- Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:40 am
#11132
Hi all,
I'm involved in a project to monitor some wildlife - we're interested in the weights of nesting seabirds. These guys build burrows, so what we plan to do is place a small load cell in the tunnel and use that to get the weight as they go in and out.
The load cell will generate a voltage in a (fixed) range which will pass through an A to D converter and be fed into one of the inputs on the MaxQ. This input will be stored, along with the date/time, in the internal memory of the processor each time the event happens. Later on we might also add an RFID tag reader to the system, which will send through an ID before the weight (if the bird is going into the nest, say) or after the weight (if the birds on the way out).
We have a MaxQ-P2000 development board and JTAG USB connector, both purchased from the folks at Olimex.
Now, the problem here is that I'll be writing the code for this project and, while I'm a reasonable C/C++ coder, I've never before touched a project involving microprocessors and I'm a little out to sea. Would anyone have any resources that might help or that might be useful for this sort of setup? Particularly introductions into writing code for embedded system in general and/or a good introduction to the MaxQ in particular. Sample source code would be greatly appreciated as there seems to be very little available on the net.
What tools are there available? Max-IDE is one, but it doesn't have a C compiler. I could handle assembly if need be, but that would get rather interesting - and again, I've been unable to find much in the way of sample code. I've looked at GCC and I'm currently chasing up some information on building a cross-compiler as there seems to be a patch available. New territory again, though.
IAR Workbench is another one that I see popping up a lot; but, while I can get it to compile the tutorial code, I seem to be having some trouble getting it talking to the Olimex board.
I realize these are quite general questions and I apologize for that, but I'm a little lost and would greatly appreciate some direction. I've arrived here via the Olimex website so I hope questions about this chip are on topic.
Cheers
I'm involved in a project to monitor some wildlife - we're interested in the weights of nesting seabirds. These guys build burrows, so what we plan to do is place a small load cell in the tunnel and use that to get the weight as they go in and out.
The load cell will generate a voltage in a (fixed) range which will pass through an A to D converter and be fed into one of the inputs on the MaxQ. This input will be stored, along with the date/time, in the internal memory of the processor each time the event happens. Later on we might also add an RFID tag reader to the system, which will send through an ID before the weight (if the bird is going into the nest, say) or after the weight (if the birds on the way out).
We have a MaxQ-P2000 development board and JTAG USB connector, both purchased from the folks at Olimex.
Now, the problem here is that I'll be writing the code for this project and, while I'm a reasonable C/C++ coder, I've never before touched a project involving microprocessors and I'm a little out to sea. Would anyone have any resources that might help or that might be useful for this sort of setup? Particularly introductions into writing code for embedded system in general and/or a good introduction to the MaxQ in particular. Sample source code would be greatly appreciated as there seems to be very little available on the net.
What tools are there available? Max-IDE is one, but it doesn't have a C compiler. I could handle assembly if need be, but that would get rather interesting - and again, I've been unable to find much in the way of sample code. I've looked at GCC and I'm currently chasing up some information on building a cross-compiler as there seems to be a patch available. New territory again, though.
IAR Workbench is another one that I see popping up a lot; but, while I can get it to compile the tutorial code, I seem to be having some trouble getting it talking to the Olimex board.
I realize these are quite general questions and I apologize for that, but I'm a little lost and would greatly appreciate some direction. I've arrived here via the Olimex website so I hope questions about this chip are on topic.
Cheers
