Once your development environment is setup, you learned how to open, compile, flash and debug code. It time to start learn all the interfaces on the MCXA Microcontroller. First and the easiest interface is GPIO as an output. In this article we will learn how to write an application to blink and LED connected to a GPIO of the MCXA Microcontroller. DEMO Example of GPIO Toggle LED on MCXA Microcontroller You can import the official example given. Go to File>New>Import SDK Examples>Double clock on the FRDM development board and you will get a list of examples. You can choose driver exampl ..read more

Whenever we start to learn microcontroller programming, the first thing that is required is to set up the development environment where you can write, modify, compile, and debug the code. In this article, we will learn how to set up the development environment for MCXA Microcontroller. There are a few things which are required to be done: It would be good to buy a FRDM Development board, if you have already purchased it do power on test. Install the Integrated Development Environment, you can start with NXP officially support IDE, MCUXpresso IDE. Install the Software development kit(SDK) for ..read more

I hope you have gone through my previous blogs on NXP MCX Microcontroller and MCXA Microcontroller Series. Now that you have a good overview of the MCXA Microcontroller, we can start getting into further details. To start with we can discuss various hardware related things which are worth understanding. Before you start working on a project using MCXA microcontroller, my recommendation is that, you go through the MCXA microcontroller datasheet, it will help you understand what all you get in the MCU. MCXA Microcontroller is based on ARM Cortex-M33 Core, MCXA Series has two MCU range MCXA14X a ..read more

The NXP’s MCX A14 and MCX A15 series in MCXA microcontrollers, built on the Arm® Cortex®-M33 core and capable of operating at up to 96MHz, are designed to serve a broad spectrum of applications through their high integration and extensive analog capabilities. There are other series in NXP MCX microcontrollers, I have covered them in my previous blog. These MCUs feature low-power operation with advanced peripherals, including timers for three complementary PWM pairs with dead band insertion and a 4Msps 12-bit ADC enhanced with hardware windowing and averaging. Their innovative power architectur ..read more

In the rapidly evolving world of industrial and IoT applications, the launch of NXP’s MCX microcontroller series marks a significant milestone. The MCX series, built on Arm® Cortex®-M architecture, embodies a leap forward in system design simplicity and performance enhancement, catering specifically to the needs of developers in this dynamic sector. Revolutionary Scalability and Flexibility At the heart of the MCX series lies its remarkable scalability, which is evident from its configuration options, which include up to 4 MB of Flash and 1 MB of SRAM. This extensive scalability ensures that a ..read more

Ai-thinker has started building open-source hardware and in that they have launched camera development boards, which are AiPi-Cam-U and AiPi-Cam-D. These are specifically designed for development with Camera and connectivity (Wi-Fi/BLE) Let’s take a look at the details and what is the difference between AiPI-Cam-U and AiPi-Cam-D. Aithinker AiPi-Cam-U AiPi-Cam-U is a camera development board built with Ai-M61-32S module by Ai-Thinker which supports WiFi6 and BLE5.3. The Ai-M61-32S module has rich peripheral interfaces, including DVP, MJPEG, Display, Audio Codec, USB2.0, SDU, Ethernet (EMAC), S ..read more

I was doing some research on made in India USB-PD charger recently, that’s when I found this compact stuffcool USB-PD charger. This charger is smallest size USB-PD charger in India as they claim and delivers 20W (Stuffcool Nuevo model) . It can output 5V at 3A, 9V at 2.22A and 12V at 1.67A. It is manufactured in India and is BIS certified. First attraction is its yellow color and then it’s small size. It is such a compact USB-PD charger, you won’ t believe it can output 20W. It is not GaN based. After using it for couple of hours I saw it heating it up but was not abnormal and little more hea ..read more

I wanted to see how someone is building a GPS tracker in Germany, what different they are doing vs other designs available in the market so I did a review of Salind GPS Tracker which is made in Germany. You can check teardown of other GPS Trackers here. The GPS Tracker comes in a nice premium packaging with micro USB charging cable, user manual. You can open it easily by opening six screws. Once you open them, large battery is visible and a small PCB board. What is the capacity of the battery? 10,000mAh gives 90days of stand by time as per their claim. This is one of the simplest designs I h ..read more

When I did a teardown of Curv Glucometer, at the same time I did also buy Dr Morepen Glucometer GlucoOne, just for the comparison purpose. Basically to see how the design differs as Dr Morepen Glucometer doesn’t have USB interface but has a display and powered by single use coin cell battery. Display on the device has the advantage that you don’t need anything else, you can see results directly on the screen, no app download, you don’t need to learn app how to use. I learned that they manufacture these devices in Himachal, India. Let us see what is there inside and how they have designed. What ..read more

In this blog, I am doing a teardown of a Made in India Curv Glucometer which you can connect to a smartphone via USB-C and in the app you will be able to access all the data. Innovative product idea, no doubt. I saw this product many months back on Amazon and recently purchased it to understand how they have built the product from electronics point of view. What is a Glucometer? A glucose meter, also known as a glucometer, is a medical device used to determine the concentration of glucose in the blood. It is commonly used by people with diabetes to monitor their blood sugar levels. The meter w ..read more