There is a lot of information on the web about Real Time Operative Systems, but i will be very fast because i am not an expert nor a genius in this and other themes.

This is a combination of software and hardware requirements to do real time applications. Like computers that have an Operative System (not RT) it is a built in, non visual real time system. Depending on the application, the RTOS will be a bless or your doom because the debug and implementation of this types of systems are more complex, but literally it is more efficient and faster to do something in a RTOS layer that a non-RTOS system.

In this entry i will explain RTOS basics and will finish with a video of implementing the simple example with Keil RTX CMSIS-RTOS compliant on the FRDM-K64F board for just setting and then blink a LED.

Have a Freedom Board and want to start developing using Kinetis Design Studio?  Well, here is a video in my youtube channel corresponding to the Kinetis Design Studio and the FRDM-K64F board.

You willl start rapidly to develop a simple blink application with Processor Expert in this short video.

The bootloader is a firmware program, and in our case, with our microcontroller is resided in flash memory.  Basically loads main functionality of all interface and peripherals and has command line interface tools to make an upgrade of our existing application.

A better use of a bootloader is to implement in a serial line of devices ready to flash; companies use a bootloader to program lots of units and ship pre-programmed or in a facility, the commodity to re-program a line of devices in a sub-network if you are far away from them.

Learn how to start-up your first bootloader with the Kinetis Freedom K64F.

A simple way to don’t raise memory size of your MCU and doing compression/decompression of audio is using an external module to process it.  With te SOMO-14D module you could do the work.

This tiny audio module can play wav or mp3 files stored in the SD Card up to 512 files of audio in AD4 format (ADPCM).  For general purposes i constructed a terminal interface with my nucleo mbed board.  With this i can play, pause, stop, resume, set the volume or go to any audio file (if exists) that is on the main module.

On the other hand, on the mbed repository you could get libraries almost non-dependable hardware and easy adaptation to any other microcontroller board.

Please check the project.

mbed is in my opinion the most outstanding online colaboration and engineering tool for amateur engineers or not.  It is capable to do multiple fast track projects and have a numerable boards to complain this task.

• Multiple vendor platforms
• Based on ARM Cortex-M architecture
• Online compiler (following C/C++ ANSI notations, really important!)
• Repository of code
• Colaborative tools
• Exporting options to professional IDEs (Keil, IAR, etc.)

Of course it have disadvantages, but if you want a non traumatic experience it will works very well.

Yo first select a board, make some examples and if you want to go to production can also do that.  It really shortens the learning curve of the engineering for those people that have no time or wants to test and do fast prototyping.

Here i will write to you a tutorial of using this board, the Kinetis K64F board, mbed enabled for starting to know what is, enable your first application and then make your own code.

Tiva C Series microcontrollers are the “new” ARM Cortex-M with capability of floating point operations.  They are 32-bit microcontrollers that have embedded USB, Ethernet, GPIO, Timers, and so on peripherals for your application use.

What is impressive is the price, the TI Connected LaunchPad that i am evaluating only costs USD 19.99 and you could plug daughter boards called booster packs (like arduino shields or beaglebone capes).

Follow to the evaluation page here.

The Leap Motion Controller is an HID (Human Interface Device) thatn handles you the capability to interact with your environment without touching anything.  Just slide and move your hand over the device, make gestures and control every move of your world.

Vie the tutorial here.

There is often called Variable Speed Drive or Variable Frequency Drive.  These devices are used to control speed and torque during the timespan of the application.

Check the cool application in LabVIEW using an old and common protocol like Modbus TCP that is very common in industrial control applications.

In this post i made a simple library in LabVIEW and interfaced with the PC to acquire brainwaves using the Neurosky Mindwave Mobile, LabVIEW and a RN-41.

Ubertooth One is a Kickstarter project by Michael Ossmann to make experiments under the 2.4GHz band.  Is a development platform for wireless but you can specially do more than that.  You could sniff bluetooth packets with kismet and log it to later open in wireshark and analyze.  This is very usefull to make drivers and inspect bluetooth network data.  In an advanced feature, ubertooth could be used to inject bluetooth packets.  Check the page of the post.