In Part 1 of this tutorial I am going to show how to set up the Microchip MPLAB IDE with the free MPLAB C Lite Compilers.
In Part 2 we are going to open up a sample MPLAB project and compile it. The sample project is the GluonPilot FreeRTOS based autopilot.
Microchip MPLAB IDE
MPLAB Preamble
Microchip has provided a FREE Lite version of their paid MPLAB C compilers. The only limitation on the Lite version of the MPLAB C compiler is that it doesn't offer advanced compiler optimizations and as such makes slightly larger Hex firmware files. This isn't a big problem for most hobbyists getting started in microcontroller programming. The nice thing about the Lite compilers is the fact they don't have any saving limitations and they don't expire.
Here is a photo of the new textbook A SURVEY OF MATHEMATICS WITH APPLICATIONS 9th Edition
Yesterday I got my copy of the new textbook A SURVEY OF MATHEMATICS WITH APPLICATIONS 9th Edition from Pearson.
This new edition of the textbook was published on January 6, 2012 and has special meaning to me because it features a photo of my prototype sierpinski fractal antenna design in the chapter on Non-Euclidean Geometry and Fractal Geometry (page 555). I have always found fractals interesting and I am really proud that Pearson selected my image to use in their textbook.
As I flipped through the textbook today I was impressed with the improvement in the quality and readability of math textbooks since I was a student!
This textbook has been updated with modern references and provides quite a few real world math problems for students to study. The graphic design of the textbook is top-notch with excellent colour illustrations that will help to explain mathematic concepts to the reader.
Here is a photo of page 555 from the math textbook that features my fractal antenna image.
Here my name, Andrew Hazelden, is listed in the credits section of the textbook.
Here is a photo of Andrew Hazelden flying model airplanes in -15°C weather.
This morning my brother, Russell, & I decided it would be fun to get out to the flying hill and fly some model airplanes during the winter season. For the last few days the coastal winds around West Dover, Nova Scotia have been calm at sunrise.
This morning the road was a bit icy and the temperature was around -15°C but it didn't stop us from having a great time. We got to the top of the flying hill just as the sun was breaking through a few clouds on the horizon. I snapped a few photos with my Canon Powershot as we were getting set up for flying. We flew a Multiplex EasyStar this morning for half and hour until our fingers and toes started to get a bit numb. The FMA co-pilot flight stabilizer worked well and leveled out the wings from the occasional gust of wind.
Sunrise in the West Dover Barrens
Here is a photo of the barrens with a light covering of snow and ice.
Last night the power was out for over four hours in West Dover. After I used up the last of the energy in my UPS unit I had to find something else to do with the evening.
Since the power was off in the village the street lights were off as well. This created an interesting opportunity for some excellent wintertime backyard astronomy.
I used a flashlight to locate my camera gear and tripod. Once I had my tripod set up outside I changed the lens on my Canon DSLR camera to an 8mm Peleng circular fisheye lens. The Peleng lens is a lot of fun because it takes extremely wide angle photos. I set my Canon D60 camera to bulb mode and programmed my Canon TC80-N3 intervalometer to capture 90 second long exposures. In all I ran the camera for 45 minutes in the cold weather and captured 28 long exposure images before the batteries died. I think it is cool that the Peleng lens has such a wide field of view that it also caught the headlights of cars driving by on the highway.
This image is a stack of 20 photos @ 90 seconds each.
For the 26 image composite I used the maximum image stacking mode in Photoshop along with dark frame subtraction.
This image is a single 90 second exposure that shows Orion's Belt low on the horizon.
This is my January 16th progress update for the 2012 Winter Warmup RetroChallenge. For the competition I'm working on creating an IRIX based soccer game using OpenGL on a Silicon Graphics O2 computer from 1997.
This last week I created the game artwork in Photoshop. The soccer game will have two players and features a hand drawn 2D soccer ball. I drew the animated soccer ball sprite in Photoshop by rotoscoping over an image sequence.
I used the MediaConverter program on IRIX to convert the soccer ball image sequence to a movie.
This is frame 1 of the animated soccer ball sprite.
For my 200th bog post I would like to present a preview of a graphical bootloader I'm developing for the handheld computer called the mikroMMB from MikroElektronika.
The firmware is called dsFreeloader and it will allow you to browse through a grid of HEX firmware files and bootload them using the microSD card reader. This means you could load hundreds of firmware files on a single microSD card and then launch them with a tap of a button.
The dsFreeloader firmware supports automatic display rotation using the built-in accelerometer and comes with a few programs like an egg timer app and a flashlight app.
There is still a lot of work to be done before it is ready for any public testing. I have the first version of the user interface working with a few built-in Apps. Right now I am working on the microSD card based bootloader code. This project will need a few months of development and testing before it will be available for download.
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