http://www.hbbrbasic.com/component/jb2/rss.html description http://www.hbbrbasic.com/component/jb2/post/27.html New website devoted to 32 bit micro controllers. Check it here: http://www.32bitmicro.com/ http://www.hbbrbasic.com/component/jb2/post/26.html Q: What do you get when you combine NXP ARM7 bunch of LEDs and a building? A: Simple, you get Big Binary Clock. Students at theTechnical University of Wroclaw, Poland, came up with the idea of using 18 round windows as display for the clock. The interesting part is that they have used NXP's ARM7 chips with Bluetooh communication. For more pictures check the picture gallery here, video and clock simulation. http://www.hbbrbasic.com/component/jb2/post/25.html Cortex-M3 aka CM3 based MCUs are getting more and more popular TI has just acuired LuminaryMicro with their entire portfolio of CM3 based micros. TI Stellaris page linkSTMicro has published introductory "STM32F10xxx Cortex-M3 programming manual" click on the link to access PDF document.  NXP has "Introduction to NXP's new LPC1700 Cortex-M3 Microcontroller" webinar and offers free LPC1766 samples on this page http://response.nxp.com/forms/experience_mcuoptions NXP will be the first to release MCUs based on ARM 's newest core Cortex-M0. ARM IQ magazine from March 2009  has number of good articles about CM0 and NXPs LPC1100 series    http://www.hbbrbasic.com/component/jb2/post/24.html IEEE Spectrum has an article titled "25 Microchips That Shook the World" . Their choices include chips like NE555, TMC0281, 6502, TMS32010, PIC16C84, μA741, ICL8038, WD1402A, ARM1, KAF-1300, IBM Deep Blue 2 Chess Chip, Intel 8088, Micronas MAS3507 MP3 decoder, Mostek MK4096 4K DRAM, Xilinx XC2064, Zilog Z80, Sun SPARC, Tripath TA2020, Motorola MC68000,  C&T AT Chip. My personal favorites are 555, 741, Z80 and ARM1. I had great time reading the artilcle,  brings back lots of good memories.   http://www.hbbrbasic.com/component/jb2/post/23.html Ember announced next-generation high performance, low power ZigBee SOC chip based on Cortex™-M3 core. By replacing XAP2 core found in the current generation of chips Ember is going after more open architecure for smart 802.15.4 based networks.  It will be interesing to see how this new chip compares to the Freescale's ARM7TDMI based MC1322x.Ember press relase  http://www.hbbrbasic.com/component/jb2/post/22.html  It has a been busy time lately with not much activity on the blog but for a good reason! We have put a lot of energy in developing new products which we will be introducing in the coming weeks. Anyway, with all the things going in the world I feel we all need to contribute in anyway we can to reduce our carbon footprint.  I have been spending quite a bit of time researching alternative energy sources which I think is a bad name I prefer using natural energy sources! As far as energy consumption is concerned, ARM chips are well known for the low power requirements but my goal is to provide system that fully utilizes low power capabilities in the supported chips to deliver power efficient computing, stay tuned for more on that.  Specific long term goal is to design a system that is totally off the grid but is a useful computing device. To do that it will have to harvest energy from the environment and store it. Storing energy is rather easy using recharchable batteries or supercaps, harvesting is what is interesting. There is a lot of energy around us in all kinds of forms like the obvious thermal, solar, wind and not so obvious like RF, sound, mechanical vibrations, thermal gradients. The only catch is to catch that energy! A lot of activity is happening in the energy harvesting research around the world with people looking at all kinds of unconventional approaches like this one: Diode Power or how to rectify ambient thermal noise to produce DC power. A quick look at the power density calculations (provided they are correct!)  for the Diode Array and comparison with the solar arrays shows that Diode Array has a potential to be a better use for all those silicon wafers going into the solar panels. If Diode Array can produce DC power then it could be easily added to those silicon chips for a self powered system on a chip.Check the website for Diode Array http://greenselfreliantenergy.com/  http://www.hbbrbasic.com/component/jb2/post/21.html NXP has posted a training video with overview of the LPC23xx and LPC24xx series. It is short about 30 minutes of introductory information but if you are new to the NXP chips the time is well spend watching it. Couple of highlihts: - discussion of the Flash memory including desing details, MAM accelaration and code protection CRP. - discussion of on-chip busses including local bus dual AHB1, AHB2 and DMA - new peripherals Ethernet, LCD, UDB OTG/OHCI, External Memory Interface Particular attention in the presentation is being paid to performance enhacing features. NXP web page with tranining video click-here.  There is also a companion presentation in PDF format click-here. http://www.hbbrbasic.com/component/jb2/post/20.html Analog Devices ADuC7 series of ARM7 based analog microcontrollers has some unique features not offered by other manufacturers. Staying true to the name it offers great analog capabilities with precision analog I/O including 12 bit ADC and D/A in ADuC702x chips or 16 bit ADC in AduC703x with PGA (Programmable Gain Amplifier). But these chips also come with very unique peripherals like Programmable Logic Array (PLA), Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) or ability to run directly off a high voltage of up to 16V for ADuC703x chips. In addition they come in some of the smallest packages for ARM based microcontrollers. ADuC7 web page click-here   http://www.hbbrbasic.com/component/jb2/post/19.html Freescale has released fully integrated MC1322x ARM7 based Platform in a Package (PiP) RF transceiver for 802.15.4 wireless networks. MC1322x  has 128KB Flash, 96KB RAM, 80 KB ROM plus GPIO,ADC,UART,I2C,SPI and even keyboard interface click-here for more info. Looks like a very good solution for 802.15.4 based networks including ZigBee, 6LoWPAN, HART and ISA100+.First poducts based on MC1322x are already showing up, for example this FreeStar Pro radio module from CEL. http://www.hbbrbasic.com/component/jb2/post/18.html What do you get when you cross curtain rods, knobs and rings with a bunch of cordless screwdrivers, some cardboard and a Shapelock (Polymorh) plastic? The result is a biomimetic or rather anthropomimetic android robot. The two fascinating projects Android and Cronos are well within capabilities of amatures, for details check  websites: Android 10 click here and Cronos click here