SHADE Sun Photometer Bootloader

This post comes almost out of the blue, but in reality is the culmination of a long time of work. It is the final piece of software that was needed in one of the projects that I have spent the most time working on, the SHADE Sun Photometer. This is a handheld low cost instrument for measuring atmospheric aerosols that is intended to be used in aerosol measurement campaigns and as part of the GLOBE program, allowing kids and students to obtain measurements that are up to par with the data quality requirements that NASA scientists need, without having a huge price tag on it. Although we have been delayed many times, and have faced many difficulties in completing the instrument, it is one step closer to being ready for production. Here is the site that we have for it:

http://shade.ubicode.com/

SHADE

Solar Handheld Aerosol Determination Equipment

 

I would like to note that our intention in producing this instrument is to enable a global network of aerosol measurements, and collaborate in some way with the task of understanding and fighting climate change. We started this as a school project and have developed this with our spare time and budget, so lots of bugs are still present. Which brings me to the point of this post, a bootloader!

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Microcontroller Mapper

This is little project that I worked on for a while. Imagine something like processor expert, but for Texas Instruments MSP430 (or most any family of microcontrollers). Its a GUI that allows you to quickly assemble a board definitions include file for use in your project with great ease, and writing the least amount of code by hand (which can be error prone if the project is quite large). I developed this tool after working on a projects that had to be ported to work from one microcontroller to lots of others. Instead of going around writing hundreds of lines of register #defines, I made a program that allows you to quickly assign pins and modules in microcontrollers, while simultaneously verifying that you did not map a pin twice in different functions.

 Concept

The mapping of the microcontroller is divided into three layers. Modules, Resources and Mapping.

modules_resources2

  • Modules are generic macro definitions that descrive microcontroller peripherals. These are generic, and can be reused as many times as copies of the hardware exist inside the microncontroller. For example a DIGITAL_PIN, or a UART.
  • Resources are lists of modules that are given specific locations in a microcontroller. For example, P1.1 and P1.2 as a DIGITAL_PIN.
  • Mapping involves connecting the users project to specific resources in a microcontroller. This translates to giving the resource macro a user friendly name in the location specified by the resource. For example, BUTTON1 in P1.1 (which will automatically get set as a DIGITAL_PIN).

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