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Thanks Blakely.
Like Jon I've used lots of languages over the years, often trying out a
new idea on the PC in C or even VB and then porting it to a micro in
assembler. Like you I have mostly worked in assembler because it reads
cleanly, and logically to me. There is nothing cryptic or hidden about
it, what you see is nearly always what you get. I like to thrash things
until they bleed before I use them in designs, and I did this to great
lengths with the MSP. I too find porting between micros, a fairly simple
process, and, as Jon says it is often a great way to learn new things,
or get a different insight into something. A few years ago I thought it
was much easier than porting between different C implementations.
In recent years I have had no constraints, other than physical ones on
what I do. I no longer work commercially because my health has failed me
suddenly on a couple of occasions and forced me to let people down, and
on many occasions I believe that my situation has been taken advantage
of, so I work for me now. Oddly I seem to have even less time, again
partly due to health, and partly because there is almost no end to the
depths of exploration I need indulge in to produce what I want. I guess
this has always been part of the excitement of design. Every design is a
new field, or has been, so years back I had to dig out the maths and get
acquainted with DSP, because the text books quoted formulae that weren'y
explained, and used symbology that meant something totally different to
me. I jumped into semiconductor manufacturing and found an affinity for
it, so robotics design, and chemistry and physics, then GPS, underground
mining, and communications, learning new fields all the time, (and
trying in my old age not to forget some of the older stuff).
My latest venture is the most exciting by far. I started it in 1993, 7
years before my own accident, but never had the time to devote to it,
and was also highly criticised and sometimes even ridiculed by the
'experts' of the day, so it became something I read a lot about and
occasionally built and tested new ideas, but never took it all the way.
A couple of years ago I was in a very bad place and needed to do
soemthing to dig my way out of it. I had a few off the wall ideas but
instead I threw everything into testing my old ideas, as I didn't even
know if they would work, I just couldn't see why not, and that, I feel
is often as good a reason as any to pursue something new. I also felt
that if I didn't do it then it would never happen.
The result of this is that the two people who tested my first (crude)
system have gone from wheelchair bound C5 quadriplegics to being able to
drive, lift themselves in and out of their chairs, feel things they
hadn't felt for 6 years, ride a horse unaided, pass their drivers
licence test, regain control of bladder and bowel, and generally do
things they were told they would never do again. One has feeling back
from her arms to her feet. I'm about to embark on the next stage of
this, sending machines to another dozen people in the US, a guy in
Brazil and a few people in Australia. The machines are free, as are all
the consumables, cables and software updates (thanks in a large part to
my first victim). I am hoping for the same slow but steady progression
as the first 2 machines showed. Eventually I hope this will become
commercially available to everybody, at an affordable price, but for now
I struggle to make ends meet on a state disability pension, but I
believe that what I am doing is the most meaningful thing I have ever done.
Now the relevance of this is that it is all done with an MSP430F2618,
running the crap out of it. It runs round the clock for 3 days on a
battery charge, thanks to the low power modes of the MSP, and there is
enough grunt to not only run the core code, but wifi, BT and soon I am
hoping it will be able to track and image spinal cord and neural
activity in real time. I don't think this would be feasible in C on this
processor.
Why choose the MSP430 for this job, which obviously calls for a fair bit
of processing power, especially when you see the likes of Ti suggesting
ARM or DSP processors for simple things like blood ox or ECG? The answer
is boringly simple. I know the MSP430 inside and out. I had an off the
shelf MSP430F149 based board from 2000 with one of my early test
designs on it that I was able to update for the 2 test systems, so no $
outlay. I had an MSP430F2618 EVK that I could test some new ideas for
the latest design on, again no $outlay.. I had the tools for the MSP
ready to hand, again no $ outlay, and, finally I had the IAR Kickstart
program for free, so there was no cost at all in doing the core micro
based work, which meant that the little that I could put aside each
week, could be hoarded for more important things. Things like making the
PCB and buying the parts, custom made batteries, (super cheap, $3.50
each in a 100 lot for 3000mAh Li poly 3V7 cells in a foil pack with a
customised PCM board) custom shielded cables and a nice box from Hammond
because they will pre drill and cut, and are very reasonably priced.
Progress has been necessarily slow, but when you are on the phone to
somebody, who, when you first spoke to them was unable to even swap
their position in their wheelchair, and they say "I have to hang up in a
minute Al, I'm about to drive up a mountain and need to concentrate a
bit". Or you receive a video in your email showing a girl sitting on her
horse and walking it around a paddock for the first time in 6 years,
then 2 months later I get another video of her lifting herself out of
her chair into a Polaris quad and driving off across the fields, it
makes you feel that you haven't wasted your time. It makes me feel
vindicated in my beliefs.
This is why I do what I do, I cannot imagine doing anything else, and
have always felt that I wanted to design things that made a personal
difference to people, but like most working engineers haven't been able
to do as I pleased as much as I would have liked. I am lucky to have
been born into this very precise era when one person can indulge their
inquisitive nature and do such things, because I fear that it is all
becoming too black box, prebuilt boring stuff. We have gone from valve
technology to billions of transistors per square cm in just just over 50
years, a spectacular rate of advance that should continue to the point
where the machines design other machines and all we do is give them a
list of 'wants', a 'Wish List Converter' module.. Now if only I could
get DOS or similar for my PC so that I could grab all of it's potential
for myself instead of losing it to windows and the thousand things I
don't need to do that windows thinks I should.!
Cheers
Al
On 19/01/2016 4:48 AM, [email protected] [msp430] wrote:
>
>
> I have not visited here much of late - guess the lack of projects or
> new processors or laziness(?).
>
> Nice to Jon and Al- both of whom have given me invaluable help over
> the years.
>
> I use the IAR assembler tools as well. The are fast YACC based tools.
> I use them for the MSP430, 8051, and Renesas RX family. Nice to be
> able to work with the same tools sets. I don't use the IAR IDE at all
> nor their .h files. For every product, I create that defines every
> register, every bit and uses a fair amount of ASCII graphics. The idea
> behind this is that as an appendix, it follows the product and serves
> to complete the documentation. The chief advantage I find is that you
> get a great exposure to the hardware and peripheral base that each
> processor family supports. And like much code, it becomes the template
> for subsequent additions to that family. The downside is that it
> takes a long time to create. I am working on the RX family now and
> some members there have a huge number of configuration registers.
>
> Everything is done from command line invocation in (ALT - F9)
> UltraEdit with the result box popping up in the editor.
>
> My fallback assembler is the X32 Universal Assembler - a table driven
> product that allows you to define your own Mnemonics and Opcodes. It
> can be expanded to add new instructions. I did this to extend their
> H8 tables to support the H8S family - most notably the STM and LDM
> multiple stack push/pop instructions. And it is very useful when
> porting code. If I were more ambitious, I would create a
> Meta-Assembly language and then define the Opcodes for each member
> family. Of course a good Macro capability in most assemblers can do
> the same thing.
>
> The real reason I code exclusively in assembler is that it reads
> better to me. It matches my thinking and appears perfectly clear.
> Maybe it is just a mental limitation of my part, but C is just too
> ugly to read and easily gets obfuscated beyond comprehension.
>
> Blakely LaCroix
> Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
>
>
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<font size="-1">Thanks Blakely.<br>
<br>
Like Jon I've used lots of languages over the years, often trying
out a new idea on the PC in C or even VB and then porting it to a
micro in assembler. Like you I have mostly worked in assembler
because it reads cleanly, and logically to me. There is nothing
cryptic or hidden about it, what you see is nearly always what you
get. I like to thrash things until they bleed before I use them in
designs, and I did this to great lengths with the MSP. I too find
porting between micros, a fairly simple process, and, as Jon says
it is often a great way to learn new things, or get a different
insight into something. A few years ago I thought it was much
easier than porting between different C implementations.<br>
<br>
In recent years I have had no constraints, other than physical
ones on what I do. I no longer work commercially because my health
has failed me suddenly on a couple of occasions and forced me to
let people down, and on many occasions I believe that my situation
has been taken advantage of, so I work for me now. Oddly I seem to
have even less time, again partly due to health, and partly
because there is almost no end to the depths of exploration I
need indulge in to produce what I want. I guess this has always
been part of the excitement of design. Every design is a new
field, or has been, so years back I had to dig out the maths and
get acquainted with DSP, because the text books quoted formulae
that weren'y explained, and used symbology that meant something
totally different to me. I jumped into semiconductor manufacturing
and found an affinity for it, so robotics design, and chemistry
and physics, then GPS, underground mining, and communications,
learning new fields all the time, (and trying in my old age not to
forget some of the older stuff). <br>
<br>
My latest venture is the most exciting by far. I started it in
1993, 7 years before my own accident, but never had the time to
devote to it, and was also highly criticised and sometimes even
ridiculed by the 'experts' of the day, so it became something I
read a lot about and occasionally built and tested new ideas, but
never took it all the way. A couple of years ago I was in a very
bad place and needed to do soemthing to dig my way out of it. I
had a few off the wall ideas but instead I threw everything into
testing my old ideas, as I didn't even know if they would work, I
just couldn't see why not, and that, I feel is often as good a
reason as any to pursue something new. I also felt that if I
didn't do it then it would never happen.<br>
<br>
The result of this is that the two people who tested my first
(crude) system have gone from wheelchair bound C5 quadriplegics to
being able to drive, lift themselves in and out of their chairs,
feel things they hadn't felt for 6 years, ride a horse unaided,
pass their drivers licence test, regain control of bladder and
bowel, and generally do things they were told they would never do
again. One has feeling back from her arms to her feet. I'm about
to embark on the next stage of this, sending machines to another
dozen people in the US, a guy in Brazil and a few people in
Australia. The machines are free, as are all the consumables,
cables and software updates (thanks in a large part to my first
victim). I am hoping for the same slow but steady progression as
the first 2 machines showed. Eventually I hope this will become
commercially available to everybody, at an affordable price, but
for now I struggle to make ends meet on a state disability
pension, but I believe that what I am doing is the most meaningful
thing I have ever done. <br>
<br>
Now the relevance of this is that it is all done with an
MSP430F2618, running the crap out of it. It runs round the clock
for 3 days on a battery charge, thanks to the low power modes of
the MSP, and there is enough grunt to not only run the core code,
but wifi, BT and soon I am hoping it will be able to track and
image spinal cord and neural activity in real time. I don't think
this would be feasible in C on this processor.<br>
<br>
Why choose the MSP430 for this job, which obviously calls for a
fair bit of processing power, especially when you see the likes of
Ti suggesting ARM or DSP processors for simple things like blood
ox or ECG? The answer is boringly simple. I know the MSP430 inside
and out. I had an off the shelf MSP430F149 based board from 2000
with one of my early test designs on it that I was able to update
for the 2 test systems, so no $ outlay. I had an MSP430F2618 EVK
that I could test some new ideas for the latest design on, again
no $outlay.. I had the tools for the MSP ready to hand, again no $
outlay, and, finally I had the IAR Kickstart program for free, so
there was no cost at all in doing the core micro based work, which
meant that the little that I could put aside each week, could be
hoarded for more important things. Things like making the PCB and
buying the parts, custom made batteries, (super cheap, $3.50 each
in a 100 lot for 3000mAh Li poly 3V7 cells in a foil pack with a
customised PCM board) custom shielded cables and a nice box from
Hammond because they will pre drill and cut, and are very
reasonably priced. <br>
<br>
Progress has been necessarily slow, but when you are on the phone
to somebody, who, when you first spoke to them was unable to even
swap their position in their wheelchair, and they say "I have to
hang up in a minute Al, I'm about to drive up a mountain and need
to concentrate a bit". Or you receive a video in your email
showing a girl sitting on her horse and walking it around a
paddock for the first time in 6 years, then 2 months later I get
another video of her lifting herself out of her chair into a
Polaris quad and driving off across the fields, it makes you feel
that you haven't wasted your time. It makes me feel vindicated in
my beliefs.<br>
<br>
This is why I do what I do, I cannot imagine doing anything else,
and have always felt that I wanted to design things that made a
personal difference to people, but like most working engineers
haven't been able to do as I pleased as much as I would have
liked. I am lucky to have been born into this very precise era
when one person can indulge their inquisitive nature and do such
things, because I fear that it is all becoming too black box,
prebuilt boring stuff. We have gone from valve technology to
billions of transistors per square cm in just just over 50 years,
a spectacular rate of advance that should continue to the point
where the machines design other machines and all we do is give
them a list of 'wants', a 'Wish List Converter' module.. Now if
only I could get DOS or similar for my PC so that I could grab
all of it's potential for myself instead of losing it to windows
and the thousand things I don't need to do that windows thinks I
should.!<br>
<br>
Cheers<br>
<br>
Al<br>
<br>
<br>
</font>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 19/01/2016 4:48 AM,
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a> [msp430] wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:[email protected]" type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Context-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<br>
<br>
I have not visited here much of late - guess the lack of projects
or new processors or laziness(?).<br>
<br>
Nice to Jon and Al- both of whom have given me invaluable help
over the years.<br>
<br>
I use the IAR assembler tools as well. The are fast YACC based
tools. I use them for the MSP430, 8051, and Renesas RX family.
Nice to be able to work with the same tools sets. I don't use the
IAR IDE at all nor their .h files. For every product, I create
that defines every register, every bit and uses a fair amount of
ASCII graphics. The idea behind this is that as an appendix, it
follows the product and serves to complete the documentation.
The chief advantage I find is that you get a great exposure to the
hardware and peripheral base that each processor family supports.
And like much code, it becomes the template for subsequent
additions to that family. The downside is that it takes a long
time to create. I am working on the RX family now and some
members there have a huge number of configuration registers.<br>
<br>
Everything is done from command line invocation in (ALT - F9)
UltraEdit with the result box popping up in the editor.<br>
<br>
My fallback assembler is the X32 Universal Assembler - a table
driven product that allows you to define your own Mnemonics and
Opcodes. It can be expanded to add new instructions. I did this
to extend their H8 tables to support the H8S family - most notably
the STM and LDM multiple stack push/pop instructions. And it is
very useful when porting code. If I were more ambitious, I would
create a Meta-Assembly language and then define the Opcodes for
each member family. Of course a good Macro capability in most
assemblers can do the same thing.<br>
<br>
The real reason I code exclusively in assembler is that it reads
better to me. It matches my thinking and appears perfectly
clear. Maybe it is just a mental limitation of my part, but C is
just too ugly to read and easily gets obfuscated beyond
comprehension. <br>
<br>
Blakely LaCroix<br>
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
<br>
<br>
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