing more fun.

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Microcontrollers And Sensor Hubs

An article about microcontrollers (MCUs) and sensor hubs caught my interest today because since I started trying to learn microcontroller basics a couple months ago, I hadnt seen discussion of MCUs that involved sensor hubs.

Microchip Sensor Hub

In case sensor hubs are new to you, Wikipedia defines them as:

"...a microcontroller unit/coprocessor/DSP that helps to integrate data from different sensors and process them. This technology can help off-load these jobs from a products main application processor, thus saving battery consumption and providing a performance improvement."

(As an aside, if you know a lot about sensor hubs and feel Wikipedia is a valuable resource, you might want to consider contributing content about sensor hubs to the Wikipedia entry. It is currently labeled as a stub.)

There are several reasons sensor hubs are of interest to me. First, Im trying to learn all I can about microcontrollers, and it appears some sensor hubs are built with an MCU core. Second, Im very interested in using sensors in MCU projects, and understanding sensor hubs will likely help me do a better job of designing and building sensor-dependent applications. Third, sensors are an emerging area of consumer technology, primarily because of smartphones, and mobile computing devices over the next few years are going to include a growing number of sensors. This chart, above left, from an Electronics360 article indicates the rapidly growing market for sensor hubs.

Atmels sensor hub webpage mentions some of the sensors and mobile computing devices their MCU sensor hub systems are designed for:

"These can include motion sensors (accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers), environment sensors (light level, color, temperature, pressure, humidity) and many others...These systems are required in a broad range of products such as smartphones, tablets, ultrabooks, IoT- (Internet of Things) enabled devices, gaming, healthcare, and wearable computing."

An article from April 2014, "Atmel, Qualcomm, NXP Lead Booming Sensor Hub Market" indicated Atmel has the leading market share (32%) for sensor hubs. The article goes on to say:

"The use of sensor hubs is increasingly crucial because of the push for always on sensors used for activity monitoring, voice-command operation and contextual awareness...Three approaches are being taken to the provision of sensor hubs according to the report. One approach employs an external hub, typically a dedicated microcontroller (MCU), as offered by chipmakers such as Atmel, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and NXP Semiconductor. Recent smartphones that use this approach include the Apple iPhone 5s, Samsung Galaxy S5 and the Motorola Moto X. A second method utilizes a low-power sensor hub as a low-power core that is part of the application processor, offered by Qualcomm, Intel and Nvidia. In future the Samsung Exynos range and MediaTek and HiSilicon are expected to follow this route...The integrated approach will overtake the MCU approach in the market after 2016...A third way for implementing sensor hubs is to integrate the hub logic, typically an MCU, with a cluster of sensors, typically an accelerometer and gyroscope. The accelerometer and gyroscope are the most common sensor combination, allowing for various levels of activity and motion tracking, ranging from step counting to more detailed motion tracking and contextual awareness."

It appears MCUs role in sensor hubs may be short-lived for smartphones and other super-high volume mobile computing devices. But for battery-powered MCU maker projects with lots of sensors, the ultra-low power MCU-based sensor hub may play an important role, or at least provide some good insights on effective circuit design. At the next Humboldt Microcontrollers Group meeting, Ill be asking if Ed or any of the others at the meeting have experience with sensor hubs.

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Humboldt Microcontrollers Group June 12 Meeting Notes

Getting started on this post much later than usual, so it will be just a few comments about what happened at tonights meeting of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group.

Due to people being out of town and having prior commitments, there were only four participants in tonights meeting. We still had good discussions about microcontrollers and electronics, and I, at least, learned a few things about controlling motors with microcontrollers (MCUs).

TI Tiva C LaunchPad board

Ed started out the night by showing us the powerful $20 Texas Instruments (TI) Tiva C LaunchPad board he received recently from TI. He hasnt a chance to hook up any fancy demonstrations with it for the group yet, but he did seem pretty happy with it. Well likely have a blog post about it from him in the next few weeks after hes had a chance to work with it.

Ed also brought his less expensive TI LaunchPad board which he is using for some capsense proximity sensing. He talked about that at the previous Humboldt Microcontrollers Group meeting, and brought the small LaunchPad to demonstrate some capsense work hed done since that previous meeting.

The third item Ed brought were some nice oscilloscope screenshots of the PWM (pulse width modulation) control of the DC motor, since part of tonights meeting was planned to be discussion of Jeremy Blums Arduino Basics #5 video tutorial about motors and transistors. Youll see those oscilloscope screenshots in an upcoming blog post. Ed explained what the screenshots showed and the difference between the various trace patterns.

Nick explains how the chicken coop door opener will work.

Nick brought the work-in-progress door opening mechanism for his new chicken coop. Im trying to talk him into writing one or several blog posts about the project, but so far his time has been focused on finishing the design and getting it built. He powered the circuitry for opening and closing the door and showed us how it works. One of the door automation components is a part off an old Willys Jeep, which makes his chicken coop door more interesting and a bit unique. Its unlikely many other chicken coop doors in the USA have parts from a Willys Jeep. We just hope the chickens appreciate the history and character of their coop door!

After Nick demoed the chicken door opener, he talked briefly about the microcontroller educational kit he received from TI. Were looking forward to him bringing that to an upcoming meeting and maybe writing a blog post about the kit.

First circuit in #5 video tutorial

Next we spent some time talking about microcontrollers and motors, with the discussions being primarily to help me understand how circuits should be designed for controlling motors with an MCU and how the components for the circuits should be selected or sized. After we got most of my no load current, voltage operating range, stall current and collector current questions answered about motors and transistors, the group helped me finish breadboarding the first exercise in the #5 video, Nick typed up the sketch for the Arduino to operate the motor, we plugged it into power -- and the setup worked perfectly. Voila!

This weekend, Ill go through that exercise again by myself to make sure I understand it, polish up the code in the sketch a bit so it has comments in it and so I understand what each part of the code is doing. Then Im hoping to work on the rest of the #5 video (although I still need to work on a couple previous videos in the series...).

One last thing discussed was the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group wiki. We started out with a Wikispaces wiki, but have decided to move away from that wiki service because they require everyone who wants to view their wikis to sign up for an account. Thats just annoying for how we want to use the microcontroller wiki. So Ed is hosting a MediaWiki site, and we hope to have that operational in the next week or two. Well put a link to the wiki on this blog once the site is up and running.

See you in two weeks (thats Thursday, June 26) for the next Humboldt Microcontrollers Group meeting.

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Microcontrollers Libraries More Than Just Reading About MCUs

Libraries are places where people in a community go for information.

Some libraries are starting to provide more information about microcontrollers (MCUs) than just books for you to check out and take home with you to read. Around the USA, libraries in cities large and small are starting to offer hands on classes that involve working with MCUs, most often Arduinos.

Doing a search on Google News for libraries currently offering classes or workshop activities involving MCUs turned up eight libraries who recently had an article or a blurb about those MCU activities. The Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN, has maker spaces at two of its libraries and the May 25 article about them mentioned an Arduino class, as well as two robotics classes and a circuit board class that likely involve MCUs. The Allen County Public Library got involved with MCUs and the maker movement with a mobile maker space a few years ago:

"The library has also had a partnership with TekVenture, a non-profit Fort Wayne company. TekVenture’s Maker Station mobile laboratory was moved to the library’s lot at Washington and Webster streets three years ago, where the staff provided laboratories and workshops for library employees and patrons. Georgetown is still in the process of growing a crop of makers, Georgetown Branch Manager Lisa Armato said. “Thus far, people are mostly just taking classes and then afterward some come to practice...Another boy, who was an avid gamer, designed and made 3-D copies of a device that attached to a smart phone and to free up the player’s fingers for easier game playing on the phone’s screen. “He printed off his design for $3, took them to school and sold them to his gaming friends for $10,” Gregg said...“Everyone is very excited about all the new learning opportunities,” Armato said. “All of our classes are filling up, and we have waiting lists for some. We are seeing all ages, from 9-year-olds to senior citizens, learning side by side,” she said."

Other libraries have smaller budgets or are just starting to get involved with MCUs via introductory classes. Two libraries currently in the news who are also offering Arduino classes are the Westport Library in Connecticut and the Mead Public Library in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The May 15 article about the Westport Library says:

"A workshop on how to use the Arduino board, a small programmable microcontroller board, will be taught in a six-session workshop at the Westport Library...The Arduino board is an open-source electronics platform used for robotics, and all kinds of other projects...The sessions are for anyone with an interest in electronic circuits and the ability to learn coding. Each session will focus on a new problem...participants who have an Arduino kit should bring it. There will also be kits for use provided by the library. The workshop will be using the Sparkfun Inventors Kit for the class, which is available at for purchase..."

The May 19 Sheboygan article says:

"“Wanna race?” 14-year-old Christian Henke asked as he elbowed his dad, Andreas, at the Mead Public Library on Saturday. The father and son had just sat down to try their hand at building their own self-driving robot car at the Sheboygan Connects activity day at the library...The simple robotic vehicle, which Christian and father worked on, had two large wheels and a rear caster. At the front of a robot, two sensors turned 180 degrees on a servo to determine which course was the least obstructed...The robot was controlled by an Arduino circuit board, a simple programmable electronic prototyping platform..."

The first step towards having libraries offer classes with Arduino or other MCUs is for local makers to talk to their librarians and offer to explain more about the small computing components and why the library might want to consider offering some classes or workshops with them (often with the local makers developing and leading the classes or workshops).

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Power Sipping Microcontrollers Use FRAM

Emerging technologies and new tech terms are something of high interest to me, so when I saw a couple recent articles about microcontrollers with FRAM, I needed to know more.

FRAM (also written as FeRAM), or ferroelectric random-access memory, is defined by Wikipedia as,

FRAM Cell

"...similar in construction to DRAM but uses a ferroelectric layer instead of a dielectric layer to achieve non-volatility. FeRAM is one of a growing number of alternative non-volatile random-access memory technologies that offer the same functionality as flash memory. FeRAM advantages over flash include: lower power usage, faster write performance and a much greater maximum number of write-erase cycles (exceeding 1016 for 3.3 V devices). Disadvantages of FeRAM are much lower storage densities than flash devices, storage capacity limitations, and higher cost."

The article titled "Comprehensive Ultra-Low Power FRAM Microcontroller Platform from Texas Instruments" looks a bit like it came directly out of the marketing department rather than the engineering department. Although I guess most, if not all, press releases are generated by marketing departments, so the wording shouldnt really surprise me. The numbers in the article may not be incorrect, but they sure are presented in a hard-to-believe so-much-better-than-the-previous-model way. The article says,

"Texas Instruments (TI) today announced its comprehensive ultra-low power FRAM microcontroller (MCU) platform with all the necessary hardware and software

tools...to reduce energy budgets, minimize product size and enable a battery-free world. TIs new MSP430FR59x/69x FRAM MCU families...range from 32 to 128 KB embedded FRAM. These MSP430™ MCUs are ideal for smart utility metering, wearable electronics, industrial and remote sensors, energy harvesting, home automation, data acquisition systems, the Internet of Things (IoT)...ultra-low-leakage (ULL) proprietary technology with embedded FRAM delivers the worlds lowest system power with active power of 100 uA/MHz, accurate-RTC standby power of 450 nA...and an enhanced scan interface for flow metering that can operate while the system is in standby, resulting in 10 times lower power...FRAM is the only non-volatile embedded memory that can be written at 8MBps in under 800uA – more than 100 times faster than flash."

The new MCUs sound like the definition of innovation -- "a battery-free world," "worlds lowest system power," "10 times lower power" and "more than 100 times faster." If those terms are relevant and delivered on a cost-competitive basis relative to alternative components, there are definitely applications where it would be worthwhile to evaluate the IT FRAM microcontrollers. The Wikipedia article explains some aspects of the FRAM advantages,

"Flash works by pushing electrons across a high-quality insulating barrier where they get "stuck" on one terminal of a transistor. This process requires high voltages, which are built up in a charge pump over time. This means that FeRAM could be expected to be lower power than flash, at least for writing, as the write power in FeRAM is only marginally higher than reading...Flash memories commonly need a millisecond or more to complete a write, whereas current FeRAMs may complete a write in less than 150 ns."

 To benefit from the FRAM, MCU-system designers will have to focus on where the FRAM advantages over competing memory forms will pay big benefits. Two use cases that seem like the best candidates are energy-harvesting and remote sensors.

If you had some sample Texas Instruments FRAM MCUs, what would you use them for?

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Atmel SMART Microcontrollers

Atmel, the manufacturer of the microcontrollers (MCUs) on the Arduinos, just announced a new brand name for their 32-bit ARM core MCUs -- theyre now called Atmel | SMART.

The news release I saw this evening indicates that, in addition to launching this umbrella brand for its ARM MCUs, theres a new chip family in Atmel | SMART (why did the marketing people have to put a pipe between the two words??), designed primarily for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The new MCU, known as SmartConnect SAM W23, has integrated WiFi to make it easier on hardware designers and firmware coders who want to connect their embedded application to the Internet. Ive seen firsthand that combining an MCU and a WiFi chip

Atmel SAM W23

in a circuit can be challenging, especially if its not a high-volume application that lots of people have already figured out and provided code for others who dont spend a lot of time interacting with WiFi in their PCB applications.

Atmel has two online entry points for people who want to know more about Atmel | SMART. One is a general marketing webpage with cute graphics and not much information. The other entry point, probably more worthwhile for someone who wants to use one of these MCUs in a project, is the product information page for the Atmel ARM MCUs. If anyone tries out one of the SAM W23s, let me know how you like them. I dont know if theyre even on the distributor sites like Digikey, Mouser or Jameco, but if theyre not there yet, they will be soon.

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May 29 Second Meeting of Humboldt Microcontrollers Group

Short post tonight -- just got home from the second meeting of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group because it ran long. Which is a good thing, since people wouldnt have hung around past the nominal 8 PM meeting end time unless they were enjoying themselves.

We only had four people for most of tonights meeting, which is about half the size of the first meeting. We hope the low participation in tonights gathering was because the other people from the first meeting just couldnt make it to tonights meeting but are still interested and will be at future meetings.

About 2/3 of the way through the meeting, another person joined the group. He first had to find
someone to let him in the building because the doors to the Greenway Building were all locked. The front door had been propped open with a wooden wedge and the meeting information posted on the laminated sign on the front door saying to keep it open until 8 PM. Unfortunately either someone accidentally kicked the wedge out of the way or closed the door on purpose before 8 PM, because a couple people were unable to join the meeting because the door was locked.

I apologize to anyone who attempted to come to the meeting tonight and was locked out. To address the issue of the front door being automatically locked after 5:30 PM, for the next meeting (on June 12) we will:

1. Put the wedge in the door to hold it open and write the meeting info on the laminated sign.
2. Check on the door at 6:30 and 7:00 PM to make sure its still open.
3. Put a Humboldt Microcontrollers Group meeting sign on the front door with a phone number of someone in the meeting to call if the door is locked.

We also might meet down in the front lobby area at the big round table. That way we can see the front door and know if it gets closed during the meeting.

We talked about a wide range of subjects in tonights meeting, but the two primary microcontroller topics were CapSense and IR sensors for motion detectors. Ill write more about those two tomorrow -- too late tonight for technical topics.

For the June 12 meeting of the group, well be focusing on the #5 Blum video tutorial, which covers motors and transistors. If there are people new to microcontrollers at the meeting, a group will split off into a separate area to talk about the first Jeremy Blum Basics of Arduino videos. The more experienced people will cover breadboarding or other work they did on the topic of motors and transistors, as well as any specific exercises or questions they had from the #5 video.

Hope to see lots more people at the June 12 meeting, including anyone who was inadvertently locked out tonight...

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Microcontrollers And A Humboldt Laser Harp

I need to find out if laser harps are a fairly common item in Arcata and Humboldt County. If theyre not, building one could be a perfect project for the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group.

Laser Harp At Concert

First of all, if you dont know what a laser harp is, well turn to Wikipedia, which says:

"A laser harp is an electronic musical instrument and laser lighting display, consisting of several laser beams to be blocked, in analogy with the plucking of the strings of a harp, in order to produce sounds...They have also been used in public art installations...Playing the actual sound is usually handled by connecting the laser harp to a synthesizer, sampler or computer."

The picture at the right shows what one version of a laser harp looks like. The instrument can take many forms.Watching this short video clip will help understand what a laser harp is -- Bucharest Laser Powered Harp. The Bucharest video shows how engaging a laser harp will be for people walking past it. If you want to see someone playing music on a laser harp, watch Tetris Theme on Laser Harp. The Bucharest is a relatively simple version, something that would be a good exercise to build before attempting something like the Tetris laser harp.

Tetris Laser Harp

There are plans available for building a laser harp, many of which use an Arduino. Some plans have to be purchased, while other are free. It looks like a proof of concept might be something along the lines of the Ladyada laser harp exercise (pictures were on the page yesterday, but Flickr was having problems displaying them at the time I uploaded this post). That mini-project or one similar to it lets you learn the basics of sensing the laser beam and programming the microcontroller to respond when the beam is broken.

Once youve been able to generate music by breaking the beam, the next step would be to set up several laser beams so each one can be a different note. I havent researched laser harps enough to know which would be a better route to go -- building one like the Bucharest laser harp in the short video linked above or building the one whose design is on open-source-energy and is quoted at ~ $100 for the parts and uses an Arduino Uno. It might be

Open-source-energy Laser Harp

quicker to build the open-source-energy one because it has all the plans and Arduino code. If I can recruit enough people to split the cost of the parts, or find a sponsor who wants to cover the whole cost, my vote would be to build the open-source-energy laser harp.

Finally, after weve gotten experience building a multi-beam harp and having it produce decent music, then we could design our own, more like the Bucharest one, thats designed for interaction with people who are walking by. To have the laser harp be interesting looking even if the room isnt totally dark, some people have built in fog machine capabilities so the fog will highlight the lasers. The fog would make the design a lot more complicated, but it might make the laser harp fun to use in a lot more environments.

The next step in deciding whether to move ahead on this is to find out if anyone else in the area is interested in building a laser harp. If I can find another person to work on it with me, we can at least do the proof of concept circuit. Then wed have to choose a design for the multi-beam harp, price out the bill of materials and come up with a way to cover those costs.

If youre interested in working on a laser harp, send an email to arcatabob (at) gmail {dott} com. We can get together, figure out if we want to start with the Ladyada single beam exercise (if we can get the parts list, circuit designs and Arduino code) or if theres another low cost starter project to learn the basics.

Lasers are always a good thing to have in projects!

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Theres Gold In Them There Microcontrollers!

A recent article in EE Times titled "Is There Gold For EEs in Silicon Valleys Hills?" describes quite well one reason why people, especially college age or younger, should consider learning more about microcontrollers.

"The latest California Gold Rush (there have been many since 1849) is hardware startups. Businesses like Nest, Oculus Rift, and Makerbot have been acquired for princely sums. That, combined with the advent of crowdfunding sites and easy prototyping tools like Arduino and 3D printing, has encouraged lots of people to get out there and start panning for gold...Its really a great time to start a technology business, especially for hardware. I am seeing massive changes in how people design and prototype electrical and mechanical systems, manufacture those systems, and fund businesses that build and sell those systems...Development platforms are evolving, and many young engineers are learning Arduino for embedded programming before they learn C. Theyre more likely to get started on an Atmel AVR than a dsPIC. It also means that the field is still fairly wide open. These development tools are not yet fully entrenched. With a little bit of skill, knowhow, and some branding, you could build the next great hardware platform..."

The Humboldt microcontrollers group is intended to connect people in the region who already know how to use microcontrollers (and want to share their knowledge or learn more about these tiny electronic marvels.

For those Humboldt folks who dont already work with microcontrollers, or maybe dont even know what they are, this group is intended to help you learn about them and assist you in starting to make things with microcontrollers.

Who knows, maybe youll meet someone at a Humboldt microcontrollers group activity and end up starting a new business with them!

If you werent at the first meeting of the Humboldt microcontrollers group on May 15th, please consider coming to the next meeting. That meeting is on May 29th, from 6 to 8 PM, at 1385 8th Street in Arcata. Check out the Humboldt Makers Group website or their Facebook page for more info. If you have questions about the group or about microcontrollers, youre welcome to email me (Bob Waldron) at arcatabob [at] gmail (dott) com.

Hope to see you on May 29th!

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Humboldt Microcontrollers Community

Microcontrollers are about to become a part of my life.

That is to say, Im going to learn a few things about microcontrollers, which were already involved with many parts of my life.

If you live in Arcata, CA, or elsewhere in the Humboldt County region, you should consider participating in a new activity in the area -- the Humboldt Microcontrollers community. To start out with, were going to meet every other Thursday from 6 to 8 PM at 1385 8th Street, Arcata, CA, USA. The first meeting will be this week, on May 15, 2014. The purpose of this new intentional community is to get together on a regular basis with other people who want to learn about microcontrollers and / or want to share what they know about them.

If you like microcontrollers or are interested in learning more about them and you live in Arcata, Eureka, McKinleyville, Fortuna, Trinidad, Blue Lake or any of the other fine parts of the Humboldt region, please connect with us. Even if you cant show up every other week, wed love to find out who all the members and potential members of this new community are and how we can work with you, help you learn and learn from you.

So what are microcontrollers?? Theyre basically little computers. Wikipedia says a microcontroller is "a small computer on an integrated circuit containing a processor core, memory, and programmable input/output peripherals...used in automatically controlled products and devices, such as automobile engine control systems, implantable medical devices, remote controls, office machines, appliances, power tools, toys and other embedded systems." So youve likely got a few of them in your car, in your electric drill, in lots of the newer electronic toys, in your cable tv set top box, and in your fish locator.

The Humboldt Microcontrollers community activities are being organized by the Humboldt Makers Group, a local organization of people interested in DIY activities of all sorts, a group for people who are part of, or would like to be part of, the maker movement, even if they dont know what the maker movement is. Probably the best way for now to keep track of the Humboldt Microcontroller community activities is to watch the Humboldt Makers Facebook page. Microcontroller community activities will be posted there as well as a few pictures of microcontroller projects and other topics of interest to makers.

Im going to use this blog to reach out to people in the Humboldt area to invite them to participate in the Humboldt Microcontrollers community if they already know what microcontrollers are. Im also reaching out to others in the region who dont know what microcontrollers are, but might really enjoy or benefit from working with microcontrollers and making things that are controlled by or assisted by microcontrollers. It will be lots of fun seeking out both types of people, meeting new people who can teach me lots of interesting stuff about microcontrollers and new people who I might be able to help learn about these powerful devices. Or if I cant teach them, maybe I can learn with them.

Im also using this blog to chronicle my Adventures With Microcontrollers. Im starting my learning pretty much from scratch. Meaning I havent programmed these devices or built anything with them before. And I dont know much about electronics. So if you read a little about microcontrollers and think it might be fun to learn a little more, please join me and a few other people every other Thursday. Dont worry if you dont know anything about microcontrollers or electronics -- show up anyway. And dont worry if you cant come on May 15 -- just show up whenever you can. Check the Humboldt Makers Facebook page for up-to-date info on meeting times.

Tomorrow Ill write a little bit about the Arduino, the single board microcontroller were going to use for learning the basics of what a microcontroller is, how you connect and program them, and what you can use them for. In other future blog posts, Ill talk about interesting and useful applications for microcontrollers in Humboldt Country, do more in-depth explanations of what the different parts of a microcontroller are, explain what electronic components are needed to learn about and use microcontrollers, and Ill try to find reasons and ways to convince Humboldt area people to come join us in the learning and sharing of knowledge and skill with microcontrollers.

If you have questions about the Humboldt Microcontrollers community, send me (Bob Waldron) an email. The address is arcatabob [at] gmail (dott) com.

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Microcontrollers Aquaponics and Humboldt

I know very little about aquaponics at the moment, but I have a feeling that may change over the next year or so...

Someone I met today is interested in microcontrollers and aquaponics (a mashup of aquaculture and hydroponics). I think he mentioned that hes planning to build an aquaponics system soon. And Im pretty sure a member of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group previously told me theyre very interested in working with someone to build an aquaponics system. In addition to those two people being interested in working on a fish & plants system, the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation & Conservation District is involved with this topic, as illustrated by a video clip from Fall 2013. The news blurb reports that,

"...On Sunday the greenhouse received 75 white Sturgeon fish about six inches in size. The idea behind the greenhouse is to farm fish and plants in a mutually beneficial cycle by using the fish waste to convert to plant food. Project coordinator Erika Blackwell...said she wants Humboldt county to grow into an aquaculture industry. “The fish being in the system means we can start planting our vegetable starts and get our produce to market. There is this huge opportunity to provide locally raised sustainable raised fish. The climate is perfect for aquaculture..."

So tonight I did a brief online search for microcontrollers and aquaponics and found a few online resources for people interested in this topic. A few of the resources are linked below. There are lots more for those interested in this subject.

Ill have to ask John (the gentleman I met today) and Nick (a member of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group) if either of them saw Rik Kretzingers aquaponics display at this years Maker Faire in San Mateo. Rik is from the Bay area and has been doing aquaponics for a number of years. His 2014 Maker Faire display topic was Internet of Farming: Arduino-Based Aquaponics. Rik authors the Aquaponic DIY Automation blog. Maybe in the coming months we can talk Rik into making a visit up to Humboldt county to talk about his experiences with fish, plants and MCUs. And we can ask Erika Blackwell if we can do a tour of her Samoa system, and maybe see if there are opportunities for collaboration -- perhaps the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group can help her set up some low-cost controls systems if there are experiments shed like to try but for which she doesnt have the budget to do a full-scale commercial installation.

A couple other MCU / fish / plants projects to be found on the web include a Make: Project called "Aquaponics -- Online Temperature and Humidity" and an Instructables project called "Arduino Aquaponics: JSON Pump Controller." Rik or John might know of better online forums for this topic, but the Backyard Aquaponics forum seemed to have a fairly active community based on my brief visit to the site.

Lastly, it seems almost too good to be true, and I didnt take time to investigate it fully yet, but there might be seed money available to help get a new aquaponics project started in Humboldt Country. The Aquaponics Association has a micro grant program where members of the association can apply for grants of up to $1000 "to increase public awareness, understanding, and knowledge of aquaponics as an educational tool, a hobby, or a business in providing a source of fresh, local, healthy food." Thats an opportunity well have to look into more closely...

I know a lot more about aquaponics now than I did when I woke up this morning!

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Microcontrollers Batteries Not Included Or Needed

The concept of energy-harvesting or energy-scavenging devices is intriguing to me. If the power for an electronic component or computing device comes from energy harvesting, you dont need to plug it in and you dont need batteries to power it.

Wikipedia defines energy harvesting as:

"Energy harvesting (also known as power harvesting or energy scavenging) is the process by which energy is derived from external sources (e.g. solar power, thermal energy, wind energy, salinity gradients, and kinetic energy), captured, and stored for small, wireless autonomous devices, like those used in wearable electronics and wireless sensor networks."

The concept of energy harvesting somewhat applies to the larger field of capturing needed energy from the immediate environment of the item that will use the energy. Examples of this larger definition include:

• Regenerative braking, which converts kinetic energy of a vehicle into a stored energy form, such as a flywheel or battery, which can later be used to provide power to the vehicle.
• Mobile items with solar cells, such as a car with solar cells on the roof that help keep the car cooled when its parked in the sun, or the Soar Impulse aircraft (shown at right) that uses solar power it captures to both gain altitude (potential energy) and to charge its batteries during the day, then uses the altitude and batteries to keep itself flying through the night.

In terms of energy harvesting for microcontrollers (MCUs), a VentureBeat article, "Spansion goes battery-less with tiny ‘Internet of things’ chips," talks about two Spansion energy harvesting chips, MB39C811 and MB39C831, which can power MCUs. Spansion sees energy harvesting as one alternative for powering the Internet of Things (IoT).

"Spansion says it can eliminate the need to put a battery in the tiny sensors that will deliver the measurements from the Internet of things.” That should make it much more affordable to deploy billions of such sensors...By getting rid of the battery, such chips...will lower the maintenance costs significantly for companies that deploy networks of sensors for Internet of things applications...Spansion’s chips include a family of power management integrated circuits that can capture and store energy from ambient sources. Those include solar, piezoelectric (vibration), and temperature changes (Peltier). It could also use energy from electromagnetic induction."

An industrial use case for this combination of energy harvesting and low-power electronics is wireless sensor networks in large manufacturing facilities. Manufacturing equipment often generates vibration or heat, both of which can be used to power the sensor electronics and wireless communications systems. Had the US economy not crashed in 2007 / 2008, I quite possibly have been an engineer for a small startup that was going to install custom designed energy-harvesting wireless process sensor networks in aluminum smelters around the world. Aluminum production facilities are very large, so lots of money can be saved by not having to run process sensor powere and communications wiring throughout the facility. The recession caused the aluminum manufacturers and the startup company to put the project on hold for several years.

A potential application for energy-harvesting electronics like the Spansion chips mentioned above would be an agricultural monitoring system that has sensors spread out over several fields and greenhouses with a wireless communication system for getting the sensor data to collection nodes and to a central data storage and processing location. The energy harvesting means that power lines dont need to be installed to every sensor point and communication wiring doesnt need to be run to all the wireless modules. Energy harvesting powers the sensor electronics and the wireless communications electronics.

MCUs that would work well for this application are the sensor hub microcontrollers mentioned in yesterdays blog post, "Microcontrollers And Sensor Hubs," such as the Atmel SAM G microcontrollers. The SAM Gs are only 3 x 3 mm, and they use less than 7 µA in deep sleep with SRAM retention.

Although I cant immediately think of a Humboldt short term microcontroller application that requires energy harvesting, it would be interesting and educational to design and build a Humboldt Microcontrollers Group project that includes energy harvesting. And once we have familiarity with the energy harvesting circuits and the low-power devices that can be powered by the ambient energy that is collected, we may find financially viable applications, either in Humboldt County or elsewhere in the world.

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PancakeBot Microcontrollers To Make You Smile

So tonights post about the PancakeBot show you just how much fun you can have with microcontrollers (and other bits of technology) once you learn how to use them.

A recent SlashGear post is about an Arduino-controlled pancake-printing 3D printer that prints out an
Eiffel Tower. The PancakeBot is an open source project, so if you want to 3D print your pancakes, theres information out there to help you put together a slightly-wacky machine that will do just that.

The video for printing the Eiffel Tower is worth watching, if only to see how well-produced the video is and what a great job theyve done of getting the pancake printer to work.

But what I thought was even better was PancakeBots "Breakfast Gallop" video. I went to the projects website and checked out their blog. The video of a pancake horse riding across the countryside would be a priceless memory to make with your kids. After 3D printing the props for the video and after making the video, the kids get to eat the props! How much better can it get?

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