Chassis Electronics Informatics Transport, safety, and charging Box Project Management Optional features
Project description Project description Project Progress and Status

W4 - Embedded programming

Computer controlled cutting

Tasks

  • Group assignment:
    • ✔ Demonstrate and compare the toolchains and development workflows for available embedded architectures
  • Individual assignment:
    • ✔ Browse through the data sheet for your microcontroller write a program for a microcontroller
    • ✔ Simulate its operation (in Wokwi), to interact (with local input &/or output devices) and communicate (with remote wired or wireless connections) -> Wokwi does not offer RFID module communication options
    • X Extra credit: test it on a development board
    • ✔ Extra credit: try different languages &/or development environments

Conclusion

Simulation result: definitely use event driven architecture but will have to be tested in some other way.

List of required BOM components:

See my documentation on choosing the appropriate hardware for more details.

Group assignment

Link to group assignment in lab

Working with Draw.io, Overleaf, Wokwi, Circuit.js

These programs are pretty straight forward and I have already been using them in several occasions. There are hundreds of tutorials online for each of these programs. Hence, I will document only the issues I encountered this time and how I (tried to) solve them.

Wokwi simulations

Testfile Wokwi project: Download ZIP. Link to public project

This quick code was based on these 2 projects: push button interrupt pi pico and RGB LED Pi Pico

Issues while working with Wokwi:

  • The RGB LED dropped the brightness level instantly when I connected the button. Logically, I'd say the power gets divided between the two components. Is that modelled in Wokwi?
    Comparison brightness of RGB LEDs with and without button attached
  • I have yet to figure out how to properly attach the button it seems. Reference for using push buttons in Wokwi.

Though I am planning to use an event driven architecture model for my final project, I decided to test interrupts in micro python to have a comparison.

Working with different programming environments and languages

This week I used VS Code and Overleaf for programming in Latex. I prefer using Overleaf for building PDF files because

  • The preview function works perfectly
  • Both are can be connected to GitHub, so I can always switch between programs if needed
  • I already use VS Code for programming this website. Having separate projects open in both programs allows me to directly get to work without having to switch between project folders.

I also tested programming the RP2040 on both VS Code and Wokwi. Notes:

  • I am more used to using VS Code or the Arduino IDE for embedded programming. Using Wokwi's IDE takes getting used to
  • Wokwi offers the unique advantage to simulate the wired communication for my project. The plug-in for VS Code works just the same.
  • No offline simulations possible unless a license is purchased for 97$ a year.
  • I tried embedding Micropython into my C-adjacent code. It opens some new possibilities. It's time to practice Microphython now!