Martin Cowen ⁽⁴⁶⁾

Knowing what kind of project you are working on can help you work out which planning method and software methodology to apply, as well as what management strategy to use. Once you have categorised your project into one of these four types, you will improve your expectations about the timescale and velocity. Not knowing about these project types leads to confusion about the project direction and pace, which can be demoralising for staff and leads to misunderstanding by customers, management and other departments. The trend in the last 20 years has been to apply Agile methodologies to all projects, but this Feabhas video explains why that isn't always a good idea. (The click-baity title isn't what it first appears). I'd like to expand on the video by looking at the relationship between these four project types and the appropriate planning and execution…

Continuing from my Getting Started post, we now want to use the same method on a FreeRTOS example such as ble_app_hrs_freertos. When compiling, we get file include path problems, starting with nrf_ble_gatt.h. These can be fixed by adding the following entries into the Project - Options - Preprocessor - User Include Directories ../../../../../../components/ble/nrf_ble_gatt ../../../../../../components/libraries/sensorsim ../../../../../../external/freertos/source/include ../../../../../../external/freertos/portable/ARM/nrf51 ../../../../../../external/freertos/portable/CMSIS/nrf51 ../../../config/ble_app_hrs_freertos_pca10028_s130 But then we hit a problem in compiling 'port.c' - expected '(' before 'void' on line 92 port.c is in the Third Parties folder since it is a FreeRTOS file This is the compiler not accepting an asm void function, which isn't related to any changes I've made to get this to run but is a provided file. Let's see if it is any different in the later version of the SDK The source code is unchanged but the comments say that…

The CMSIS Config Wizard provides a GUI interface to many options which are otherwise tricky to set in sdk_config.h. To add it to your project, follow the instructions in this YouTube video, which I have summarised in text form below. First install Java. You might be lucky and already have Java installed, eg if you go to your Windows Settings - Apps & features and search for Java, if you see Java SE Development Kit then it is installed. File - Open Studio Folder - External Tools Configuration Paste in the following to replace the existing contents <tools> <!-- PC-lint - http://www.gimpel.com/html/pcl.htm --> <if host_os="win"> <item name="Tool.PClint"> <menu>&amp;PC-lint (Unit Check)</menu> <text>PC-lint (Unit Check)</text> <tip>Run a PC-lint unit checkout on the selected file or folder</tip> <key>Ctrl+L, Ctrl+P</key> <match>*.c;*.cpp</match> <message>Linting</message> <commands> &quot;$(LINTDIR)/lint-nt&quot; -v -incvar(__CW_ARM) -i$(LINTDIR)/lnt co-gcc.lnt $(DEFINES) $(INCLUDES) -D__GNUC__ -u -b +macros…

Choosing a Dev Kit The nRF51 is recent enough to be supported by a mature development environment and to have lots of others try it out before me. The Development Kit comes in a handy sized board which only needs micro USB for power and data, and has a built in SEGGER JLink debug chip, as well as 4 user buttons and LEDs, and all the usual ports. It uses the nRF51422 which is Cortex M0 based, so I thought it would be a good way to do some M0 development work. In comparison, the later nRF52 series are M4 based, more capable but more expensive. I decided I didn't need the feature of the nRF52/Cortex M4, which was my first mistake. Nordic's Getting Started Guide v1.3, which covers the nRF51 DK, recommends Segger SES as the preferred development enviroment…

This Youtube video by Controllers Tech shows how to use an STM32 to measure the frequency of an incoming rectangular wave using the input capture functionality of the timers. The code shown the video works but there are a few areas which could be improved, as I will now discuss. Then I make a performance improvement by using DMA instead of interrupts. The code is written using STM's HAL library which means that it does not have to handle the specific STM32's registers, which makes it more portable. However, HAL is still specific to the ARM and STM architecture, so you need to know what features are available in your internal peripherals to be able to write HAL function calls with the appropriate parameters. Initialising Global variables Controllers Tech declares a set of global variables at the top of main.c and initialises them…