A scary LED project for MSP430 Launchpad

I read the Evil Mad Scientist Labs project "A pumpkin that sleeps like a Mac".  This inspired me to build up an LED project to light my jack-o-lantern. Their project uses an ATtiny2313 and I didn't have time to order parts.  But I did have some TI MSP430 LaunchPad boards that I hadn't even opened yet. 

So I installed an IDE and ported the code from AVR to MSP430.

Actel Smartfusion

Yesterday, I went to Seattle for a presentation (they call it a "design workshop") on Atmel's Smartfusion devices.  They have combined their Flash-based FPGA with an ARM Cortex-M3, the usual micro-controller peripherals, and some configurable analog blocks to make a very flexible, mixed-signal, embedded device.  I brought home an eval board and some thoughts on their technology.

Your utility thinks you are lazy and stupid

Someone was wrong on the internet.  That’s certainly not news nor something I want to try to battle every day. But in this case, the problem I discovered appears to be spreading and it is affecting important decisions in the real world.

The energy industry is selecting which technologies to implement based on the belief that consumers are “stupid and lazy”.  I’ve tracked down the source of this problem.
 

Eagle Cad autorouter on fine pitch SMT

That first design may be an anomaly, so I tried a couple more designs.

Eagle Cad autorouter

In EEVblog #93, Dave Jones rant's that "PCB Autorouters Suck". Especially for beginners, and most definitely in cheap tools.  

I happen to agree.  So I tried a little experiment.  My results surprised me.

What I learned at Code Camp

I  attended Portland Code Camp with about 1400 other geeks yesterday at the University of Portland.

Because paper notes get lost and don't hyperlink so well, I'm going to post them here. 

Eventually, the slides will be online and I will link them.

AVR Dragon vs slow clock rates

I am using the Atmel AVR Dragon board for debugging. For $50, its a great tool. The AVR Dragon supports virtually all AVR devices, and works with AVR Studio to support Atmel assembler and GCC C code and in-circuit debugging.  It also works with other tools, such as the command line AVRDUDE utility.