Illustrated Blog on Embedded Software Architecture
In order to charge batteries with the wind turbine simulator, the setup already becomes quite elaborate. First, there is the brushed DC motor which drives the axial flux turbine. It has a 24V, 350W and maximum 19A rating. The DC motor drives the generator with a chain gear to step down the high RPM of […]
Introduction The core of our charge controller (PMD2) is essentially two switchable mosfet channels: one channel to load a battery (bank) and another channel to divert abundant energy to a dump load. Both channels can be switched on/off by software controlled PWM, and by configuring different PWM duty cycle ratios, we should be able: to […]
One of the challenges involved in designing and developing the ‘energy harvester‘, is to work out how to design, prototype, test and evaluate software algorithms for managing power flow in the system. At first, we can use powerful lab power supplies: We have lab supplies capable of 900W, 1500W and 3000W DC power output. These […]
Introduction We started the energy harverster project about a year ago and we thought it might be interesting to our readers to explain how we work and how we get the job done. Of course, bringing the technical challenge to a good end is important but only part of our mission, which is to: demonstrate […]
Connection scheme for low-side switching In comparison to the high-side wiring diagram we saw in part 1, the connections for low-side switching are the other way around: all ‘+’-s are connected (instead of all ‘-‘-s), and the (power) switching devices are ‘below’ the loads (instead of ‘above’). In order to better explain this diagram, we need […]
This post is Part 2 of the series. Part1, which explains Programs and Processes, can be found here. Thread A thread is a single path of execution and schedulable by the CPU. It has its own stack, program counter and set of registers. A process (living program and container of all resources — see Part1) has one […]
An embedded device does not do its job in the ‘void’. It needs to interact (and communicate) with users and/or other devices. Even inside an embedded device, lots of communication is required between controllers and (external) peripherals, sensors and actuators. Communication properties In general communication happens one to one (e.g. a telephone call via a […]
Attopilot 50V 180A A few weeks ago we tested the Attopilot 50V 90A. Results were ok, we only noticed a small gap between measured and real amps. Today we show you the experimentation results of the 180A Attopilot sensor board. Again, we used the Deans connectors and quite a lot of solder to connect the Attopilot device […]
Introduction After exploring the relay solution space (read part1, part2 and part3), we decided to actually change the boundary of the system and move the relay outside of the energy harvester. Main reason is flexibility and scalability: one could choose a more optimal relay in terms of cost and power spec depending on the (maximum) […]
Introduction Especially process and thread are terms which have many different definitions and implementations. And therefor, it is easy to get confused, and hard to get the concepts crystallized in your mind. Just do some googling and you will find plenty of sources which more or less contradict each other. We will add another source […]
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RTOS bvba is a young company which was founded in 2012 by Pieter Beyens and Gert Boddaert. Please read our Mission Statement to find out our goals and initiatives. About us
Kris Bellemans is a software engineer employed at Sioux Embedded Systems, Belgium. He is passionate about low-level programming, embedded Linux and technology and science in general and has 4 years of experience in the field of software engineering. For more information, check his LinkedIn profile.
Patrice's professional tag cloud: anything mobile, software design, explorer, Enterprise Architecture, Agile Coach.
http://blog.threeandahalfroses.com
Luc has more than twenty years of experience in embedded systems and real-time behavior. He is specialized in Operating Systems and interactions between hardware an software. Besides owning his company Luperco, he performs research on real-time scheduling at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).
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