Play Angry Birds For Real with Mbed NXP Cortex-M0 Slingshot

If you’re just bored to play Angry Birds with the touchscreen of your smartphone or with your mouse in Angry Birds for Chrome, you can now bring the fun back to the game by playing with a real slingshot ! mbed designed a USB slingshot with an mbed NXP LPC11U24 (Cortex-M0 MCU) board that emulates a USB mouse. mbed measures the angle and strength applied with: An accelerometer that measure the tilt by tracking the gravity vector A rubber stretch sensor used as the sling, and measure how much it is stretched. They built the slingshot with the following hardware components: mbed NXP LPC11U24 board – 59 USD 3-axis Accelerometer – ADXL345 Accelerometer connect via SPI  – 14.95 USD Stretch Sensor connected to pin 15 (analog input) – 9.95 USD USB B connector Handcrafted Slingshot Here’s how mbed describes their NXP board: The mbed NXP LPC11U24 MCU module is a […]

Atollic TrueSTUDIO for ARM 3.0 To Be Released at Embedded World 2012

Atollic has just announced  that Atollic TrueSTUDIO for ARM 3.0 – a C/C++ development tool for embedded developers –  will be released on the 28th of February 2012, at Embedded World 2012,  Nuremberg, Germany. Atollic TrueSTUDIO v3.0 will bring the following improvements: Redesigned user interface that is more intuitive to C/C++ developers New support for NXP LPC1000 Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M3 devices New support for Infineon XMC4000 Cortex-M4 devices New support for Energy Micro EFM32 (Cortex-M3) Upgraded support for STMicroelectronics STM32 devices Improved real-time interrupt tracing with ARM Serial Wire Viewer (SWV) interface. Execution time profiling now present information using bar charts Upgraded ECLIPSE platform to the latest “Indigo” release (3.7.1) Major upgrade of the GNU command line tools Upgraded TrueINSPECTOR, TrueANALYZER and TrueVERIFIER add-on products Supports over 800 ARM devices Hundreds of minor improvements Since the product has not been released, that’s currently all information there is.  Further information will certainly […]

BiKN Technology Platform: 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Network

NXP and Treehouse Labs has unveiled BiKN technology platform that uses low-power 802.15.4 wireless chip technology from NXP Semiconductors to enable the “Internet of Things”  and opens new markets and applications for affordable wireless sensor and control networks. This technology allows to track “Smart Objects” tagged by wireless sensors and monitor (and possibly control) them via an application running on mobile devices, PC or Cloud servers. BiKN Technology Platform can be used in a range of applications including home and industrial automation, smart energy management, improving tracking and monitoring of equipment and inventory in retailing and hospitality, enhancing safety monitoring and security in healthcare, social services, athletics and educational environments. BiKN Technology Platform works by integrating hardware and software, operating through mobile and web-enabled devices, and leveraging IEEE802.15.4 low-power networking standards. Treehouse Labs uses the NXP JN5148 ultra low-power wireless microcontroller and the JenNet-IP open source wireless network protocol stack […]

Beyond NFC Payment: Other NFC Use Cases

During CarteS event, NXP has uploaded a video on YouTube showing several NFC applications that are not directly used for payment. In the video below, you’ll see several such applications including: Smart Advertizement: shopping advice, movie promotion, travel info and game Smart Meter for meter reading and real-time power consumption monitoring via an Android device e-Passport with NFC Technology for faster immigration procedure. Secure Online Authentication NFC-Enable motorcycle to prevent theft NFC-enabled figurines to interact with video games. Authentication to unlock door, laptop and more. Gesture enabled smart card where you can use gesture to sign your own card and enable/disable it. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com

The Linux NFC Subsystem – ELCE 2011

Lauro Ramos Venancio, Instituto Nokia de Tecnologia and Samuel Ortiz, Intel give a presentation about the NFC subsystem in Linux at Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2011. Abstract: NFC (Near Field Communication) is a wireless protocol mostly designed for fast information reading and writing from nearby devices and tags. It also allows NFC devices to establish a transport layer link and exchange larger chunks of data. While Android ships with its own multi platform NFC stack writing HCI frames to a raw character device and supporting one single device, Linux is currently missing any kind of generic and clean NFC support, from both kernel and user space (cnxsoft: Since end of last month, this is not the case as Linux 3.1 supports NFC). Therefore, a new socket family for NFC, along with a kernel netlink API for high level NFC commands passing is being developed. An NFC user space daemon abstracts […]

NFC Smart Meter Demo by NXP and Landis-Gyr

NXP and Landis+Gyr are showcasing smart meters equipped with NFC technology at the Metering Europe 2011 event in Amsterdam this week. The companies are demonstrating how utility companies will be able to use NFC smart meters to: Save money by removing the need to include an LCD display in a smart meter. Meter readers will instead use an NFC-enabled phone to take a reading from the meter and then use their handset to collect and view current and historical energy consumption. Use an embedded secure element in the smart meter to increase customer privacy while at the same time providing the necessary level of access to installation and service technicians. Enable authorised maintenance technicians to download metering information to handsets or tablets as well as upload firmware updates to the meter via NFC. Use secure device pairing to deliver home area network (HAN) capabilities. Provide secure and convenient pre-payment of […]

Windows 8 NFC (Near Field Communication) Demo

A few months back, I would have never thought I would post about Microsoft and Windows in an embedded software blog, except for the rare mention of Windows CE or Windows Embedded products. But it now seems Windows 8 will actually focus on products that were previously almost exclusively ARM based such as tablets and smartphones. I have already posted about Windows 8 Tablet and Smartphones demo at the build conference and today I’ll discuss a little bit about NFC support in Windows 8. Windows 8 will support NFC (Near Field Communication) with NXP PN544 NFC controller chip. NXP PN544 is also the NFC solution used in the Windows 8 tablets, made by Samsung, which are being distributed to attendees of Microsoft’s Build Windows conference 2011. The NFC use cases available with Windows 8 include: Windows 8 device pairing (e.g. Bluetooth headsets and speakers) Data sharing (e.g. digital business cards) […]

NXP to release “Internet of Things” source code

Up to now, mainly people were using the Internet, but now things connect to the internet without human beings intervention for data collection (sensors) in order to improve the efficiency of different systems, this is what is called the “Internet of Things”. Watch IBM introduction to the Internet of things if you are not familiar with the concept. NXP recently announced the JenNet-IP software will be available under an open-source licence in Q4 2011. JenNet-IP is an ultra-low-power, IEEE 802.15.4-based wireless connectivity network layer software stack. Key features of the JenNet-IP networking software include: Highly robust, easily scalable, self-healing tree network proven at over 500 nodes Proven in a variety of residential and industrial applications, including asset management, lighting, solar and building control IP-based networking to enable the Internet of Things Gateway or non-gateway options for connection to the Internet or stand-alone operation Easy-to-use, elegant and extensible SNAP object-oriented API […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case