jonas.håksberg

Back to normal

Sun, 23 May 2010 18:03:00 +0100

So, it seems there is some small bug, or feature, in the BlogEngine.NET JavaScript delivery service. All this problem with searching not working and that comments havn't been working as they should, it all started working again after removing the first line in blog.js, which is a simple JavaScript-comment. But, like I said, it seems to be working now. I have also updated the blog to version 1.6.1.0. One thing I havnt't done is to update the design from on the comment listing on the posts.

Now that the blog is working as it should again I can get back to packing up my appartment. I've got a new jobb at ABB in my home town Ludvika. So me and my girlfriend will be moving next weekend, and on june first I will start my new job.

My next post, that will hopefully come up in the middle of june will be about how to get CAN up and running on a PIC microcontroller with a built-in CAN-module.

PIC with Ethernet

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:33:00 +0100

About a month ago I bought this nifty little Network Interface Card suitable for micro controllers and breadboard development. It contains the Microchip ENC28J60 Ethernet Controler, with an SPI-interface, and an RJ-45 connector with integreated magnetics. The ENC28J60 is really nice, as it can accept 5V logic signals even thou it ionly runs on 3,3V! And if you use this chips with a PIC micro controller you can download a complete TCP/IP library from Microchip!

I've been working a little bit with this library, and this ethernet controller, before. But I have never had such a great breadboard adapter as this one.

To make sure it works I made a connection using a PIC18F4620 on a breadboard and made a small program with Microchips TCP/IP library (actually they had a small example accompanying the library) that creates a server that accepts one connecting over TCP. When conencted it echos back what ever you send it, but with capital letters!

I will write a small article in the future on how to get this up and running, complete with source code and schematics, this note is just a teaser. I have also some thoughts about making a small development board with a PIC18F4620, ENC28J60 and a SD-card interface.

Petit FatFs on a PIC18

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:05:00 +0100

Intro

In this article I will guide you through how to get the Petit FatFs library to work on a PIC18F4620 with a SD memory card connect over SPI. This library will enable you to read and write (to a limit) files from a FAT formated SD-card.

I will assume in this article that you have a basic knowledge of Microchip's PIC microcontrollers and you know how to use MPLAB and C18. I will also assume that you know how the SPI interface, and off course, electronics in general.

Hardware

The hardware is pretty straight forward. It is, off course, a PIC18F4620, it runs off of a 10 MHz crystal that is raised to 40 MHz using the internal PLL circuitry in the PIC. The SD-card is connected to the PIC using Sparkfuns SD-card holder. As the PIC runs on 5V and the SD-card cannot handle 5V but runs on 3,3V there needs to be some level translations of the signals between the PIC and the SD-card. To handle this little problem I'm using these logic level converters. The signals used between the PIC and the SD-card is the SPI-lines, SCK, SDI and SDO, and also write protect, WP, card detect, CD and of course chip select, CS. CS, WP and CD are inverted. In the driver I've used CS on PORTD7, WP on PORTD2 and CD on PORTD3 (as seen the HardwareProfile.h in the attached project).

Below is a picture of the hardware used, on a breadboard:

Schematics are available all over the Internet so I will not include one here (since I don't have done one, but have used common methods for level translations).

Software

First off it is recommended that you have have the latest version of Microchip Application Libraries, can be downloaded from the Microchip website. This is because I use the GenericTypeDefs.h and Compiler.h included with this library.

To get this library up and running the user is required to write some functions of his/her own. These are the functions:

disk_initialize - Initialize disk drive
disk_readp - Read partial sector
disk_writep - Write partial sector

Clicking on the function names will take you to the documentation for those functions on the Petit FatFs website. The prototypes for these functions are in diskio.h and the implementations are in diskio.c. This file is the driver part of the library and makes it spossible for the rest of the FAT library to be able to communicate with the sectors on the SD-card. This driver could be altered if you instead would like to connect it to say a harddrive disk.

WIth the disk_readp() and disk_writep() you can read and write entire och parts of a sector into or from RAM.

Luckily for us the creator of the FatFs library has provided us with sample code to make the library work on an AVR. And since the code is written in C it was pretty easy to make the necessery adjustments to suit out PIC and C18 instead.

I did also have to make changes to the core of the Petit FatFs; after many hours of debugging I came to the conclusion that the supplied mem_cmp() in the Petit FatFs wasn't working with the C18 compiler, so on line 242 of pff.c to make use of the memcmp() supplied with the C18 library. I also included string.h at the top of pff.c.

In the attached project you can see how to use some of the different functions of the Petit FatFs library. I have just tried the read functions, such as reading a file from a directory and displaying it's content. I have also written a small routine that displays one entire sector, in this I have chosen to display the contents of the FAT table base sector (this sector address is stored in the dirbase member of the FATFS structure.

Below is a picture of how the output may look from the serial output of the PIC;

For more information on how to use the Petit FatFs I refer to the library's documentation here.

The attached MPLAB project assumes that you have C18 installed in C:\Program files\Microchip\MCC18\ and the Microchip Application Library installed in C:\Microchip Solutions\.

Good luck and please feel free to comment!

Download

PetitFatFsPIC100309.zip (155.41 kb)

Relaunch!

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:32:00 +0100

Hi all! I have just relaunched this blog with a new design and a new focus!

This blog will from now on only be in english and it will be divided into two major categories; articles and notes. In articles I will write about my projects and tips & hints about my technical interests. In notes I will write, a bit sporadically, about things that just pops in to my head and I want to share, like this post!

In the archive you will find all my old post categorized under old. Please feel free to continue to leave commecnts about those post if you like!

I hope I will be able to post a small article later this week, it will be about getting the Petit FatFs to work on a Microchip PIC18F4620 microprocessor, with the C18 compiler, and with a SD memory card.

That will be all for this time and hope to see you here again soon!

To easier know when this blog is updated please feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed!

Länge sedan sist

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:17:00 +0100

Uj uj, nu var det länge sedan jag skrev, igen. Jag är riktigt dålig på det här måste jag erkänna.

Men vad har hänt sen sist då? Jo, jag och Louise var ju till London, kanske kommer det något inlägg om den resan senare (men jag skulle nog inte räkna med det om jag var Ni). Bilder kan ni se här: http://fotoalbum.otio.se/v/traveling/london0810/.

Tillsammans med en kompis har jag börjat programmera på en IRC-bot, vars huvuduppgift ska vara att ta tid på hur snabbt man skriver (för att använda som verktyg när man lär sig touch typing) slumpvalda texter i en, eller flera, IRC-kanaler. Den kommer att användas i bland annat kanalen #svorak på EFnet (http://efnet.org/), besök den gärna!

Jag har också börjat använda Svorak som tangentbords-layout. Främst för lära mig korrekt fingersättning. Hela det här inlägget är skrivet med Svorak :)

En liten uppdatering på sidan har jag också hunnit med, nämligen att snabbt och enkelt kunna översätta den här sidan med Google Translate.

Fler uppdateringar + resa till London

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:17:00 +0100

Fick lite tid över idag så jag knåpade ihop en liten Control som visar mina tio senast tillagda länkar på del.icio.us. ni kan se den in action här till höger.

Den är inte riktigt klar ännu då det ska till en tillhörande extension så att man kan ändra lite instälningar utan att behöva ändra i källkoden. Det kommer även upp en artikel om den här Controlen.

Idag bokade jag även flygbiljetter till mig och Louise till London i slutet på oktober. Fem nätter blir vi där, ska bli skönt med en liten minisemester. I går bokade också Louise en stuga i Vemdalen efter jul som vi och sex kompisar ska åka till och ha kul och åka skidor, ska bli skoj!

Uppdateringar på sidan

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 07:26:00 +0100

Som ni ser så har jag ändrat lite i designen på sidan, inga stora saker men jag tycker att det är en stor skilnad.

Som ni kanske också ser så har det tillkommit en flik till längst upp på sidan, Projekt. Där kommer så småning om olika projekt att hamna, inom elektronik och programmering.

Jag har även uppdaterat BlogEngine.NET till version 1.4.5.0 från den tidigare 1.3.1.0.

Hoppas ni gillar den nya designen!

Nytt webbhotell!

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:18:00 +0100

Om ni kan läsa detta inlägg så betyder det att jag framgångsrikt har bytt webbhotell, från Neno (som blev kassa när de köptes upp av Crystone), till Loopia. Ett mycket bra byte må jag säga!

Irakisk TV-debatt: Är jorden platt?

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:51:00 +0100

Ibland kan man börja fundera hur det står till egentligen; http://haha.nu/interesting/iraqi-tv-debate-is-the-earth-flat/

BlogEngine.NET Additional Language Extension

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:36:00 +0100

Nu har jag knåpat ihop ytterligare en extension till BlogEngine.NET!

Denna nya Extension kallar jag för BlogEngine.NET Additional Language Extension, och gör ungefär det man skulle tro att den gör. Den gör det möjligt att skriva ett inlägg på två olika språk, ditt huvudspråk, samt ett annat. Kan man inte göra det utan denna Extension tänker ni säkert nu, och självklart kan man det. Men det som gör den så bra är att du bara får huvudspråket på framsidan, i arkiven och i RSS-feedsen. Sedan genereras en länk med en text som du har val, t.ex. "This article is also available in english!" överst i posten, undrer titeln. Du kan även välja att visa en flagga! Om man ser den på förstasidan så ser man endast denna svenska text, men om man tittar på posten egna sida ser man även den engelska översättningen.

Det är väldigt enkelt att använda denna Extension. Börja med att ladda ner AdditionalLanguage.cs från Extensionens CodePlex sida: http://codeplex.com/blogengineaddilang. Kopiera sedan AdditionalLanguage.cs till /App_Data/Extensions/ på din BlogEngine.NET blogg. Sen är det egentligen bara att köra på!

För att bryta av en post skriver du helt enkelt bara [ addilang ] (utan mellanslag) där du vill bryta din post och skriva din post påd et andra språket.

Det finns två inställningar du kan göra på denna Extension, dessa är:

"Also available in"-text (måste anges) - Texten som ska stå överst i inlägget.
The name on a flag-file in /pics/flags (behöver ej anges) - namnet på en utan bilderna som ligger i /pics/flags/. T.ex. gb.png.

Du kan se denna Extension i bruk på denna post! Hoppas du kan få användning för den. Har du några frågor är det bara att skriva dessa i kommentarerna eller använda kontakt-fomuläret. Har du tips eller idéer på vad mer man bör kunna göra med denna Extension så är det bara att säga till!

[addilang]

Just finished my third extension for BlogEngine.NET!

I call this new extension BlogEngine.NET Additional Language Extension, and it does almost what you could expect it to do. It makes it possible to write a post in two different languages, your standard language and an othe one. I guess you are thinking that "cant you do it without this extension?", and sure you can. But with this extension, only the part of your post with the standard language will appear on the frontpage, the archive pages and in the RSS-feed of your page. A link is generated with a text of your shoosing, t.ex. "Denna artikel finns även på svenska!" on top of the post beneath the post title. You can also choose a flag to be shown! To be able to see this english text you must visist this posts own page. As you are doing now.

It is very easy to start using this extension. Start off by downloading the latest source from this extensions CodePlex page: http://codeplex.com/blogengineaddilang. Copy the AdditionalLanguage.cs to /App_Data/Extensions/ in your BlogEngine.NET blog. And then you can start bloging in two languages!

To break of a post you just write [ addilang ] (without spaces) where you want to break it and write the post in you second language.

There are only two settings for this extension, these are:

"Also available in"-text (not optional) - The text you want on the link to the other language section of ryour post.
The name on a flag-file in /pics/flags (optional) - the name on onve of the flag files in /pics/flags/. T.ex. sv.png.

You can see this extension in use on this post! On the front page, in the archives and in the feeds you will only see the swedish translation of this text. Hope you will get big use of this, I know I sure will. If there are any questions or suggestions, don't hesitate to write a comment or send me a mail through the contact page.