Kipp Bradford: SPARK Project #3, Post#5

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:52:30 GMT

Kipp Bradford: SPARK Project #3, Post#4

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:18:08 GMT

Kipp Bradford: SPARK Project #3, Post#3

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:04:32 GMT

In my previous post, I described how I was able to program an iCop eBox to transmit date using an XBee wireless link. The program was written in Visual C++ and executed serial port commands to send data to a host computer. I had previously set up the XBees to communicate at 115,200 baud, but the Visual C++ serial port configuration defaults to 9600 for the baud rate. I was able to find sample code for I

Kipp Bradford: SPARK Project #3, Post#2

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:37:57 GMT

Blinking an LED and transmitting text to a serial terminal is not the most exciting thing in the world, but it’s very cool to breathe life into a balky computer even at the most basic level. Also, I have worked with enough development tools know that it can be a lot of work going from first build to basic function. Many vendors like National Instruments, Texas Instruments, and others have recog

Kipp Bradford: SPARK Project #3, Post#1

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:40:43 GMT

For my third and final SPARK project, I'm going to continue building on lessons learned from Project 1 and Project 2. I've found Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 to be a powerful tool, but getting started is not a trivial process. Despite a sophisticated IDE, configuring a

Kipp Bradford: SPARK Project #2, Post#5

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:33:10 GMT

Small and simple, the iCOP eBox is a fanless x86 computer with solid state storage.

I began my second SPARK project with plans to control my iRobot Create with an iCOP computer and Windows Embedded CE 6.0R2. There were many project design lessons reinforced by my first SPARK project, and I applied those to lessons my second SPARK proje

Kipp Bradford: SPARK Project #2, Post#4

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:46:31 GMT

Providence, Rhode Island is home to many larger than life characters. One that has special meaning for me, and is arguably one of the most iconic characters, is New England Pest Control's giant blue mascot, Nibbles Woodaway. I've always found programming fun and interesting, but the true challe

Kipp Bradford: SPARK Project #2, Post#2

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:48:12 GMT

In a

Kipp Bradford: SPARK Project #2, Post#3

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:07:20 GMT

In my last post, I presented the beginnings of a plan to connect an iRobot Create to an iCop SPARK computer running Windows Embedded CE R2.0. Now it's time to dive in and get some code loaded onto the iCop machine, then see if I can talk to

Kipp Bradford: SPARK Project #2, Post#1

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:29:13 GMT

My second SPARK project is going to be slightly different than my first. I’ve learned a lot about Windows Embedded CE 6.0R2, and have a better idea of it’s strengths and weaknesses. It is a sophisticated tool with a lot of capabilities. I continue to explore those capabilities, but from a much simpler starting point. I’ve also been working closely with Bill Mar of A complete aside for people doing work with electronics.

I have a rule I have been using for the past 10 years. 3 mistakes and I am done for the day. I don’t care if it is installing the wrong resistor, putting a LED in b

David Shoemaker: Motor drive with the VNH3SP30

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:11:23 GMT

Been a while, been really busy with day and night work :)

This past long weekend I got my rolling chassis working. I am using my I/O wad based on an Atmel ATMega128 to do the PWM & direction control. This is connected to the Ar

David Shoemaker: And now for something new

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:00:55 GMT

Wow, looking over the history posts I just transferred from the MSDN site I realized it has been more than a month since I put up anything new. Lots going on in the project but I have been delayed while waiting for some parts. Along with the ever present "Day Job". I have picked up some new items to interface to the Artigo. Pololu High Current Moto

David Shoemaker: Moving out

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:49:00 GMT

I am temporarily setting aside the webcam stuff because I had some handy motors dropped into my lap in the form of a pair of dead electric scooters. These run on 2 12v batteries in series for a 24v system. The design of these is fairly simple with only a few s

David Shoemaker: Driver versions and API sets

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:48:05 GMT

I spent a big part of the weekend trying to get my own code to grab a still image from my web cam. In the end I had a complete failure, then I realized I had fallen into a trap that could happen to others.

The USB web cam driver that was originally published as being for CE 4.2, 5.0 and 6.0 uses a set of IOCTL commands to interface with it. The USB cam driver for 6.0 is a DSHOW camera interface and the IOCTL commands will compile and run. But they will always fail.

David Shoemaker: Getting started using CE / picking the ARTiGO board

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:47:16 GMT

Someone sent me a question regarding how to get started doing CE development. I will preface the answer with the simple fact that I have been doing this since 2000 and so don't have the freshest eyes on the getting started question.

So I will take a general approach on the problem. Any time I want to learn a new technology I start out by coming up with a sample problem and then start digging into the technology to see how I could solve it. I tend to buy a lot of

David Shoemaker: One step back, two steps forward.

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:46:15 GMT

I wanted to use a test application for verifying the function of the USB webcam. There is a test application which ships with CE called cameradshowapp. This lives in the shared source.

Problem was I didn't install the shared source and CETK when I installed CE to start with. Not a big deal, went to control panel and ran the CE 6.0 setup again in modify mode. Selected Shared Source and the CETK. I had to put the CE 6.0 disk in and a while later all was bet

David Shoemaker: USB: Webcam vision

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:45:26 GMT

Please note I am going to be building on the work's of others for this. I am not going to be writing a USB driver from scratch or doing any super fancy vision processing. I am going to integrate what others before me have done and bend it to my needs.

First we need to download the USB webcam driver for CE 6 that was published on MSDN Now that we have our image ready it's time to get the device hooked up so we can download the image.

The ARTiGO is really just a small PC so set it up as such (mouse / keyboard / display) for now. In my setup I am using a USB keyboard and mouse. Using them on CE does require you to select the USB HID catalog item (fro

David Shoemaker: Our first image

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:26:15 GMT

Everything is installed now and it is time to build our first CE image for the device.

Start Visual Studio (if this is the first time you have run VS with PB installed there will be some configuration dialogs about default settings).

File ->

David Shoemaker: SparkStation setup

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:15:10 GMT

Ok, we have all the parts laying around now (ARTiGo, Laptop, Spark CD). Time to get the SparkStation setup.

Most everyone out there has installed a piece of software on Windows. This isn't much different.

Insert VS 2005 CD disk 1 and close the drive, this launches the setup. Follow the setup steps. That gets VS 2005 installed.
NOTE: The second step of the VS installer is to install the MSDN, but there are no MSDN bits on the spark disks so you wo

David Shoemaker: The "SparkStation"

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:13:36 GMT

This work is being done as an outside of work free time project. As such I wanted to keep a clean development environment separate from my other home / work computers. So I have setup a laptop for my spark development. And I am enough of a geek that I call it my "Spark

David Shoemaker: The test bed

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:11:52 GMT

I will be using the VIA ARTiGO spark kit as my experimentation test bed.

From the VIA site:

"The SPARK Your Imagination Kit comprises a complete VIA ARTiGO A1000 Pico-ITX Builder Kit, which includes a 1GHz VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX board, ultra compact Pico-ITX form factor

David Shoemaker: Plan of attack

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:07:10 GMT

First things first we need a breakdown of things we want to accomplish. In rough order

David Shoemaker: A bit about me

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:05:16 GMT

Welcome to my blog.

A little about myself before we begin.

I started programming on an Atari 400 in the math lab of my Jr. High School during 9th grade.

I "graduated" to a Commodore VIC-20 when I got one for Chris

David Shoemaker: Welcome

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:56:02 GMT
Welcome to my spark project blog. I will be posting various tidbits so you can follow along as I work on my CE based projects. Primarily related to a couple of projects I have in mind to be based around one of the Spark kits. NOTE: I will be cross posting this content to my general embedded blog on blogs.msdn.com/DavidShoemaker (though that will in the future have non spark content).

KippBradford: Post 5 Part 2

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:37:47 GMT

Let's begin this SPARK post with a recap. I began this series with the notion that I would use a simple project, a smart home computer system, to explore

KippBradford: Post 5

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:17:12 GMT

Shawn Schaffert's ratcheting scheduler

Real Time Operating Systems
Even though this project is about a smart home dashboard that doesn't

KippBradford: Post 4

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:25:15 GMT

One of the most important functions of an embedded system is the ability to connect to a variety of external signals. For my smart home energy efficiency dashboard, the signals

KippBradford: Post#3

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:15:52 GMT

I came across this very elegant residential energy efficiency dashboard from Agilewaves as I was thinking about user interfaces for my smart home project. I like the clean, intuitive design and the logical layout. Skilled interface designers were probably involved with creating this interface. I won't pretend to be a skilled

KippBradford: Post 1

Thu, 28 May 2009 20:06:40 GMT
Whenever I start a new project, I find it helpful to define several key items. These typically involve defining what the customer requirements are, and what tools are available to meet those requirements.
The customer for this project is a friend who recently converted a shuttered electronics supply warehouse into an 8000 square foot mixed used building.

The first floor

KippBradford: Post 2

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:31:26 GMT

In my last post, I presented some background on the green building where this project takes place, and I discussed the basic signals that need to be measured for this project. In order to create inputs into

SPARK PROJECT