STM32F446 on board temperature sensors,the timer configuration problem - embedded

i am currently try to ramp up bare metal programming using STM32F446 nucleo board.
I try to make use of on board temperature sensors and display the value on via UART.
i studied the code from http://www.microdigitaled.com/ARM/STM_ARM/Code/Ver1/Chapter07/Program7-2.txt
I not really understand timer code,i understand register configuration but i don't get why does it needed in this case, are the timer try to tabulate the sensors value for every one second?

As described in the code comments:
ADC1->CR2 = 0x13000000;
Configures the ADC conversion to be triggered from TIM2, then,
while(!(ADC1->SR & 2)) {}
"busy-waits" for a single conversion to complete.

Related

How to deep sleep an Attiny until an analog value of a photoresistor changes?

for a battery powered project I would like to put an Attiny85 into deep sleep mode immediately after program start and let it wake up only when a sensor value (in this case a photo resistor) changes. Unfortunately I could only find examples for interrupts by a button and not for photo resistors in the internet. Does anyone have an idea how I could implement it, or if it is impossible?
Turn out that this is probably a software question.
Probably to lowest power and simplest way to implement this would be to...
Connect the analog sensor value to any one of the analog input pins on the ATTINY.
Make sure you disable the digital buffer on that pin.
Set up the ADC to point to the pin and set other relevant values like precaller.
Set up a watchdog timer to fire a periodic interrupt.
Go into deep sleep and wait for the watchdog timer to fire.
Each time the watchdog fires...
Enable the the ADC.
Take a sample.
Jump to main code if the value has changed more than your threshold.
Disable ADC.
Go back to deep sleep.
How power efficient this will be really depends on how often the timer interrupt fires - the less often the better. If your application can live with only checking the sensor, say, once per second then I bet power usage will be single digits of microamps or less.
If you really need very low latency when that sensor values changes, then you could instead use the build in analog comparitor...
.. to generate an interrupt when the input voltage goes above or below a threshold value, but this will likely use much more power since just the analog comparitor itself uses ~30ua while on, and you will also need to generate the voltage that you are comparing to either with the internal 1.1 voltage reference or an external resistor bridge or buffer capacitor.

Error -200361 using USB-6356 X-series DAQ board for SPI control

I'm using a USB-6356 DAQ board to control an IC via SPI.
I'm using parts of the NI SPI Digital Waveform library to create the digital waveform, then a small wrapper VI to transmit the code.
My IC measures temperature on an RTD, and currently the controlling VI has a 'push for single measurement' style button.
When I push it, the temperature is returned by a series of other VIs running the SPI communication.
After some number of pushes (clicking the button very quickly makes this happen more quickly in time, but not necessarily in number of clicks), the VI generates an error -200361, which is nominally FIFO buffer overflow on the DAQ board.
It's unclear to me if that could actually be the cause of the problem, but I don't think so...
An NI guide describing this error for USB-600{0,8,9} devices looks promising, but following the suggestions didn't help me. I substituted 'DI.UsbXferReqCount' for the analog equivalent, since my read task is digital. Reading the default returned 4, so I changed the property to write and selected '1', but this made no difference.
I tried uninstalling the DAQ board using the Device Manager, unplugging and replugging, but this also didn't change anything.
My guess is that additional clock samples are generated after the end of the 'Finite Samples' part for the Read and Write tasks, and that these might be adding blank data that overflows, but the temperatures returned don't indicate strange data, and I'd have assumed that if this were the case, my VIs would be unable to interpret the data read in as the correct temperature.
I've attached an image of the block diagram for the Transmit VI I'm using, but actually getting it to run would require an entire library of VIs.
The controlling VI is attached to a nearly identical forum post at NI forums.
I think USB-6356 don't have output buffers used for Digital signal. You can try it by NI-MAX, if you select the digital output, you may find that there is no parameters for Samples. It's only output a bool-value(0 or 1) in one time.
You can also use DAQ Assistant in LabVIEW, when you config Digital output, if you select N-Samples or Continuous samples, then push OK button, here comes a Dialog that tell you there is no buffer for lines that you selected.

Using NAudio, How do I get the amplitude and rhythm of an MP3 file?

The wife asked for a device to make the xmas lights 'rock' with the best of music. I am going to use an Arduino micro-controller to control relays hooked up to the lights, sending down 6 signals from C# winforms to turn them off and on. I want to use NAduio to separate the amplitude and rhythm to send the six signals. For a specific range of hertz like an equalizer with six bars for the six signals, then the timing from the rhythm. I have seen the WPF demo, and the waveform seems like the answer. I want to know how to get those values real time while the song is playing.
I'm thinking ...
1. Create a simple mp3 player and load all my songs.
2. Start the songs playing.
3. Sample the current dynamics of the song and put that into an integer that I can send to which channel on the Arduino micro-controller via usb.
I'm not sure how to capture real time the current sound information and give integer values for that moment. I can read the e.MaxSampleValues[0] values real time while the song is playing, but I want to be able to distinguish what frequency range is active at that moment.
Any help or direction would be appreciated for this interesting project.
Thank you
Sounds like a fun signal processing project.
Using the NAudio.Wave.WasapiLoopbackCapture object you can get the audio data being produced from the sound card on the local computer. This lets you skip the 'create an MP3 player' step, although at the cost of a slight delay between sound and lights. To get better synchronization you can do the MP3 decoding and pre-calculate the beat patterns and output states during playback. This will let you adjust the delay between sending the outputs and playing the audio block those outputs were generated from, getting near perfect synchronization between lights and music.
Once you have the samples, the next step is to use an FFT to find the frequency components. Fortunately NAudio includes a class to help with this: NAudio.Dsp.FastFourierTransform. (Thank you Mark!) Take the output of the FFT() function and sum out the frequency ranges you want for each controlled light.
The next step is Beat Detection. There's an interesting article on this here. The main difference is that instead of doing energy detection on a stream of sample blocks you'll be using the data from your spectral analysis stage to feed the beat detection algorithm. Those ranges you summed become inputs into individual beat detection processors, giving you one output for each frequency range you defined. You might want to add individual scaling/threshold factors for each frequency group, with some sort of on-screen controls to adjust these for best effect.
At the end of the process you will have a stream of sample blocks, each with a set of output flags. Push the flags out to your Arduino and queue the samples to play, with a delay on either of those operations to achieve your synchronization.

Plot a graph of Time vs RSSI for a 433Mhz RF ASK Receiver

Hi Im using the following RF module
http://www.apogeekits.com/rf_receiver_module_rx433.htm
on an embedded board with the PIC16F628A. Sadly, I realized that the signal strength was in analog form and couldn't get any ideas to get the RSSI reading off the pin because well my PIC is digital DUH!.
My basic idea was
To get the RSSI value from my Receiver
Send it to the PIC
Link the PIC to a PC via RS232
Plot a graph of time vs RSSI of the receiver (so I can make out how close my TX is to my RX)
I thought it was bloody brilliant at first but ive hit a dead end here. Any ideas on getting the RSSI data to my PC from this receiver would be nice.
Thanks in Advance
You can get a PIC that has an integrated ADC for sampling the analog signal. Or, you can use an external ADC chip to do the conversion. You would connect that to your PIC using SPI or I2C.
The simplest thing to do is obviously to use a more appropriate microcontroller - one with an ADC! There are many (most), including PICs (though that wouldn't be my first choice).
Attaching an external SPI or I2C ADC might be a bit tedious since having no SPI or I2C on your part, you'd have to bit-bash it. If you do that, use an SPI part - its simpler. Your sample rate will suffer and may end-up being a bit jittery if you are not careful.
Another solution is to use a voltage controlled PWM, then use the timer input capture to time the pulse width. That will give you good regularity and potentially good resolution. You can get a chip (example) to do that, or grow your own. That last option requires a triangle wave input as well as the measured (control) voltage, but on the same site...
In a similar vein, you could use a low frequency VCO (example) and use the output to clock one of the timers, then using a second timer periodically sampling the first and reset it. The count will relate to the voltage, though not necessarily a linear relationship, linearisation could be none on the PIC or at the receiving PC - I'd go for the latter - your micro will suck at arithmetic (performance wise) - even integer arithmetic, especially if it involves division.

Lighting Control with the Arduino

I'd like to start out with the Arduino to make something that will (preferably) dim my room lights and turn on some recessed lighting for my computer when a button or switch is activated.
First of all, is this even possible with the Arduino?
Secondly, how would I switch on and off real lights with it? Some sort of relay, maybe?
Does anyone know of a good tutorial or something where at least parts of this are covered? I'll have no problems with the programming, just don't know where to start with hardware.
An alternative (and safer than playing with triacs – trust me I've been shocked by one once and that's enough!) is to use X-10 home automation devices.
There is a PC (RS232) device (CM12U UK or CM11 US) you can get to control the others. You can also get lamp modules that fit between your lamp and the wall outlet which allows you to dim the lamp by sending signals over the mains and switch modules which switch loads on and off.
The Arduino has a TTL level RS232 connector (it's basically what the USB connection uses) – Pins 0 and 1 on the Diecimila so you could use that, connect it via a level converter which you can buy or make and connect to the X-10 controller, theirs instructions on the on the Arduino website for making a RS232 port.
Alternatively you could use something like the FireCracker for X-10 which uses 310MHz (US) or 433MHz (UK) and have your Arduino send out RF signals which the TM12U converts into proper X-10 mains signals for the dimmers etc.
In the US the X-10 modules are really cheep as well (sadly not the case in the UK).
Most people do it using triacs. A triac is like two diodes in anti-parallel (in parallel, but with their polarity reversed) with a trigger pin. A triac conducts current in either direction only when it's triggered. Once triggered, it acts as a regular diode, it continues to conduct until the current drops bellow its threshold.
You can see it as a bi-directional switch on a AC line and can vary the mean current by triggering it in different moments relative to the moment the AC sine-wave crosses zero.
Roughly, it works like this: At the AC sine-wave zero, your diodes turn off and your lamp doesn't get any power. If you trigger the diodes, say, halfway through the sine's swing, you lamp will get half the normal current it would get, so it lights with half of it's power, until the sine-wave crosses zero again. At this point you start over.
If you trigger the triac sooner, your lamp will get current for a longer time interval, glowing brighter. If you trigger your triac latter, your lamp glows fainter.
The same applies to any AC load.
It is almost the same principle of PWM for DC. You turn your current source on and off quicker than your load can react, The amount of time it is turned on is proportional to the current your load will receive.
How do you do that with your arduino?
In simple terms you must first find the zero-crossing of the mains, then you set up a timer/delay and at its end you trigger the triac.
To detect the zero-crossing one normally uses an optocoupler. You connect the led side of the coupler with the mains and the transistor side with the interrupt pin of your arduino.
You can connect your arduino IO pins directly to the triacs' triggers, bu I would use another optocoupler just to be on the safe side.
When the sine-wave approaches zero, you get a pulse on your interrupt pin.
At this interrupt you set up a timer. the longer the timer, the less power your load will get. You also reset your triacs' pins state.
At this timers' interrupt you set your IO pins to trigger the triacs.
Of course you must understand a little about the hardware side so you don't fry your board, and burn your house,
And it goes without saying you must be careful not to kill yourself when dealing with mains AC =).
HERE is the project that got me started some time ago.
It uses AVRs so it should be easy to adapt to an arduino.
It is also quite complete, with schematics.
Their software is a bit on the complex side, so you should start with something simpler.
There is just a ton of this kind of stuff at the Make magazine site. I think you can even find some examples of similar hacks.
I use MOSFET for dimming 12V LED strips using Arduino. I chose IRF3710 for my project with a heat sink to be sure, and it works fine. I tested with 12V halogen lamp, it worked too.
I connect PWM output pin from Arduino directly to mosfet's gate pin, and use analogWrite in code to control brightness.
Regarding 2nd question about controlling lights, you can switch on/off 220V using relays, as partially seen on my photo, there are many boards for this, I chose this:
As a quick-start, you can get yourself one of those dimmerpacks (50-80€ for four lamps).
then build the electronics for the arduino to send DMX controls:
Arduino DMX shield
You'll get yourself both the arduino-expirience + a good chance of not frying your surrounding with higher voltage..