The art of being human

Im sure when the slave ant looks to us, they look to us and ask the world why they cant be human?  Being human means making your own decisions and stepping on animals nowhere near as "great" and changing the world.

What the ant doesnt understand is that great power leads to great destruction, not only to the world but oneself.

Im not being pessimistic today...really.  I have been destroying myself lately.  Not physically...just mentally.

I think it is safe to say that most women pull themselves out of their own mental trouble eventually.  I can say that my mind is emotionally scrambled and deteriorating but I will get on a platform and fix it eventually.  That is who I am but until then....

Its the fact that, there was something I had very dear to me, a flower.  It wilted not because of any natural cause but because I, as a human, forced it to.  I didnt want to but the people around me convinced me that it was the best thing to do.  I didnt regret it till now really...now when everyone is getting flowers and all will get to see them bloom.  I feel like I should feel happy especially since one of those flowers belongs to a dear friend of mine.  Deep down inside, I am happy ecstatic for her!  But on top of all that happiness is jealousy.

I have been a sour person to her in some points of life.  I have always been jealous to be honest.  Im not as sincere, nice, pretty or smart which turned into me not being as laid back as I used to be...


...as laid back as her....


But dear world, I have never tried to be like her honestly.  It is a mere coincidence that we like a lot of the same things.  I can safely say that I love many things that she hates and were ok with that.  After all, were two different people!
Who am I to make the flowers of life wait for me when they have nothing to do with me?  It isnt really her.  In fact, I think that I can easily say this is jealousy overload.  EVERYONE around me is doing it...except me.  Heck I even get to watch as another best friend pair does it together.
I hate the fact that I can be so honest with myself about things like this.

Dearest loving friend you know who you are.  I cant say this to your face because...well youve known me long enough to know how that goes.  Im sorry for all those horrible things I have done and I truly am happy for you guys.  I hope all goes well.


and that is truly from the bottom of my heart?



Whew that feels better.  

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eff

Totally terrible day yesterday. Well didnt start out bad...it just went downhill really fast. Maybe Im over exaggerating...


*sigh* its carried over into today....

and has become one of those times when the only thing that keeps you going is the hope that tomorrow will be better...that time will fix it all.

But in reality I think Im tired of waiting...

Even the strongest man can only carry the extra weight around before they can get tired. They just cant keep doing it =

So in happy news...I got to eat nice food yesterday thanks to Adam. Not really used to fresh food but hey...not gonna complain about that. Also since I was so effing depressed last night I went to bed at 8 and probably passed out around 9. So yup all energized right now =]

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two songs stuck in my head

So Ive been singing Gotta feeling by Black Eye Peas...for like five days.

The other song? Its a little kids song called Senor Don Gato and is about a cat that gets a letter to get married but dances himself off a roof and dies LOL

lyrics (en inglès)

Oh Senor Don Gato was a cat

On a high red roof Don Gato sat

He went there to read a letter,

Meow, meow, meow

Where the reading light was better,2

Meow, meow, meow

Twas a love note for Don Gato

I adore you wrote the lady cat

Who was fluffy, white and nice and fat

There was not a sweeter kitty,

Meow, meow, meow

In the country or the city,

Meow, meow, meow

And she said shed wed Don Gato

Oh, Don Gato jumped so happily

He fell off the roof and broke his knee

Broke his ribs and all his whiskers,

Meow, meow, meow

And his little solar plexus,

Meow, meow, meow

Ay Caramba cried Don Gato

Then the doctors all came on the run

Just to see if something could be done

And they held a consultation,

Meow, meow, meow

About how to save their patient,

Meow, meow, meow

How to save Senor Don Gato

But in spite of everything they tried

Poor Senor Don Gato up and died

And it wasnt very merry,

Meow, meow, meow

Going to the cemetery,

Meow, meow, meow

For the ending of Don Gato

When the funeral passed the market square

Such a smell of fish was in the air

Though his burial was slated,

Meow, meow, meow

He became reanimated,

Meow, meow, meow

He came back to life, Don Gato

XD

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Keeping your Records up to Date

I think Im going to have to wait until the new year to turn over a new leaf about keeping records. I think I have set-up and started a record keeping system about seven times now and every time I have a problem the records go out the window until I can finally come to gripes with the cause of the problem. This mostly occurs when I have a fish kill. I hate losing even one of them and I struggle with myself and tend to blame myself until I or someone comes up with an acceptable answer.

The fact that fish kills can be expected at any time and with no apparent reason doesnt change the way I feel.

So if you happen to have one or two floaters, and you get to feel a bit guilty about it.... YOURE NOT ALONE.....

Anyhow back to fishin and planting...

Clarendons Rural Agricultural Development Authoritys (RADA) extension officer, Orlando Rowe, was on hand to demonstrate such a method to patrons inside the Clarendon parish showcase at the 58th annual Denbigh Agri-Industrial Show....

There is money available..... Programs that work to research the development of aquaponics and...

 Now about those floaters....

Now a Lady and her favorite pastime....

Now some BSF News
I learned that these larvae emit a chemical signal that keeps houseflies away. Sweet. And chickens love to eat them.

And heres more on BSFs

And Finally....

See you Soon

Ozzie

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Unboxing And Updating A Texas Instruments MSP430FR5969 Ultra Low Power FRAM MCU

[Tonights post is by Ed Smith, a member of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group]

I just received a Texas Instruments (TI) MSP430FR5969 LaunchPad! This is my unboxing post, Ill also cover updating the onboard programmers firmware for use with Energia.

Well kick things off with a few specs, or at least a quick product description. This is an unboxing not a review, after all.

The MSP430FR5969 MCU is aimed at extreme low power consumption, to the point where when it is operating at full power it consumes ~100µA/MHz. Thats quite low; at 16MHz its consuming a measly 1.6mA. In the various sleep modes the power draw is measured in handfuls of micro-amps, and in deep-sleep it even gets down to nano-amps.

The FR5969 LaunchPad takes that MCU and gives it a home, as well as a built in programming interface, breakout headers (with very nice labels, as well see later), buttons, LEDs, lots of jumpers, and a 0.1F supercap. Thats not µF, thats not mF, thats a tenth of a Farad, something that would have cost a tremendous amount of money a decade ago.

For bonus points, Energia already supports this platform.

The box is a simple affair, nothing especially flashy other than the rocket logos. Even those arent flashy per se, not compared to modern marketing anyway. Its a sturdy box, I approve.

Inside the box we find, not surprisingly, an anti-static bag with a LaunchPad in it! There actually is a surprise in here, Ill focus on it later.

This is the bottom of the board, in case you hadnt guessed.

Here we have the top side, there are hints of greatness here too.

The last thing in the box is a beefy mini-USB cable, to connect the LaunchPad to your computer for programming and/or power. Its very nice of TI to include this, and I appreciate it.

Out of the bag we get more detail, we can see the two user buttons plus reset button, a wide array of jumpers for controlling how much of the MCU core is connected to the debug/USB/power side of the board, as well as the supercap and two user addressable LEDs. Note the amount of text near the headers!

On the bottom there are two things I really, really like. One is the amount of pin information printed near the headers, Ill zoom in on it in a bit. The other is the plastic standoffs. This is something lacking in the vast majority of dev boards out there.

The board sits nicely on the standoffs and bottom headers, no worries about short circuits to metal tables no MCU tipping over when you try to plug something in. Its a small thing, but I appreciate it.

The silkscreen on both sides of the board is very informative, it gives you plenty of options for charging or not charging the supercap, using or not using the supercap, current monitoring, voltage monitoring, USB power or external power, etc. It also has significantly more pin information next to the headers than one usually sees. Not only the port numbers, which is standard, but also designations as to which pins do what. Serial TX and RX are marked on most boards, MOSI/MISO/SCK(SCLK) for SPI and SCL+/SDA+ for i2c are not usually marked, and they are here. This cuts down on the amount of time needed looking at datasheets and pinout diagrams substantially. I dearly hope that other companies will follow TIs lead here; they seem to be thinking about the end user.

All is not roses with the FR5969 LaunchPad however. Maybe it is roses, and were getting to the thorns now. In any event, there are two revisions of this MCU. The first revision to come out, and the new Energy Trace revision. Energy Trace adds a solid set of features to check where the energy is going, but it also requires a newer firmware version for the on board programmer. Unfortunately for some reason or another it doesnt seem to have made it on to the first round of Energy Trace boards! On the plus side, updating the firmware is fairly easy.

Updating the MSP430FR5969 EZ-FET Firmware via Energia

This guide assumes youre going to be using Energia to do your programming, or at least your firmware updating. Code Composer Studio also ships with an updater I believe, and you can download a standalone command line updater as well.

The first step is to open Energia and find the Update programmer menu. Its under the Tools menu and is not hard to find.

You will need to run this a few times, as there is a bug in the update script somewhere that times out after updating one device, and there are three devices on this board that need updating.

For the moment, run it until you start getting errors. I was able to update two out of three devices without any further effort.

Once you start getting errors you will need to close Energia and download the TI MSP430 Flasher utility, the command line program I mentioned above, you can find it here:
 MSP430 Flasher Link


Once you have downloaded and installed it, you need to open two folders. One is the MSP430Flasher install directory (click the pictures to the right for a larger size), the other is the mspdebug directory inside the Energia install directory. The pictures to the right show the paths on my computer.


Once you find the two directories you want to copy HIL.dll and MSP430.dll from MSP430Flasher into Energias mspdebug directory. Backing up Energias copies of those two files isnt a bad idea, I created a directory called "OEM" and moved the originals into it, then copied the new HIL and MSP430 dlls.


Once you have copied those two files, re-open Energia (if you didnt close it before, close it and re-open it) and run Update Programmer again. Instead of throwing errors it should happily update the remaining piece of firmware. If you feel like being sure, run it again and make sure its happy that time too.

Presto! Your MSP430FR5969 LaunchPad is now ready to use, enjoy!

- Ed Smith

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Arc Controller Motor Shield More Power!!

The August 21 article "Arduino Motor Shield, Arc-Controller Launched By Arc Robotics" gave me a good reason to do a little research on microcontroller (MCU) motor control and motor shields.

Arc-Controller motor shield

The article covers the Arc-Controller, a new high capacity motor shield that has a Kickstarter campaign in progress, telling us:

"Maker, developers and hobbyists that enjoy building Arduino platform based projects might be interested in a new Arduino Motor Shield called the Arc controller which has been created by Arc Robotics...“There have been a lot of amazing projects come out of the Maker revolution, however, many are limited by the capability of their motor controller. We want to change that. The Arc-Controller is a bridge to bring high Amp motor control to your projects, up to 43 amps with a heat sink. It is capable of variable speed and direction control over a single Stepper Motor or two DC motors, because when do you only need one motor. The Arc-Controller is compatible with about any Arduino, or other micro controller such as Raspberry Pi. It runs an ATMega328, and is user programmable via the Arduino IDE."

The Kickstarter campaign still has 36 days to go, but it has gotten off to a very slow start, with only $927 pledged of the $41,500 funding goal. According to the Arc-Controller Kickstarter page,

"The Arc-Controller built around two H-Bridges. Each one can supply 43 amps of continuous current, with a properly mounted heat shield. The dual H-Bridges run separately, controlling two high-end DC Motors or as one controlling a single stepper motor. Built into the H-Bridges are current and temperature fail-safes.  If they begin to get too hot, or if they exceed the maximum current levels, current limiting will take affect. They will automatically shut down until they cool off, or until conditions are safe to operate. We also have included a reverse polarity protection...There is an integrated circuit on board that gives a current reading from the H-Brides to see how much current each individual motor is using. This gives you the option to write your sketches to react under certain loads, detect shorts and over heating states...We are creating a simple library that can be used to easily send commands to the Arc Controller. These commands can configure the Arc Controller to run a stepper motor, drive two brushed DC motors, and even an integrated an XY thumb stick “Arcade Drive”. The interface library will take input from you and transmit it to any number of connected Arc Controllers...We have had lots of success with tank style robots to the point that we made it run on two wheels until you want it to act like a tank. then it will lay down and drive like a tank. We have many theoretical uses, that we are eager to try such as: home made Segways, drive-by-wire go-karts, RC lawn mowers..."

There are a fair number of existing motor controllers for Arduinos if the Arc-Controller is overkill

for your needs. Here is a sampling of whats available for Arduino:

Adafruit motor shield V2

1. Adafruit Motor Shield V2 for Arduino -- $19.95 -- "We kept the ability to drive up to 4 DC motors or 2 stepper motors, but added many improvements...Instead of a L293D darlington driver, we now have the TB6612 MOSFET driver: with 1.2A per channel and 3A peak current capability. It also has much lower voltage drops across the motor so you get more torque out of your batteries...Instead of using a latch and the Arduinos PWM pins, we have a fully-dedicated PWM driver chip onboard. This chip handles all the motor and speed controls over I2C...5 address-select pins means up to 32 stackable shields: thats 64 steppers or 128 DC motors!"
2. Pololu Dual MC33926 Motor Driver Shield for Arduino -- $29.95 -- "This shield makes it easy to control two brushed DC motors with your Arduino or Arduino-compatible board. Its dual MC33926 motor drivers operate from 5 to 28 V and can deliver a continuous 3 A per motor. These great drivers also offer current-sense feedback and accept ultrasonic PWM frequencies for quieter operation."
3. Ardumoto - Motor Driver Shield -- $24.95 -- "This is a motor shield for Arduino that will

   

   Ardumotor from SparkFun

   control two DC motors. Based on the L298 H-bridge, the Ardumoto can drive up to 2 amps per channel. The board takes its power from the same Vin line as the Arduino board, includes blue and yellow LEDs to indicate active direction, and all driver lines are diode protected from back EMF."
4. Monster Moto Shield -- $69.95 -- "This is essentially a ramped up version of our Ardumoto motor driver shield. For this monster shield we’ve replaced the L298 H-bridge with a pair of VNH2SP30 full-bridge motor drivers. We’ve also beefed up the support circuitry so this board is capable of driving a pair of high-current motors!"
5. EasyDriver Stepper Motor Driver -- $14.95 -- "The EasyDriver is a simple to use stepper motor driver, compatible with anything that can output a digital 0 to 5V pulse (or 0 to 3.3V pulse if you solder SJ2 closed on the EasyDriver). EasyDriver requires a 7V to 20V supply to power the motor and can power any voltage of stepper motor."

If you use large motors or lots of motors on your MCU projects and could really use the Arc-Controller, you may want to head over to their Kickstarter page and support their campaign. If you know of other motor shields that do pretty much the same thing, send an email to arcatabob (at) gmail {dott} com and let me know what you use or recommend, and Ill update the post with that info.

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Gravity Blog cross posting

Oh bloggers...I love you guys.  I know I get a lot of traffic here but quite frankly, I feel like Im talking to myself! I will be posting at a community known as The Gravity Blog.

Girls I have met on a certain forum starting with a P, be warned that this will include many images that may cause what is otherwise noted as trigger content (much like old posts here.)  I will continue to keep this blog clean but all texts will be added to Gravity Blog.

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