Kostas Antonakoglou

For learning purposes I currently have on my hands a EZ430-F2013 Development Kit (We all should also use Arduino ). This kit comes with a CD containing proprietary software (an IDE) in order to program and debug the MSP430 microcontroller. So, I took the chance to run it on Fedora using Linux tools and a few resources on the internet. In this post I will write down how you can program and debug your ez430 using Fedora 13 and your terminal.

First, I plugged in the ez430 and opened a terminal (yes we will work only this way for now). Write down lsusb and hit enter. Then you should get some lines containing this one:

Bus 005 Device 003: ID 0451:f430 Texas Instruments, Inc. MSP-FET430UIF JTAG Tool

That means that by default your system recognises the device and you can actually communicate with it.

Next, we need our tools! Go to System ->Administration-> Add/Remove Software (or use yum install etc.). The software we need is (actually not sure if everything is needed):

• latest version of gcc, texinfo, patch, ncurses5-dev, zlib, zlib-dev, libX11-dev, libusb-dev (not only libusb1-dev), libreadline6-dev, msp430-binutils, msp430-gcc, msp430-libc

and also : mspdebug (the program that actually does the work).To install it manually (in case there is an older version on the repository) download the .tar file create a  folder named “Programs” (in case you don’t have one) on your Home Folder.Then, extract the mspdebug folder there!

With your terminal (you can auto-complete the words in the directory using Tab on your keyboard) :

$ cd /home/(your user name on Fedora)/Programs/mspdebug-0.11

(now you are in the mspdebug folder with your terminal, the version 0.11 is the current one I use, yours can differ)

$ make (this will compile the program)

$ su -c “make install” (and give your root password to install it)

(the $ symbol is just to show that you are using different commands in the terminal, don’t copy it)

now you have installed mspdebug! Great!

If you are ready to use the MSP430 you should have a program already written. In case you don’t, get this example (modified by me to get it to compile) that flashes the internal LED of the device:

/* Blink LED example */
#include <msp430x20x3.h>

/** Delay function. **/
delay(unsigned int d) {
int i;
for (i = 0; i<d; i++) {
nop();
}
}

int main(void) {
WDTCTL = WDTPW | WDTHOLD;
P1DIR = 0xFF;
P1OUT = 0×01;   // THE x IS NOT Copy-Pasted CORRECTLY

for (;;) {
P1OUT = ~P1OUT;
delay(0x4fff);
}
}

Create a file named blink.c in a folder of your choice, copy this on the file and then cd on the folder. Now to compile it we need 3 lines (I also changed this to work):

$ msp430-gcc -Os -mmcu=msp430x2013 -o led.elf blink.c

$ msp430-objdump -DS led.elf > led.lst

$ msp430-objcopy -O ihex led.elf  led.hex

In order not to do this every single time, you need to run the program, you can create a Makefile based on the one in this site (it’s inside this zip file).

Next, to run mspdebug in order to flash the program into the MSP430, type :

$ mspdebug -d /dev/ttyUSB0 uif

(“/dev/ttyUSB0″ is of course the ez430 if you don’t have any other device and “uif” the parameter to run it with mspdebug, check the manual for more)

To flash the program you need to type : prog led.hex . Notice that it is a command to control mspdebug and not the terminal). If you push Control+D mspdebug will close, the ez430 will reset, start the program and also blinking the LED!

My resources were 3 posts in this site : http://bit.ly/deonNa I should also mention that I have installed all the Fedora Electronic Lab packages with: $ su -c “yum groupinstall “electronic-lab”

Yesterday, as you may know was Software Freedome Day. I will start with this link [1]

Yes the only people that were present were members of the greek Fedora team [2](we could be more but some lucky ones are at FUDCon @ Zurich ) together with Richard Kweskin of Hellug. We made a simple booth outside of NTUA at Stournari str., with leaflets and stickers and started to inform people about free and open source software. We started at around 11.30 and finished at 2.30. In the mean time Richard gave as a copy of a licence to have presence at the corner of Stadiou str. and Aiolou str., where we also went for the last 30 minutes.

Some photos here [3]

Next event, Athens Digital Week [4]. See you there!

==In Greek/Στα ελληνικά==

Εχθές ήταν  η παγκόσμια ημέρα ελεύθερου λογισμικού. Έτσι, το Fedora δεν μπορούσε να μην συμμετάσχει ενεργά σε αυτό το γεγονός. Και όταν λέμε ενεργά, το λιγότερο που μπορεί να κάνει κανείς είναι να δώσει το παρόν κοντά στον κόσμο για ενημέρωση. Έτσι και έγινε στην οδό Στουρνάρη έξω από το Πολυτεχνείο (αρχίσαμε κατά τις 11.30). Μάλιστα είχε κανονιστεί και ανακοινωθεί στο site του SFD [1](Software Freedom Day). Παρόντες είμασταν μέλη της ελληνικής ομάδας του Fedora [2] και ο Richard Kweskin του Hellug που μας έφερε φυλάδια αλλά και μια άδεια του Δήμου Αθηναίων  για να μιλήσουμε στην γωνία Σταδίου και Αιόλου στο κέντρο όπου και πήγαμε στις 2 το μεσημέρι για τα τελευταία 30 λεπτά (έτσι για δοκιμή και για να μην πάει χαμένη η άδεια).

Μερικές φωτογραφίες εδώ [3]

Το μόνο παράπονο, ότι δεν είμασταν αρκετοί για να ενημερώσουμε τον κόσμο. Ελπίζω την επόμενη φορά του χρόνου να είμαστε πιο ενεργοί όλοι σε εκδηλώσεις όπως το SFD και όχι μόνο στα μεγάλα events όπως το Athens Digital Week[4] που έρχεταιιιιι .

[1]  http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2010/Europe/Greece/Athens

[2]  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/SoftwareFreedomDay2010Athens

[3] http://picasaweb.google.com/anton.cost/SoftwareFreedomDay2010Athens#

[4] http://athensdigitalweek.org/

Short story : I installed gnome-do on Fedora. Do your self a favour and install it too.

How?

For Fedora users go to Add/Remove Applications and type gnome-do. Select the application and press “Apply” to install it

or for keyboard-lovers (the 1st way is more simple) just type (or paste) in your terminal:    su -c ” yum install -y gnome-do” , give your root password and you are good to go.

Actually, I don’t really like -y inside the command ( “-y” means yes to any message that occurs after you tell yum you want to install a package). I like to see what I install  (dependencies etc). But it’s faster this way for gnome-do. Gnome-do is similar to Mozilla’s Ubiquity for Firefox.

By default it is activated automatically at start-up and afterwards you need to press a keyboard shortcut (<Super>+space). Gnome-do is of course customizable. You can also add plug-ins. (For KDE fans, the default krunner -thanks Andrew-)

In Greek:

Με λίγα λόγια : Εγκατέστησα το gnome-do στο Fedora. Βάλτε το!  Πως? (1o link πάνω) [1]

[1] http://do.davebsd.com/wiki/Installing_Do Μεσω του γραφικού περιβάλλοντος πηγαίνουμε System->Administration->Add/Remove Software και γράφουμε στου κουτάκι της εύρεσης “gnome-do” επιλέγουμε το πακέτο και έπειτα πατάμε κατω δεξιά το Apply.

Αλλιώς για τους λάτρεις του terminal su -c ” yum install -y gnome-do” 

Είναι προεπιλεγμένο να ξεκινάει με την εκίνηση του Fedora και ενεργοποιήται (σε περίπτωση που το χρησιμοποιήσετε και χαθεί) με το <Super>+Space (το Super είναι συνήθως το εικονιδιάκι των Windows -_- ) .Έχει και plugins (προεκτάσεις).Για τους λάτρεις του ΚDE (μπλιαχ ) υπάρχει προεγκατεστημένο το krunner.

Today I desperately needed to draw arrows in a picture to point parts of an Arduino stack with an Ethernet and Xbee shield.

So, I took the picture of the stack, increased the contrast and made other adjustments to perfect the pictures, and I was ready to place the arrows. Arrows? How? OK, I googled and found this http://registry.gimp.org/node/20269

You just have to download the .scm file. If you are a Linux user (obviously I use Fedora), go to your Home Folder and press Control+H to unhide the hidden folders. Next, go to the “.gimp-2.6″ (1st: Yes there is a full stop, 2nd: 2.6 is the name of the folder right now according to GIMP’s current version). Inside this folder find the folder “scripts” and place there the .scm file. Now, open GIMP (or re-open if already running), go to Tools and you are good to go

(Tip: To draw an arrow you must use the path tool at the toolbox. Just click one time to point the start of the arrow and a second time to point the end. You will just make a straight line that will be used as a path)

In Greek : Στον σύνδεσμο που υπάρχει παραπάνω μπορείτε να κατεβάσετε το .scm αρχείο που θα σας επιτρέψει να σχεδιάζετε βέλη με το GIMP αυτόματα. Για να λειτουργήσει το αυτό το script πηγαίνουμε στο Home Folder, πατάμε Control+H για να αποκαλυφθούν οι κρυφοί φάκελοι και στη συνέχεια πηγαίνουμε στον φάκελο “.gimp-2.6″ (1ον ναι υπάρχει τελεία, 2ον το όνομα προέρχεται από την τωρινή έκδοση”). Μέσα σε αυτόν τον φάκελο υπάρχει ο φάκελος “scripts” όπου και τοποθετούμε το .scm αρχείο. Ανοίγωντας το GIMP τώρα μπορούμε να δούμε στο Tools το Arrow

(Συμβουλή: Για να φτιάξετε το arrow πρέπει να σχηματίσεται ένα μονοπάτι με το path tool. Αν απλά κάνετε ένα κλικ για την αρχή και άλλο ένα για το τέλος του βέλους εκεί που επιθυμείτε είστε έτοιμοι να φτιάξετε το βέλος με το Arrow που βρίσκεται στα Tools)

Μια ακόμη συλλογή με instrumental τραγούδια, που αγκίζουν αρκετά όμως είδη μουσικής, έρχεται να κάνει παρέα στην πρώτη που ανέβασα πέρσυ στο Jamendo. Με άδεια Creative Commons by-nc-sa πάντα   για να την μοιράζεστε (και όχι μόνο) ελεύθερα.

Scream of a butterfly

http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/67942

Guess what! A new album on Jamendo and of course it’s another creative commons by-nc-sa licenced one . It’s instrumental including various genres. I hope you will enjoy it

Hola! Esta es mi primera vez que escribo en español en mi blog personal. Es porque he cargado mi segundo álbum en Jamendo . Espero que os guste!

Yesterday ended the GFOSS Conference 2010 that took place in Athens at NTUA (National Technical University of Athens). It was an event that started on Friday, but yesterday was special because of the workshop I was organising this week together with Anastasis (anast)! The subject was (in translation) “Fedora Project : Remix and Spin it! The Fedora operating system you own (and not only that)”. Furthermore, we also had booth presence on both days with the usual swag

The workshop lasted 1 hour ( the schedule said 2 hours) but I think something more than that would be boring. Some setbacks occurred previously that day and affected the workshop a little bit. First, I tried to create an iso image using a kicksart file I made that unfortunately needed a bit of time to be created due to yesterday’s bad signal of the wifi where the booth of Fedora was (damn near fields), so I didn’t make it in time for the “Takis OS” Live CD I wanted to create. Second, I didn’t expect my laptop to fail me when I tried to plug in the dvi cable. I count it as a setback but, ok I overcame it thanks to the laptop of Anastasis

I think it was around 15 people that joined the workshop (thanks to everybody). I tried to pass the knowledge of what is a remix, a spin, their differences (and similarities), guidelines, processes, kickstart files, livecd-tools, cobbler…but not to the extent of getting down with too much coding, configurations and setting many arameters. In a few words I tried to show the way for a simple creation of a Remix from the kickstart file until the creation of a LiveCD and told a few words about the magic things cobbler can do. Anastasis talked about Geo Spin and Security Lab spin. I couldn’t miss the chance to talk about Fedora Electronic Lab too. Also, I am happy that Nikos (comzeradd) and Pantelis (pant) joined us as well!

click for more photos

YEAH!!! At last an open source event and it’s a big one, the Free Culture Forum . I can’t wait to go! It will concern mainly freedom of knowledge, digital rights etc. I also want to attend the participation of Richard Stallman through videoconference. I missed the Software Freedom Day here in Barcelona, I will not miss this one!

Almost a month here in Barcelona (in 4 days to be precise!)…Anyway, I will be quick. In a previous post there is an picture of a fire extinguisher called “UNIX”. On this post, let me show you my new find!Yes, another fire extinguisher…I think someone is doing this to me on purpose!
Yeah, it says “FIREFOX”…it’s cooler than Unix as it’s open source…but I like them both (?). Anyway. If I find a third one, I’ll let you all know. A friend of mine told me that I should find matchboxes with names like “Apple” or “MS” etc (yes this illustrates an obvious point). I don’t want to find anything of these, they just come to me! Hahaha…

Today I didn’t have many things to do (“You have to do the laundry” sais the little angel on my right shoulder, “Yeah…Whatever” says the little devil on my left) so I checked out what Google has to offer me (as a Fedora user) now that I am at the mercy of the internet. I checked out Picasa, Google Reader, Google Desktop and amora (not a google app). I am sure you are familiar with the 3 first ones. But the last one may not ring you any bell…If you own a Nokia cellphone actually, you should know it (and yes, I allow you to check the link before you finish reading this post ). I own a Nokia N82, and amora offers me the means to controll my computer via my mobile’s keyboard (mostly for presentations though).

To install amora I also had to install Python for S60 first (for N82 I found this one and works fine). It’s so cool! I tried it with OOo Impress and works great!   I can’t wait to use it!

To install any google application on fedora you have to follow this guide : first configure the rpm key and then configure yum .

By the way I couldn’t launch picasa because I have to intsall the 32-bit openssl package! damn…Not in the mood to fix it

Google Reader works fine (also Google Reader notifier) . ActualIy, I was using the RSS plugin for Evolution, which is not bad, but now I don’t have to wait for all the feeds to get updated to read my mail properly.

Google Desktop? I don’t think I will ever use it as Firefox is open as long as my notebook is switched on.

edit : amora is simply hosted inside google-code (I didn’t make that clear enough). It was implemented by Adenilson Cavalcanti a developer from “Instituto Nokia de Tecnologia” (Nokia Institute of Technology – Brazil).(thanks to Ademar)

Not much to say about it…I saw it here at FIB (Facultat de Informatica de Barcelona) at the UPC. OK! It’s a faculty of Informatics…not so unexpected maybe!!! I hope they will upgrade to Linux! hahaha

(Imagine a scene with a trapped person inside the building using the fire extinguisher (yes the UNIX one) to brake a window(s)…quite cool picture eh? hahaha)