2013! Also, been awhile, updates, etc. (will be posting more often too!)

So, been a very long time since my last post, too long. Not long after the last post I had a break from school and then it was finals and I had zero free time. I had meant to make a post or two over my winter break from classes, but just kept putting it off. Anyway, I very much enjoyed the break, but here I am back at school and ready to do some real electronics work and start posting again!

As I had mentioned before I got a Nexus 7, and I planned on creating a chroot environment to install Arch Linux (my favorite distro by far) on. I tried a number of things since then and ended up finding Linux Deploy, an open source program for Android that does everything I had wanted to do and more! (it supports multiple popular distros and has some great options for configuring them out of the box). I can't recommend this program enough to anyone that wants a genuine Linux experience on their Android device.

I'm currently using it mostly over ssh (through either better terminal emulator pro [BTEP] or zshaolin, both great apps for Linux lovers, with zshaolin essentially being a zsh version of BTEP), though I've tried a bit of VNC stuff with it as well, I'm currently trying to find the best Android VNC client (currently Pocket Cloud is looking decent, though has some annoyances and free version limitations). Anyway, this tablet is shaping up to be one of my favorite tech purchases ever, I use it as my phone (more on that later), an internet tablet, and now as a mini PC (particularly great when connected to an external keyboard).

In other news, I have just moved my domain (somestupidwebsite.com) to a new registrar, and will likely be switching hosting companies soon as well (not that doing so changes anything here). The new registrar is gandi.net, and so far I'm very pleased with their service! Once I switch the VPS host I might even write a sort of "review" type post for both gandi and the new VPS host that I'll use (I'm currently looking into Linode, they seem to be one of the better reviewed options and will let me use Arch!).

As well, I can now promise (to some degree) new posts on a bit more of a structured schedule, I'm going to be writing another one or two over the next day or so and then setting them up on a queue to post each week or so.

Enjoy!

(oh and a little peak at my current project -> linkey)

Nexus 7

Well, been a little while since I've updated this, school seems to keep me pretty busy. However, I will have some free time this weekend during which I hope to work on (and maybe complete) a project or two. Which should mean more posts here!

As for the title of the post, I did just recently get a nice new toy/productivity device, a Google Nexus 7 (writing this post on it now in fact). I've already rooted it, and I plan on doing a few more fun/interesting things with it soon.

Hopefully I will be able to write up some posts and perhaps guides for some of what I do (plenty of rooting guides out there as is, but few if any custom chroot ones, I will be setting mine up with Arch to match my laptop). Once I have that properly set up I should be able to edit code, and even compile while on the go, amongst other things, which should translate into more posts here.

I'm also planning on being more active on Google+ now, so if you enjoy this blog and wanna chat/see smaller posts from me check me out there (I believe it's linked to this account, I will post a link later though if needed).

More to come soon!

STM32F4 Discovery Hello World (with blinking lights!)

What better way to start off a new blog than with a hello world!? Last week a lovely little STM32F4 discovery board arrived at my door from digikey and this weekend I finally got around to hacking on it. First step was to set up a toolchain (I'm on Linux and using the summon arm toolchain as of now), this was pretty simple to do. Then I downloaded the development libraries from ST, which can be found here, along with tons of other great info about the microcontroller included on the Discovery board.

The next step was to set up a nice, simple, and adaptable template project that I could use as a basis for future developments. Parts of this were adapted from a template I set up for the STM32F1 that I had used previously, along with start-up and linking code from ST's examples. In the future I may personalize more of it, but for now it suits me just fine. The code in there now blinks the four LED's in order, clockwise from green to orange, then red and blue. It's a very simple example, but it's not hard to adapt this little code to do a whole lot more! All the code for this project can be found here.

After creating the code and compiling it, I used a jtag adapter to program the chip itself. The Discovery board comes with an ST-Link programming adapter, but the Linux support with that is somewhat minimal from what I've seen, and I already had my jtag adapter and environment set up how I liked it.

I may write a tutorial soon describing the process of setting up something like this, as well as one on how to use the template "properly". I will also be posting here regularly with updates on various projects made with this microcontroller, including some LCD interfacing soon hopefully!

Here is a little video of the demo running(sorry for the shaky camera, just using my cell phone right now):

And some nice higher resolution photos of the board itself:

This shows my JTAG debugger(yellow PCB) as well

Anyway, that's all for now~ Enjoy!

Testing testing

Just a little test post for now, more to come later =D