There was some recent news that an Arduino programmed to count up to 1,000,000,000, speaking each count, had malfunctioned after 10 years, not reaching the one billion count. This had many people (on Reddit) conjecturing how long it would take an Arduino Uno R3 to count to one billion if it didn’t have to output …
The Music Computer One (MUC-I) was a music composing and playing machine I designed and built in my Junior year in high school, in 1965. I’ve recently revised the design using an Arduino Uno, which I will describe fully later in this post. But the history really begins with the GENIAC, what was said to …
With an abundance of RAM memory and the availability of floating point in the latest microcontrollers, there is little concern about minimizing memory for data storage and optimizing computation time. However, smaller microcontrollers have limited memory and no floating point, and it may become necessary to optimize the usage of memory. Accuracy and Precision Let’s …
The post discusses testing FreeRTOS on different microcontroller architectures: ATmega328P, ATmega4809, SAMD21, Renesas RA4M1, and ESP32-S3. It highlights architectural differences and challenges. Special attention is given to time slicing and the need for modifications in library codes for smooth operation across these models, emphasizing differences in scheduler functionality and usage.
The core of a Real Time Operating System (RTOS) is the task scheduler, allowing multiple tasks to share the processor by yielding when necessary. The post explores freeRTOS on 8-bit AVR microcontrollers in Arduino Uno R3, demonstrating tasks toggling pins and discussing time slicing, yielding, and the impact of removing or modifying vTaskDelay calls for efficient execution.
The Arduino website lists 27 different board models, with 5 currently marked as “sold out”. We will assume for these articles that the ones that are sold out will return. Of the 27, three use the very old, but not quite original for Arduino, ATmega328P microcontroller.. Two of these are the still popular, and widely …
I thought it would be interesting to compare the speeds of various Arduino boards, from older designs to the newest microcontrollers. I looked at the following: Note that the Nano 33 IoT, the Nano RP2040, and the Uno R4 (WiFi version) all have an ESP32 as a coprocessor for the radio functionality. The Nano ESP32 …
Traditional Arduino boards, like the Uno R3 or Nano, are typically programmed using the Arduino Library functions. These conveniently present most of the microcontroller’s functionality to the hobbyist user. Books like my Far Inside The Arduino and the microcontroller’s documentation show how to access additional functionality not addressed by the Arduino Library. As more advanced …
I’ve previously shown that the SAMD21 is slower than the ATMega328P when accessing GPIO ports, however it does have a major advantage performing arithmetic. There’s quite an advantage to a 32-bit processor over an 8-bit processor. I was also interested in seeing the performance impact of using floating point, which is done in software on …
So I just finished the Still Far Inside The Arduino book and am starting to consider a new project. The Arduino Nano 33 IoT caught my eye. While still a bit more expensive than clone Uno or Nano boards, it is the second lowest cost genuine Arduino board, second only to the Arduino Nano Every. …