Current/Power Sensors Sensors and Modules TIMER Modules

HLW8012 AC Energy metering IC: Part 1

Table of Contents So hello guys, welcome back to Gettobyte Once again. Todays blog is going to be on interfacing the Energy metering IC : HLW8012 which is manufactured by HLW Technology.On previous blogs we have developed the application driver   for W25Q SPI based flash memory’s, is time we are going to develop the Application driver for HLW8012. So first question that must come in your mind is that what is Energy Metering IC. Lets first Understand this term. What are Energy Metering Integrated Chips ? Before Understanding Energy metering IC’s their is one term that i would like to get familiar my viewers that is ASIC’s. ASIC’s are Application Specific Integrated Chips i.e. chips which are designed, developed and fabricated for particular applications.  Energy Metering IC’s are one of the ASIC’s. In this case the specific application is that of Electrical Energy Measurement. By the use and emergence of Energy Metering IC’s we can calculate the Electrical Energy parameters like RMS/Instantaneous Voltage, RMS/Instantaneous Current, Reactive/Active/Apparent Power, Energy Consumed, Power loss/dissipation, Power factor, Frequency digitally. Using this electrical Energy Measurements only our monthly electrical energy bill is calculated. These electrical energy parameters play very important role for monitoring and analyzing of Power consumption in our homes, offices, factories, city’s and all such infrastructures where their is use of electricity. These Ic’s are widely used in Energy Meters, Multifunction Meters, Smart Energy meters, Solar Energy control panels, Factory Automation Panels and etc. Energy metering IC’s are designed using the knowledge of ADC, Opamps, Low pass/High pass filters, use of Analog Electronics with Power Electronics, DSP(Digital Signal processing), Signal Conditioning circuits. All these circuits are designed inside the Energy Metering IC’s using VLSI/VHDL. That is where the concept of Application Specific comes in. So when reading the datasheet of Energy Metering IC’s some overview about these terms and terminologies would be beneficial for understanding the functioning of these IC’s. Voltage and current drive the world in every sense. Using these 2 parameters we can calculate all other electrical energy parameters be it reactive power, active power, energy, frequency, power factor and etc. Energy Metering IC’s primarily measures/senses only Voltage and Current by the use of Signal conditioning circuits, ADC, Opamps, Analog Electronics. Further these IC’s calculates all other Electrical energy parameters using DSP, Low pass/High pass filters and etc. All of these things are designed inside the Energy metering IC’s. Input voltage and current to these IC’s are fed depending upon the principal which we are using for sensing Voltage and current. After feeding the Input to these IC’s via one of the above principals, comes the role of above mentioned circuits/units which are designed inside the chips for their efficient functioning and digital accurate readings. Energy metering IC’s which are widely used are of The above listed metering IC’s and their development boards are very expensive, so for my use case i have found out some cheap/alternative Energy Metering IC’s, but their manufacturer are Chinese companies: STMicroelectronics Metering ICSTMP32/33/34 seriesClick HereTexas Instruments Metering ICsClick HereAnalog DevicesADE seriesClick HereNXP semiconductorsClick Here Previous Next HLW8012( the one we are using this blog) HLW8032 BLO937 PZEM-004T module  CS5460 bi-directional energy meter module This is the First string, Second string, Third string of the sentence. General Description of HLW8012 Energy Metering IC HLW8012 is a single phase energy metering IC, which is based on shunt resistor based principal. The HLW8012 module has on board 1 milli-ohm copper-manganese shunt resistor, which acts as a shunt resistor and used to sense the voltage and current. One of the biggest problem with IC, is its datasheet. The datasheet of this IC is in Chinese language, so likely it would be difficult to understand from it. The IC can measure the RMS Voltage, RMS Current, Active power and Outputs these reading digitally in the form of PWM signals. HLW8012 is a good choice for making small and hobbyist kind of projects which requires the measurement of AC electrical parameters. One such project/product that I found, is made on HLW8012. HLW8012 is inexpensive and good alternative to be used in comparison to  other expensive metering IC’s. The module of HLW8012 is very handy and easy to use. It has 4 input terminals: 2 terminals are connected with AC Load and other 2 terminals are connected with AC Power supply. HLW8012 Outputs the Readings of Voltage, Current and power via PWM signals of 50 percent duty cycle, Their are two pins in HLW8012 CF and CF1 which outputs the voltage, current and power readings in a digital PWM square signal, which host MCU can capture using Timer Input Capture mode. The readings are directly proportional to the Frequency of the PWM signal. Every modern MCU has Timer peripheral, which we can configure in Timer Input capture mode. In this mode Host MCU can capture the PWM signals from external world (here our external world is HLW8012). That’s how HLW8012 will communicate with the Host MCU. Features of HLW8012 Energy Metering IC Based on shunt resistor based principal. Can measure current upto 20Amps and Voltage upto 300 Volts Easy interface to Host MCU sends voltage, current and power readings digitally via PWM square signals. Needs +5 volt to operate the IC. Block Diagram of HLW8012 Metering IC PINOUT of the HLW8012 Energy metering IC Pin Number 1 Pin number 1 is VCC (Chip Select), which is used to operate the power the HLW8012 IC. Connect this pin to +5 Volts of the host MCU. Pin Number 2 & 3 Pin number 2 &3 are V1P/V1N, which are Current differential input pins. These pins are connected in parallel to the shunt resistor(See the application circuit below). This connection is already made on the Module of HLW8012. The maximum voltage that can be input to these pins are 43.75mV. Pin Number 4 Pin number 4 is V2P, which is Voltage differential input pin, this pin is connected to  input AC voltage via resistor network of 47k ohms Pin Number 5 Pin

Memory Modules Sensors and Modules SPI Modules

W25Q128JV SPI Flash Memory: Part3

Table of Contents So continuing with the blog series of, W25Q128 SPI based flash memory\’s , in the previous blogs W25Q128JV SPI Flash Memory: Part1 | gettobyte  W25Q128JV SPI Flash Memory: Part2 | gettobyte we have gone through the introduction and overview for W25Q128JV  flash memory\’s. From this blog we are going to start with the Application and Device driver development of W25Q128JV IC. The Driver which i am going to develop in this blog will be generic can be used with any MCU, by just replacing the SPI API\’s. This application driver will be generic and simple one which will be having API\’s to perform basic Operation on this chip. We will be creating the 2 files, header file and source file(.h &.c) for W25Q128JV Application driver. Header file(.h) will be having all the Macros, Typedefs, Enums, Structures  and function declarations. Source file(.c) will be having all the function definitions and local variables to be used in the driver. Header file (W25Q128JV.h) First thing that we are going to do is define the Object like Macro\’s for all the registers of W25Q128JV in the header file(.h) of W25Q128JV. Macros are widely used in Embedded Programming for referring the registers address with the acronym of the Register names, so that it is easy for developer/user to understand the code or using the API.  Like, above if we want to read the JEDECID of the chip, instead of writing 0x9F in the Application code we can pass the Macro JEDECID. (Though we are not going to use all the registers of W25Q128, as in this blog we are just going to make the driver for following features. The Application driver will be having API\’s for reading-writing the data, erasing the data, reading-writing of Status registers, reading JEDEC ID , chip erase and chip initialise.) /* * w25q128jv.h * * Created on: 15-Apr-2021 * Author: kunal */ #define WriteEnable 0x06 #define WriteDisable 0x04 #define Dummybyte 0xA5 #define ReadSR1 0x05 #define WriteSR1 0x01 #define ReadSR2 0x35 //0x35: 00110101 #define WriteSR2 0x31 #define ReadSR3 0x15 #define WriteSR3 0x11 #define Write_Enab_for_Vol_status_regist 0x50 #define ReadData 0x03 #define WriteData 0x02 #define ReadDataFast 0x0B #define JEDECID 0x9F #define UinqueID 0x4B #define SectErase4KB 0x20 #define SectErase32KB 0x52 #define SectErase64KB 0xD8 #define chiperase 0xC7 #define reset1 0x66 #define reset2 0x99 #define read_addr1 0x020000 #define read_addr2 0x030000 #define read_addr3 0x040000 #define BUSY_BIT 0x01 #define WRITE_ENABLE_LATCH 0x02 Next thing in Header file will be the function definitions that would be used for interacting with the W25Q128JV flash memory\’s. void W25_Reset (void); void WriteEnable_flash(); void W25_Read_Data(uint32_t addr, char block[], uint32_t sz); void W25_Write_Data(uint32_t addr, char block[], uint32_t sz); uint32_t W25_Read_ID(void); void W25_Ini(void); void erase_sector4KB(uint32_t addr); void erase_sector32KB(uint32_t addr); void erase_sector64KB(uint32_t addr); void chip_erase(); void Uinque_ID(uint8_t uinque[]); void WriteSR(uint8_t SR_address, uint8_t SR_data); uint8_t ReadSR(uint8_t SR_address); void WaitForWriteEnd(void); Apart from Object like Macro\’s and Function definition\’s their would be 2 additional function like Macro\’s. //For STM32 CUBEMX #define cs_set() HAL_GPIO_WritePin(GPIOA,GPIO_PIN_4,GPIO_PIN_SET) #define cs_reset() HAL_GPIO_WritePin(GPIOA,GPIO_PIN_4,GPIO_PIN_RESET) //For STM32 BareMetal #define cs_set() GPIOA->ODR |= GPIO_ODR_ODR4; #define cs_reset() GPIOA->ODR &= ~GPIO_ODR_ODR4; As we are going to interface the W25Q128JV via SPI peripheral to our MCU\’s, in which MCU would be the Master device and W25Q128JV would be slave device. And in SPI -> Chip Select/Chip Enable pin is used for selecting the slave. Thus these 2 Macro\’s would be used for selecting the slave before the SPI instructions are send ( by using the cs_set()) and then deselecting the slave after the SPI instructions( by using the cs_reset()). Source file(W25q128JV.c) This file would be having all the function declarations of the functions which are defined in (W25Q128JV.h). The 2 most important API\’s which will Send and Receive the SPI commands are: void SPI1_Send (uint8_t *dt, uint16_t cnt) { HAL_SPI_Transmit (&hspi1, dt, cnt, 5000); } void SPI1_Recv (uint8_t *dt, uint16_t cnt) { HAL_SPI_Receive (&hspi1, dt, cnt, 5000); } API\’s Explained for Device Driver of W25Q128JV: void SPI1_Send () This function is wrapper for transmitting the data via SPI. not be used directly in Application driver, but it will always be called by Other API\’s of the driver to send the command to W25Q via SPI. It has 2 parameters: 1) uint8_t *dt –>pointer to store the data that will be transmitted from the Host MCU to W25Q128JV. 2) uint16_t cnt –> Variable that will be storing the size of data that has to be transmitted from MCU to W25Q128JV. void SPI1_Send (uint8_t *dt, uint16_t cnt) { HAL_SPI_Transmit (&hspi1, dt, cnt, 5000); } void SPI1_Recv() This function is wrapper for receiving the data via SPI. This API is also not used directly by the Application Driver, but will be used by the other API\’s of the driver for receivng the data from W25Q via SPI. It also has 2 parameters: uint8_t *dt –> pointer to store the data that will be received from the W25Q128JV. uint16_t cnt –> variable that will be storing the size of data that has to be received. void SPI1_Recv (uint8_t *dt, uint16_t cnt) { HAL_SPI_Receive (&hspi1, dt, cnt, 5000); } void W25_Reset(): W25Q SPI flash Ic\’s come in small package and they have limited number of the pins. Thus W25Q provides the software reset instruction feature. User/Developer can reset the W25Q by sending the specified instructions to W25Q  via SPI. After reset the device will come to its default state and loose all volatile content. Enable reset – 0x66( reset 1 macro) and Reset – 0x99( reset 2 macro)are the instructions that has to be send for generating the software reset. These 2 instructions has to be send in sequence, as any other command after the Enable reset command( 0x66) apart from Reset(0x99) will disable the reset procedure. Once the reset command is accepted it woulfd take approx 30us to reset the W25Q IC. void W25_Reset (void) { cs_reset(); tx_buf[0] = reset1; tx_buf[1] = reset2; SPI1_Send(tx_buf, 2); cs_set(); } void WriteEnable_flash(): In W25Q, before writing to any Page, Erasing any sector/block or performing full chip erase. We have to send the Write enable Instruction via SPI.

Embedded Basics

What are Device driver, Application Codes and HAL in Embedded Softwares

What are Peripherals in MCU? What is peripheral driver in MCU? What is sensor/module interfacing in MCU. What is device driver and RTD? What is HAL/BSP? What is Application Software? When people start with Embedded Software development or Firmware development, there are couple of terms which they come across and found them very confusing to understand. Terms which i am targeting in this blog are like Device driver/low level drivers, Application codes, and HAL (Hardware Abstraction layer). To understand these terms, one has to understand that in Embedded systems there are hardware and Embedded Software is a software (take it as a programming) that is done to interact with different hardware devices. Now these hardware devices can be categorized broadly into input devices, processing devices and output devices. Input devices can be out and main These hardware devices would be like can be a complex software and s Device Driver –> First let’s breaks down the are the drivers that interface the 2 hardware’s. Real Time Drivers SDK HAL Application Codes BSP Abstraction layers

Memory Modules Sensors and Modules SPI Modules

W25Q128JV SPI Flash Memory: Part2

Table of Contents So guys this is the continued blog on my interfacing W25Q128JV SPI flash memory with STM32 and AVR MCU. So in the last blog we have started with W25Q128 overview, its features and pin descriptions. Now in this blog we are going to talk about following topic: SPI standard instructions. Status and Configuration Registers of W25Q128JV SPI Serial Flash memory. Write protection features. About its block diagram of memory mapping & management.  and then going to understand Status and Configuration Registers. Then in next blog we are going to start with its driver implementation on STM32 and AVR MCU. SPI Standard Instructions So as I have mentioned that module which we are going to use has standard SPI pins only on the breakout module( one can buy this module from robu). Remember the pinout of W25Q128 from last blog??? If not kindly refer to that W25Q128JV SPI Flash Memory: Part1 once before going further in this topic. W25Q128JV IO2 and IO1 pins are not available in the modules which we are going to use and buy. We can operate the SPI at mode 0(0,0) or mode 3(1,1),  that is SPI CPHA or CPOL bits would be either 0,0 or 1,1. W25Q128JV would be used as a slave and host MCU would be used as a master. In standard SPI we can run this IC at frequency of 133MHZ for read-write operations. But in our sample codes i would be using the IC at 1 MHZ. Most Significant bit(MSB) is sent first during the SPI communication. Chip select pin(CS) would be used for selecting the slave. When CS is set as low, the slave is selected and when CS is set as HIGH, the slave would not be selected. Serial Data Input( DI) is the MOSI pin and Serial Data Output(DO) is the MISO pin. Serial Clock Input (CLK) pin is used as Serial Clock for SPI communication. During configuring of SPI pins for our host MCU, CS pin of the host MCU would be configured as Output pin. MOSI pin of the host MCU would be configured as OUTPUT pin. SCLK pin of the host MCU would be configured as INPUT pin. MISO pin of the host MCU would be configured as INPUT pin. Dual and Quad SPI are not of our concern, so we are not going to dig deep into those in this blog. though we are going to discuss standard SPI only if anybody has any things to ask related to Dual and Quad SPI they can reach out to me via gettobyte community. Status and Configuration Registers These are very important registers, plays an important role in configuring and using these memory chips. Their are 3 Status registers, SR1,SR2,SR3. Status register provide the status on the availability of the flash memory array, whether the device is write enabled or disabled, the state of the write protection, QUAD SPI settings, Security register lock status, and Erase/Program suspend status, output driver strength, and power up status. Also, status registers are used to configure the device write protection failures, QUAD SPI settings, Security register OTP locks and output driver strength. Each Status register can be read and write by specific commands. For reading the status register we have to issue the Read status register instructions for reading the corresponding Status register. One can read the Status registers of the memory chip when we want to know the status on the availability of the flash memory array, whether the device is write enabled or disabled, the state of the write protection, QUAD SPI settings, Security register lock status, Erase/Program suspend status, output driver strength, and power up status. For writing the status register we have to issue the write status register instructions for the corresponding Status register. One can write on the status registers when we want to configure the chip for the device write protection failures, QUAD SPI settings, Security register OTP locks and output driver strength. Status Register 1 S0: BUSY bit –> BUSY is a read-only bit in the status register (S0) that is set to a 1 state when the device is executing a Page Program(02h), Quad Page Program(32h), Sector Erase(20h), Block Erase(52h), Chip Erase(60h), Write Status Register(01h,31h,11h) or Erase/Program Security Register instruction(44h/42h). During this time the device will ignore further instructions except for the Read Status Register. So in short we can use this bit inside the while loop or if loop to check whether the device is ready for further instructions or not. erase_sector4KB(read_addr1); // device is executing a erase sector instruction if((ReadSR(ReadSR1) & BUSY_BIT) == 0x01) // Busy bit is set when erase sector instruction is send, so checking that { erase_sector4KB(read_addr1); } S1:WEL –> Write enable latch is also a read-only bit that is set to 1 after executing a Write enable instruction and making the chip in write enabled mode. Prior to every Page Program(02h), Quad Page Program(32h), Sector Erase(20h), Block Erase(52h), Chip Erase(60h), Write Status Register(01h,31h,11h) or Erase/Program Security Register instruction(44h/42h) we have to send the Write enable instruction. So after sending the write enable instruction we can read this bit to check whether Write enable Instruction is executed or not.  It is cleared to 0 when the device is written disabled. Write disabled state occurs after the Page Program(02h), Quad Page Program(32h), Sector Erase(20h), Block Erase(52h), Chip Erase(60h), Write Status Register(01h,31h,11h) or Erase/Program Security Register instruction(44h/42h). So in short we can say that the WEL bit is used to check whether Write enable Instruction is executed or not. S2-S3-S4: Block Protect Bits(BP2, BP1, BP0) –> are read/write bits that can be used to protect the memory array from Program or erase instructions. One can protect ALL, NONE, or PORTION of the memory, corresponding configurations can be done for BP2, BP1, and BP0 bits according to the below tables. Also, see the TB and SEC bits for Write protection configurations S5: Top/Bottom BLOCK Protect(TB)–> This bit controls whether the memory protection has to be performed from TOP

Memory Modules Sensors and Modules SPI Modules

W25Q128JV SPI Flash Memory: Part1

Table of Contents W25Q128JV SPI Flash Memory interfacing with STM32 and AVR MCU So hello guys, welcome back to the Gettobyte once again. As I have told you that we are going to start with application codes also, so now in this blog what we are going to do?? We are going to interface the W25Q128JV SPI Serial flash memory module to our STM32 MCU and AVR8 MCU. Now let’s look at how this module looks. This module is very small and packed into small sizes. One can buy it easily from the Amazon Website. This module has 6 pins: VCC, GND, and 4 SPI Communication pins( MOSI, MISO, CE & SCK). But the IC has much more pins, that I will be briefing below. W25Q128JV SPI Flash Memory module Now starting with this Flash memory, In this blog, I will be telling you about its: General description of the IC. Features of this Serial Flash Memory. Pin Description. In the next subsequent blogs will be making the application code on AVR and STM32 MCU using SPI peripheral and peripheral driver. At first, will be making the application code on AVR MCU and then on STM32 MCU. So now moving forward, let’s begin our journey to it. General Description of W25Q SPI flash memory So starting with W25Q128JV. These are the Serial communication-based Flash memories into which we can store data. These can work as RAM memory for memory constraint embedded MCUs. We can transfer data from these memory chips in standard SPI serial communication up to a frequency of 133 MHZ and when used in Dual/Quad SPI Serial communication, data transfer frequency can go up to 236MHZ/532 MHZ. So one can read, write and fetch data from these memory chips at very high frequencies. These have 65536 programmable page lengths and in total there are 256 pages. That means it has 256 pages and on each page, we can write 65536 bytes.  W25Q SPI flash memory depicted as a book On each byte of these pages, we can read and write at a redundancy of 10000 times. Up to 256 bytes can be programmed at a time. We will go into more detail when we will understand its block diagram of memory mapping and management. Features of W25Q SPI Flash Memory It can run on Standard SPI, DUAL SPI, and QUAD SPI. Standard SPI: is traditional SPI Protocol which has CLK,CS,MISO(DO),MOSI(DI) pins.  In this, we have 1 pin(MOSI) for sending data from Master to Slave and another pin (MISO) for sending data from slave to master. It can run at Max speed of 133MHZ for standard SPI. To know more about SPI, refer to this blog  Dual SPI: In DUAL SPI, we have 2 Output/Input pins. Which means at a time we can send data from 2 pins and receive data from 2 pins. Refer the below image, DI becomes IO0 and D0 becomes IO1, so at a time we can send and receive data from both of those pins. As 1 byte has 8 bits and bits 0 and 1 of my one byte are being transmitted or received simultaneously, thus our data transfer becomes 2x then standard SPI, where only 1 bit is commuted at a time. In Dual SPI Max speed it can run at is 266 MHZ.  DUAL SPI QUAD SPI: In QUAD SPI, we have 4 Output/Input pins. Which means at a time we can send data from 4 pins and receive data from 4 pins. IO0,IO1,IO2,IO3 are the 4 pins from which data is commuted between slave and master. In Quad SPI MAX speed it can run at is 532 MHZ.  QUAD SPI One can perform 100k program-erase cycles per sector and it has data retention for more than 20 years. Efficient continuously read for about 8/16/32 byte warp. Byte warp here means that it can read memory continuously in the chunks of 8/16/32 bytes in one single time. Lets say it is reading in 8 byte wrap, so at first read it will read 0-7 bytes, then in next 8-15 bytes, then 16-23 bytes. Then the other important thing is Advance Security features which this IC has. You will be able to understand these features in better way when we will go through the Status and Configuration registers of this IC. On the memory chip, We can lock the certain memory bytes, that is no one can write or read on configured memory bytes or size. We can use the OTP (one time password) to have password based memory protection We can access the memory bytes of the IC, in Blocks(64 KB), sectors(4KB) or single byte. Starting from the Top of memory or from the Bottom of memory. PINOUT of the W25Q128 Flash memory chip So W25Q128 has 8 pins. Depending on the package we have, the number of pins of the IC can increase or decrease. The module which we will be using is packaging WSON.Pin number 1 is CE (Chip Select), used to select the SPI slave by making a LOW signal to this pinPin number 2 is DO (Data Output), that is MISO pin in case of standard SPI and IO1 in case of DUAL/QUAD SPI.Pin number 3 is /WP (Write Protection pin) ( will tell you about it in the below section) and IO2  in case of Dual/Quad SPI.Pin number 4 is GND (Ground).Pin number 5 is DI(Data Input), that is MOSI pin in case of standard SPI and IO0 in case of DUAL/QUAD SPI.Pin number 6 is CLK, the Clock pin of SPI communication.Pin number 7 is /HOLD or /RESET  pin ( will tell you about it in the below section) and IO3 in case of Dual/Quad SPI.Pin number 8 is VCC. Let’s just deep dive into the pin description of this IC Chip Select is held high, that is master has not selected the slave and all my pins would be at High impedance. When the CS pin is held low, the master has selected

Daily Coding Miscellaneous

Using a function in Embedded C.

In this example, we will make animations by turning off and on Leds with some delays. We could simply do it like this. We could simply do it like this. PORTB=0B10101010; _delay_ms(1000); PORTB=0B01010101; _delay_ms(1000); . . . PORTB=0B01000001; _delay_ms(1000); But instead of writing like this, we would use the function Led_pin( ). It will reduce the typing a bit but in the next blog, we will learn to make it very small by learning a concept called Bit Shifting. Let\’s go for an example. #define F_CPU 16000000UL //defining the clock speed of the processor #include <avr/io.h>  // library for using registers [PORTX,PORTD,PINX] #include <util/delay.h> // library for using delay void Led_pin(uint8_t byte) // Making a function with argument \”byte\” having data type unsigned int 8. { PORTB = byte;   // Whenever the function is called it will store the argument byte in PORTB with delay. _delay_ms(100); } int main(void) { DDRB = (0b00111110); while(1) { Led_pin(0b00101010); Led_pin(0b00010100); Led_pin(0b00101110); Led_pin(0b00010001); Led_pin(0b00101010); Led_pin(0b00011100); Led_pin(0b00101011); Led_pin(0b00010100); PORTB=0b00000000; _delay_ms(1000); } return(0); } In the above code we made a function  Led_pin( ). void Led_pin(uint8_t byte) { PORTB = byte;   _delay_ms(100); } Here Led_pin takes a single byte of data type unsigned int [uint8_t]. Whenever our code calls this function the arguments inside it directly go to the PORTB and blink for 100 microseconds asset in delay. OUTPUT If you are new and feeling confused about other libraries and functions then please refer to this blog.

Daily Coding Embedded Basics Miscellaneous

Introduction on embedded c

Embedded C is an extremely popular programming language when we talk about electronic devices. If you wanna go for robotics it would be a good start for you. In our day-to-day life, we use mobile, laptops, and fridges every electronic device we use is made up of using embedded C. Now without wasting any time let\’s dive a bit deep into it by looking into a very basic example Blinking LED using Embedded C. Blinking Led is a hello world for embedded C which means this is the first basic code that takes us into the world of embedded C. #define F_CPU 16000000UL#include <avr/io.h>#include <util/delay.h>int main(void){DDRB|= (0B00100000);while (1){PORTB=0B00100000;_delay_ms(1000);PORTB=0B11011111;_delay_ms(1000);}return(0);} Let’s understand our code from top to bottom. #define F_CPU 16000000UL Let’s break it into 3 parts #define F_CPU Here we are defining the clock speed of the processor. 16000000 Here we are setting the clock speed at 16Mhz as our atmega328p’s default value is 1Mhz hence 16Mhz will make it 16 times slower. UL Here we are doing nothing but declaring the data type of the clock speed. We used unsigned long because clock speed cant is negative. #include <avr/io.h> Whenever we want to use libraries of some function from some other source or even we wanna use our own code we use #include.  #include <avr/io.h>  includes a header file that contains code for using pins, ports, etc. for the Avr microcontroller. #include <util/delay.h> This library is used to put delays in our code. int main(void) The main function is when the AVR starts executing code. While(1) While loops execute the code inside it until the condition inside the parentheses remains true. We all know in C 1 refers to true and 0 refers to false. Here the code inside the while loop will run again and again because 1 can never be false. return(0); If we don\’t write return(0) at the end of the code we will get an error for sure. This happens because our operating system needs confirmation that the code we ran is running properly. This is more of a line of confirmation. You must be wondering what these words DDRB or PORTB are? Well, these are called hardware registers which are extremely important to understand so let\’s get to know what they are and what they do? Hardware Registers In our Atmega series of Avr, we have mainly 3 hardware registers. DDRx PORTx PINx Here x is referred to the bank. We have three of’em B, C, D.Every bank contains 8 pins. Depending on which bank’s pin you are using we chose the bank. DDRx[Data-Direction registers] DDRx configures the pins as output or input. As we are using an 8-bit microcontroller. The default value of the DDR is 0 which means whenever we give power it is not giving any output. If we want to set it for the output we need to set the bit we want to use for sending the output as 1. Output = 1Input    = 0DDRB = 0b00000000       DDRB = 0b00100000 Here 0b is telling us that we are writing the number in binary. We all know 0 refers to the ‘off’ and 1 refers to the ‘on’. Hence the above example is telling us at first all pins were off later on we set pin 5 as 1 for giving output. If you are familiar with Arduino Ide then you can relate DDR with pinMode.      PORTx[Port x data registers] After setting the DDRx bits to the 1(output), The port registers the voltage as HIGH or LOW. When we say the voltage is Low it means the voltage is 0V and if we say voltage is HIGH we consider the voltage as 5V.  HIGH = 1LOW    = 0PORTB = 0b00000000  PORTB = 0b00100000 If we take the example of our code we have seen above we are setting pb5 as output. In the picture you can see above PB5 is connected with pin 13 of Arduino. Now you can see we are turning we Led on which is connected with pin 13 which is connected with PB5 on Atmega 328p. If you are familiar with Arduino Ide then you can relate PORTx with digitalWrite. PINx[port c input data pin address] The pin register addresses are used when we want to read the digital voltage values for each pin we set as input in DDRX. You can relate this pin with digitalRead from Arduino IDE. I believe now it\’s clear what we did in the  above example. In the next blog, we will see how we can write a function and use it for calling. So that we can reduce our writing.

AVR MCU

Introduction to Atmel studio

I assume if you are here to do projects on Atmel studio using embedded c then you are familiar with Arduino IDE. If not then I would recommend you to get familiar with  Arduino IDE because it will build a basic foundation you need to get started. Arduino IDE will make it easy for you to relate variables, functions, etc. How to execute our first code on Atmel studio These are the steps you need to follow to run your first code. Open your Arduino IDe and copy the path I’ve shown below. For this, you need to scroll up. At the top, you will find it. Copy that path and paste it somewhere as I have pasted it in notepad++. You can see I’ve made a few changes in that path you need to do the same.  Now go to tools and open external tools. Here writes the name of the Board you are using as I am using Arduino Uno. Paste the commands in the command section and arguments in the arguments section after making the necessary changes and then click OK.  Now Go to file and create a New Project. Write the name of your program and select the compiler I’ve selected. After selecting the compiler press OK. Here you can see numerous microcontrollers. Now you need to select the one you are using. The microcontroller I am using is Atmega328p. Instead of searching, you can also write it in the search box. It is at the top right corner. Great! Your main.cpp file is open and nowhere you can start programming and making super cool projects. After writing your first program click on build -> build solution. Go to tools and select the External tool title you have saved in point 5). Here to run this code you just need to plug in your Arduino board and make a circuit for blinking LEDs, the same as you must have done while working on Arduino IDE. For reference, you can see the output. CODE #define F_CPU 16000000UL #include <avr/io.h> #include <util/delay.h> int main(void) { DDRB|= (0B00100000); while (1) { PORTB=0B00100000; _delay_ms(1000); PORTB=0B11011111; _delay_ms(1000); } return(0); } /* This is just a demo code so that you can confirm that your code is running properly. For now, you don’t need to worry about the code or what is happening inside. I will share the link down below for the same. */ OUTPUT  

Display Screens I2C Modules Sensors and Modules

SSD1306 OLED Display Screen

Display Technolgy mainly consists of two things: Display Devices and Display Driver Integrated Chips(DDIC). Display Devices: are OLED, LCD, LED, CRT, Vacuum Florescent, etc modules. To know in-depth about the different types of display devices refer to this. Display Driver Integrated Chips(DDIC): are semiconductor IC\’s that provide an interface between the control Unit(MPU and MCU) and a particular type of display device. Display driver accepts commands and data using onboard communication protocols like I2C, SPI, CMOS, RS232, etc and generates signals with suitable voltage, current, timing, and demultiplexing to make the display show the desired text or image. Display driver IC\’s may also incorporate RAM, Flash Memory, EEPROM, and/or ROM. Examples of Display Driver IC are SSD1306, HD44780, KS0108, SSD1815, and ST7920. In this blog, we are going to use the OLED Display device and will go in-depth into one of the OLED Display Driver IC\’s: SSD1306 by Solomon Systech. OLED Display Introduction OLED(Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays are the new technology in the display screen industry that are revolutionizing the user interface for users in various devices like TV screens, Virtual Reality headsets, Smart Watches, and many more. LCD Technology is compentator to OLED technology. LCD is a non-emission and older display technology that requires an external light source to work. While OLED technology is modern and considered to be emission display technology, that does not require a backlight that is an external light source. OLED Display technology is pretty exciting and opens lots of possibilities: Curved OLED Display Wearable OLED\’s Flexible and rollable OLED Transparent OLED embedded in Windows and many more we can not imagine today. The focus of this blog will be more on the understanding of OLED Display Driver IC: SSD1306 and its driver development for operating the below OLED Screen Module. To get to know about the OLED display working and its layers, readers can refer to this blog. OLED Driver IC\’s apart from SSD1306 are SSD0323. SSD1306 OLED Driver IC SSd1306 is an integrated chip that is used to drive the OLED display of the dot-matrix graphic display system. These IC\’s comes in Chip on glass or Chip on Film packaging i.e chip die is directly mounted to a piece of the glass display. SSD1306 has a feature to drive up to 128 columns & 64 rows of OLED pixels. It has constant control, display RAM and oscillator inbuilt which reduces the external components and power consumption. SSD1306 IC itself require only 1.65 to 3.3 V that can be provided to it easily from MCU. But as OLED displays does not have backlight as LCD has, so the panel of OLED requires higher voltages of about 7-15 V which is supplied to OLED panel from internal voltage doublers and charge pump circuitry\’s. And on an average OLED display consumes only 20mA current. Now coming to the part that how does these Driver IC display data on these OLED screens.

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