Camera module for Tiva TM4C controller – schematic and layout

Hello everyone. First of all, let me introduce Harshit Jain – my partner in this project. He introduced me to layouts using EAGLE – a big thanks to him! Following is the schematic of the module that we are planning to develop. (Psst psst…we have already decided where to get the PCBs made from –…

TCM82x0-MD and Tiva CM4 microcontrollers

A new post after a long time! Free time has been very hard to come by over the past few months. But, over the last month or so – I have been obsessed with an idea. Some google-ing around and quick calculations tell me that it is indeed possible to do this. After around an…

TI’s eZ430 Chronos – tinkering 101

I recently bought TI’s Chronos eZ430 – 433 MHz development kit. Basically, it is a watch with a bunch of sensors and a controller that can be programmed wirelessly over the 433 MHz ISM band. Yes – I know it is bulky and has a huge ‘Texas Instruments’ logo on it. But, as long as…

A Useful Arduino Tip

Arduino does not cease to amaze. Recently, I was chalking out plans for my first project with my new GSM-GPRS module (my birthday gift actually 🙂 ). My friends very intelligently chose a board with a four-wire serial interface rather than the conventional 9-pin RS-232 connector interface. This choice is intelligent because it is better…

Powering the Beagle!

First things first – this might seem to be a very trivial thing. Powering is simply plugging in that AC-to-DC converter into that barrel, right? Well, that is partly correct. But, how else can you power up your Beagle? And what operation modes are available and what power considerations do we have to keep in…

BeagleBoard-xM – Y U NO compress JPEG well?

Yes, this is the truth. Our task at hand is real-time acquisition of images from a USB webcam (Logitech C905), processing these images to identify a rectangle or a trapezium and then counting the number of filled and hollow circles inside and decoding this sequence of circles which stands for a particular coordinate in a…

Software to get started on BeagleBoard-xM and Ubuntu 11.04

Computer Vision is a very popular application for which BeagleBoard-xM is used around the world. And OpenCV is synonymous with Computer Vision among the users. OpenCV-2.3.1 is the latest version out there but the Ubuntu repositories have OpenCV-2.1 as the latest available version. Needless to say, our micro-SD card with Ubuntu 11.04 for OMAP came…

Our BeagleBoard-xM arrives!

This is the photograph of a freshly opened BeagleBoard-xM at my place of work here in Nasik, India. We also bought the BB Expansion Board v2 for development purposes. The board was shipped with an Angstrom demo image. We also ordered a micro-SD card with Ubuntu 11.04 for OMAP loaded onto it and OpenCV 2.1 pre-installed.…

Raspberry Pi — the newest dessert in single-board computers

Single-board computers.The term is self-explanatory. These are computers (objects that compute – rapidly most of the times) which have a single-board circuitry. Some other popular examples are the BeagleBoard, the PandaBoard etc. Today, BeagleBoard is a very well-known SBC but it has its own downsides in terms of cost. $100 is too much for a…