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Segger SystemView and Percepio Tracealyzer have been the de-facto standard for visualizing embedded system behavior for the past few years, While Segger has been able to only visualize a single core, Percepio pricing is prohibitive to the hobbyist, last but not least is the toem Impulse which requires eclipse and some people have an aversion to that as well.Segger SystemView | Percepio Tracealyzer | toem ImpulsePerfettoPerfetto is a System profiling, app tracing and trace analysis tool, it is open source and available as an online app, further more, its designed to handle millions of events,...
Thursday, January 12, 2023
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
ESP32 Performance Profiling
The ESP32 is very capable but even the most capable of devices can get overwhelmed when using it extensively, so how can we find out what is taking so long or which function should we optimize to make things even better?FreeRTOS Real Time StatsFreeRTOS has a function vTaskGetRunTimeStats which can get statistics for tasks runtime, however the API takes some performance away. So it needs to be enabled in the configuration CONFIG_FREERTOS_GENERATE_RUN_TIME_STATS.The following is an example from esp-idf examples. Getting real time stats over 100 ticks | Task | Run Time | Percentage | stats |...
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Generic Gamepad for Toy Cars
Some kids love motorized toys, cars, trucks and basically anything that makes a noise or have a motor can be a child's toy.I've been searching for a quick, simple, cheap, generic option to replace the remote controls with something I can easily source without building a specialized PCB or costing too much and I think I've found that option.This is the battlebot I've been using it for, the original controller stopped working after 3 minutes.Wemos D1 R32The Wemos D1 R32 is ESP32 in Arduino Uno form factor. The pinout is standard while still allowing access to...
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Embedding Lua in your Projects
Lua is lighweight programing language designed for embedding, it was created in 1993 by Roberto Ierusalimschy, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo, and Waldemar Celes.Lua even has a very fast LuaJIT which sadly I cannot use since I'm aiming for embedded MCU.Fortunately, Lua has great documentation and huge community, while the language needs some getting used it, it can do everything I need and more and embedding it was by far the fastest from previous MicroPython and QuickJS.Installation of the Lua library was very simple, download the release, extract it in the lib folder and add...
Embedding QuickJS in your Projects
QuickJS is small and embeddable Javascript engine made by the famous Fabrice Bellard, it supports ES2020 specifications and made available under MIT license.You might have read about my porting of his TinyEMU to ESP32 which could boot linux.During my hunt for scripting engine that can be integrated into a new embedded product I've encountered MicroPython and QuickJS, while the documentation is a bit lacking, the code was much easier to read and compile, there are no complicated build scripts and it was basically dropping the last version in the lib folder and selecting which...
Thursday, November 17, 2022
Embedding Micropython in your Projects
MicroPython is a python implementation for microcontrollers and other low resource requirement implementation which can make it perfect for embedding without significantly increasing your delivered executable or firmware.The project was created by Damien George at 2013 and has since grown and improved and even earned its place at OBCPs and is planned to reach space on board Euclid at 2023 as well as integrating into RODOS.If it can work for spacecrafts, why shouldn't it work for you?My original goal was to use MicroPython as an expression evaluation and enrichment engine for embedded data acquisition,...
Thursday, July 28, 2022
Using the ILI9488
The ILITEK ILI9488 is one of the larger and cheaper SPI displays available to the maker community,, available in 3.5" and 4". However, there are a few workable issues that prevent this display from being great. SpecificationsWhat's called ILI9488 is actually the LCD controller with an optional touch panel, you can mostly find it with XPT2046 resistive touch controller.ILI9488 (datasheet):- 3/4 wire SPI, software configurable- 480x320 Pixels- 3 modes supported: 16bit (65k colors) / 18bit (262k colors) / 24bit (16.7m colors)XPT2046 (datasheet):- 12bit 125khz resistive touch panel- pressure sensitive- temperature sensor- 4-wire SPI- Supports...
Sunday, July 24, 2022
LVGL ESP32 and Desktop Development Walkthrough
UI for Embedded is always a hassle, find the right MCU, find the right Display, connect the right wires and that's even before writing the first line of code that actually shows anything on the display, drivers, graphic libraries and input libraries can be a pain to use, not to mention a pain to write.Fortunately, we no longer live in a cave, we have PlatformIO, LVGL and drivers for many of the LCDs available for commercial use and maker community.I propose a way to start quickly so we can save some of the bring...
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