Blog Posts - Cypress.com

PSoC 4: 100 Projects in 100 Days - 8 Projects Now Available

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:24:35 -0600

Here is your update for the PSoC 4, 100 Projects in 100 Days challenge over at the element14 site. We're up to 8 projects and announced that next week's projects will focus on the Color LCD Shield.

Simple Blinking LED
CapSense Slider Example
PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit Annotation Library
USB-UART Utility
USB-I2C Utility
Danger Shield with Light Sensor Control
Danger Shield with 7-segment display
Danger Shield Buzzer of Doom
Next week will focus on the Color LCD Shield from SparkFun

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New Teaching Library with 20 Simple Community Components

Wed, 08 May 2013 12:42:55 -0600

We have a new Component Library that was just added to the Cypress Developer Community Components page. It contains 20 simple teaching Components and their associated datasheets. These Components are a great way to brush up on simple engineering concepts like an 8-bit Serial-In/Parallel-Out Shift Register or a Pseudo Random Modulated Density Generator. You can find them all within the zip file on the Blog post.

Find all the Community Components at www.cypress.com/communitycomponents.

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PSoC4 is here - Join excitement building up at Element 14 - 100 projects in 100 days

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:38:51 -0600

http://www.element14.com/community/community/knode/dev_platforms_kits/element14_dev_kits/psoc4_pioneer_kit?ICID=hp-cypress-pkban

PSoC 4: 100 Projects in 100 Days

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:09:50 -0600

Cypress and element14 are joining together in a new community initiative around the $25 PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit. We'll be developing 100 example projects and posting them on the element14 community site over the next 100 days.

The first project released yesterday was a Blinking LED.

The second released this morning is a Capsense Slider Example.

You can find all the projects on the element14 site. Our engineers are joining in the discussion to help answer questions as well as reading all the requested projects. I'll give everyone a weekly update on new projects added to the site. It's looking to be an exciting project with a lot of interesting examples.

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Announcing The First PSoC 4 Families

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:15:59 -0600

The PSoC 4100 and PSoC 4200 families of the PSoC 4 architecture are now available. These first two PSoC 4 product families are fully qualified and production silicon as well as kits are available. Along with the new PSoC 4 families, PSoC Creator Service Pack 1 was released to support the PSoC 4. In addition to 10 new PSoC 4 specific Components, two new Components, ILO Trim and I2C LCD, are now available to anyone using the PSoC 3, PSoC 4 or PSoC 5 architectures. You've asked for a number of things - Low power, enhanced CapSense, wide operating voltage range, ARM Cortex-M0 architecture, low-cost Arduino compatible development kits, and low cost silicon. The first PSoC 4 families deliver on these request. If our first two famlies targeted at cost-sensitive applications aren't yet an ideal fit for your application, contact your Cypress representative to find out what to expect next.

Learn More about PSoC 4 at www.cypress.com/PSoC4.

Learn More about the PSoC 4 Pioneer Development Kit at www.cypress.com/cy8ckit-042.

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New PSoC 5LP board from Powerfulboard

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:08:56 -0600

Powerfulboard now offers a development board supporting the PSoC 5LP with a number of open projects on Google Code. This board compliments Powerfulboard's existing PSoC 3 development board. Both boards are 40 pin DIP modules that combine the PSoC silicon with an FX2 based in-circuit programmer and debugger. The boards include two mini-USB connectors - one for the debugger and the other for the PSoC itself.

Powerfulboard, an operation of Ansync Inc., developed these low frill, small form factor systems for use in rapid prototyping or as a component in a modular design. The boards are particularly adept at designs intended for USB based sensor or control interfaces. They ship preprogrammed with sample firmware and additional example firmware, Microsoft Windows and Linux code is available at http://code.google.com/p/powerfulboard/

Learn more about these modules:

PSOC3PIM1 at $28 (PSoC 3 - CY8C3866LTI-030)

PSoC5PIM1 at $50 (PSoC 5LP - CY8C5868LTI-LP039)

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Make your existing PSoC kit compatible with Arduino and Pmod

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:49:11 -0600

PatternAgents has just released a series of adaptor cards which will allow your existing CY8CKIT-001, CY8CKIT-030 and CY8CKIT-050 to work with Mikrobus, Pmod, UEXT and Arduino shield form factor boards. Each of the boards is $30 which can be a great investment to extend your current PSoC development system.

Everything from a $9 Buzzer to a $40 GPS unit is available in add on cards today. I think the LOL Shields look fun. I'm not sure I can come up with a useful reason to need one but I can sure come up with a lot of un-useful reasons I need one.

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UPDATE: $25 SchmartBoard for PSoC - Promo Code Inside (Extended 3 days)

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:15:04 -0600

PSoC is opening doors everywhere. SchmartBoard just pre-released a new Schmartboard supporting 68-pin QFN packaged PSoC 3 and PSoC 5LP. This allows for easy soldering of the PSoC processor in a 68-pin QFN package and I2C EEPROM. It's a nice little proto board at a $25 price tag.

Although typically not populated with the PSoC, they have a special offer until April 10th just for PSoC Creator users. Type "Schmartboard Loves PSoC" in the special instructions at checkout and they will ship your PSoC Schmartboard with a free bootloaded PSoC 5LP soldered onto the board. I've got my board on order for the mid-April shipment.

Find out more at www.schmartboard.com.

Design the way you think with PSoC Creator!

UPDATE: My mistake gives you a few more days. Since I forgot to warn everyone 4/9 that you had 24 hours left, the guys at SchmartBoard have agreed to extend the promotion code though Sunday! I'll check back in with everyone in a few weeks to see how your schmart projects are coming.

PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit Available for Pre-order

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:56:02 -0600

A few weeks ago, Cypress announced the new ARM-Cortex-M0 based PSoC 4 Architecture. Today the PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit is available for pre-order from element14 for $25. You will be able to expand the $25 Pioneer kit with your existing Arduino compatible shields and Diligent Pmod daughter cards.

Read more about the PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit at www.cypress.com/go/cy8ckit-042.

Pre-order a board at www.element14.com/PSoC4.

Design the way you think with PSoC Creator.

Silicon Valley Regional Robotics

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:13:33 -0600

Want to see some amazing robots? And some even more amazing High School students? Join me at the Silicon Valley Regional FIRST Robotics competition, April 4 - 6. San Jose State University Events Center.

Here's the schedule: FIRST SVG

Square Root Math via PSoC Sensei

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:52:53 -0600

If you're interested in square root math, using the datapath and creating your own Components, check out Brad's PSoC Sensei post series on using the PSoC datapath to create a square root Component. You'll end up with a custom Component that configures the datapath to compute the square root of an 8-bit number.

The Four Part Series:

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Finishing Up the Square Root Component

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 12:49:12 -0600

Now that all the design work has been done for the square root component, we can do the work of creating the component in the tool. First, create a new project in PSoC Creator. Then, create a new component by right clicking your project in the Components tab, selecting "Add Component Item..." and selecting "Verilog File":

Now, load up the Datapath Configuration Tool and open the Verilog file that was created in the previous step. Select Edit->New Datapath. Choose the Instance Type to be cy_psoc3_dp8, give it a name, and click OK.

This will create a single 8-bit datapath with all of the default settings. Now we can configure the CFGRAM to implement our 8 operations. I've highlighted the important entries for each operation, as well as any that changed from the default:

Now we can configure the static portion of the datapath configuration. There isn t much to do here. We need to make sure that our comparison is configured correctly, and that both FIFOs have dynamic mode enabled. Everything else can stay with the default values.

Now, save the file and close the Datapath Configuration tool. The last step is editing the Verilog file to add the state machine parameter values from the last blog post, the actual state machine and a few other pieces of Verilog to complete the logic of the component.

We'll define a few more control signals: A fifo_dyn wire to determine when the FIFOs are CPU/DMA-controlled vs. datapath-controlled, an eoc wire to indicate when computation has completed, and a cs_addr wire to dynamically select the operation. Note that this is simply the lower 3 bits of the state. We'll also need wires for each of the two conditions that we plan on using in the state machine:

The state machine is relatively simple. It can be pieced together from the state diagram:

Finally, we need to hook up our control and condition wires to the datapath:

We now have a component that configures the datapath to compute the square root of an 8-bit number. In the CJCU_Isqrt component, CJ has extended this implementation to 16, 24, and 32 bits, as well as providing APIs. For information on how to extend datapath functionality to multiple bytes, see PSoC Creator 213. To see how to design component APIs for datapath components, see PSoC Creator 214.

Mapping the 13 Square Root States to 8 Operations

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:07:07 -0600

In the previous post, we came up with the 13 states necessary to calculate the square root. There's no limit on the number of states we can have, but the number of unique operations is limited to 8. Currently we have 10, so we'll need a few tricks to make this work.

Notice that I haven't listed the "(load F0/F1)" as part of the operations. FIFO loading is controlled directly from our state machine, independent of the operation.

We need to trim out two operations.

First, notice that in state 11 (op 9), we only care about the "A1 = F1" part. It doesn t matter at all what happens to A0, so we can have state 11 reuse op 8.

Second, notice that op 5 and op 7 are similar, except that op 7 also loads F0 into A0. State 5 currently starts with an empty F0, but we can have state 4 load F0 and then state 5 can copy it back. State 5 can then reuse op 7, so long as we also modify state 4 to load A0 into F0.

We now have the following operations:

And the following states:

Or in its state diagram form:

The next trick is in mapping the states to the operations using Verilog. We have 13 states, so we'll need 4 bits to encode them. Conveniently, no operation is used in more than two states. This allows us to use the bottom three bits to encode the operations we defined above, while using the top bit to distinguish between the two states that use that operation. With this mapping no additional resources are needed to map from states to operations.

It's usually good practice to give meaningful names to states, but since I've been using numbers above, I'll continue to name them with numbers here:

I've noted in the comments which states we want to trigger a FIFO load. We use this to define wires that will be used as control signals to the datapath:

We're almost done at this point. The next blog post will conclude the implementation of the square root component.

Mapping Square Root to the PSoC Datapath

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:47:24 -0600

Last post, I went through a couple of iterations of a square root algorithm before arriving at an efficient method using only shifts and adds. Now, let's figure out how to configure the datapath to execute this algorithm.

The C-style pseudo-code from the previous post is nice, but it will be easier to map if we try to represent it in a state diagram:

Notice that I've reordered a few of the operations. Instead of adding 2*D to q and then shifting the result to the right, I am now shifting q first and then adding D. This saves a shift on one of the two branches.

Now we can start thinking about how the datapath can do this.

Normally the datapath can only track two variables as a part of an iterative algorithm (one in A0, one in A1). With the latest version of the datapath which is what is in PSoC 3 and PSoC 5LP (not available in PSoC 5), there is a new mode called FIFO Dynamic Mode. In the standard mode, the datapath FIFOs are configured statically as either input or output. An input FIFO is written by the CPU or DMA and read by the datapath. An output FIFO is the opposite. With FIFO Dynamic Control, the FIFOs can be individually and dynamically selected to be in either internal or external mode. Internal mode means the datapath has full read and write control over the FIFO. External mode gives the CPU/DMA full control. This means that the CPU can load values into a FIFO in external mode, switch it into internal mode to allow the datapath to perform some computation, and then read the values back out of the same FIFO once the datapath has completed. This also means that the datapath has up to 8 new places to store computed values (two 4-byte FIFOs). Medium-complexity computations that used to eat up CPU cycles can now be offloaded and/or parallelized, speeding up applications and letting the CPU focus on more complex problems. In the square root algorithm we'll just need storage for 3 variables.

It usually makes sense to clearly partition variables between the two sides of the datapath (A0/D0/F0 vs. A1/D1/F1). It is possible to configure F0 to receive writes from A1, and to use one of our dynamic configuration operations to swap A0 and A1, but this adds complexity and cycles. For this algorithm, I'll track D in A0/D0/F0, and I'll track q and M in A1/D1/F1.

Now let's start looking at the states we'll need for our datapath state machine. The first thing we need to set up are the initial conditions. M is initially set to N, the radicand of our square root. Let's assume that value got put into a FIFO (specifically F1) before FIFO control got switched to internal. The other two initial values are static, so we can use D0 to hold 2^{n - 2}, and D1 to hold 0. Then, the first thing we need to do is load these values out of the data register into the accumulators. Luckily, we can independently select the write-source for A0 and A1, so we can load from the data registers in parallel. We can also use this state as our idle state. If we have some "start" signal, we are just fine spinning here until start goes high. That gives us our initial state:

Next, we need to compute D + q. Because we will be comparing this to M (partitioned to the "1" side) it will be easiest to store the result of the addition in A0. In parallel, we can also load M into A1 to prepare for the comparison. We need to keep around the current values of D and q, so load them into their respective FIFOs as well:

To check the condition "D + q <= M" we will use the cl1 condition provided by the datapath (cl means Compare Less Than). The cl0 condition always compares A0 < D0, but the cl1 condition can be configured to compare A1 < A0, which is exactly what we need. If D + r is greater than M (A1 < A0), we take the left branch in our state machine above. If not, we ll go down the right branch. We could perform a NOP in our current state while we wait for the result of the condition. Instead, let's precompute a value that we need for the right branch, the longer of the two execution branches: M = M (D + q):

Let's first consider the right branch. We guessed correctly with our precompute! We are done with M for this iteration, so we can shove it back in the FIFO. The next thing we need to do is compute the new values of D and q, so bring them back into the accumulators:

We need to shift q one bit to the right, and there isn't much else we can do until then, so:

Now we can compute our new value for q by adding D to what we just shifted:

Now start to calculate our new value of D:

We need to shift D one more time. At the same time, we can take a shortcut from the state machine above. D starts at 2^{n 2} and gets shifted twice every iteration, producing the series 0x40, 0x10, 0x04, 0x01. That means that on the final iteration of our algorithm, when D is about to shift off, the first shift will have already taken care of shifting D to 0. We will shift D one more time for all of the other iterations, but we can check our condition in this state to see if we are ready to stop looping. The z0 condition is hardwired to compare (A0 == 0). If z0 is false, we need to jump back to state #1. We have our registers set up exactly how state #1 expects, so there is no more work to be done there. If z0 is true, we can bail out of our loop and prepare for the result to be read out.

Now we will examine the left branch of the state machine. We guessed wrong on our precompute, so the first thing we need to do is undo that. At the same time, we can bring D back into the accumulator so that it's ready to shift:

We aren't going to change M this iteration, so go ahead and put it back in the FIFO. This will allow us to load q into the accumulator. We don't need to add D to q in this branch, so we can go ahead and shift D before q is loaded:

We have two operations left to perform on this branch for this iteration. Both q and D need to be shifted once more, and then we need to check our condition to see if we stay in the loop. Luckily, we've already defined state #7 to shift D and check the condition. So to finish out the left branch, all we need to do is shift q and jump to state #7:

Now that we've defined all of the states in the computation loop, we have to think about the endgame. If we determine that we are done looping in state #7, we will get to state #11 with our final square root value sitting in A1. Nothing else matters at that point. All we need to do is make sure that F1 contains our final answer and nothing else.

For completeness, I've added an effective NOP state #12 so that we can pulse an eoc signal before going back into the idle state:

We have successfully mapped the algorithm to states and operations that can each be handled by the datapath. In the next post, I'll detail how to get these 13 states all configured in a single datapath.

FreeSoC - Arduino Form Factor PSoC Board

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 20:15:47 -0600

So I recieved my freeSoC and freeSoC Mini boards this week. Although I haven't picked out a project that I want to do with them yet, I'm pretty excited.

If you haven't heard of freeSoc, it is an Arduino compatible development board that was offered through Kickstarter by Jon Moeller in September. Jon is a master's student at Texas A&M. He liked both PSoC and Arduino so he set out to combine them. Jon did a fantastic job and sold over 600 boards on Kickstarter. FreeSoC is an Arduino compatible board with a PSoC 5 (shown right) while the freeSoC Mini is a smaller stick style board.

FreeSoC and FreeSoC Mini are now available in pre-order from freeSoC.net.

Take a look at Jon's Kickstarter video to learn more.

What are you thinking of doing with your freeSoC?

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Introducing MDIO and SAR Sequencer in Component Pack 5

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 18:29:21 -0600

PSoC Creator 2.2 Component Pack 5 is now available and adds a MDIO Interface and a Sequencing Successive Approximation ADC Component to the existing 80 plus pre-verified, production-ready Components for your use.

MDIO Interface : The MDIO Intererface Component is used in conjunction with Ethernet products usign the Media Independent Interface (MII) standard. It's compliant with IEEE 802.3 clause 45 as well as automatically allocating memory for the register spaces to be configured through a GUI.

Sequencing Successive Approximation ADC: The ADC SAR Sequencer enables users to configure the different PSoC 5LP operational modes of the SAR ADC.

Design the way you think with PSoC Creator.

-Robyn

Implementing Complex Math using the Datapath

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 01:08:12 -0600

If you've used the datapaths to perform operations, you know that they can perform an add or subtract and they can perform various logical operators such as AND, OR, and XOR along with shifting. A couple of the Cypress component development engineers have decided to take the capabilities of the datapaths much further. In a recent post to the Community Components section of the Cypress Forums, Richard Mc Sweeney has provided a component that can perform trigonometric functions using the CORDIC algorithm. Another component developer, CJ Cullen, has provided me with his implementation of a square root function using datapaths. I'll use the next several blog posts to go through CJ's description of the implementation he put together.

Algorithm

The approach we'll use for a square root algorithm is essentially a guess-and-check. To calculate the square root of N, we will continue to make a guess (let's call it root) until that guess is as close to sqrt(N) as possible without going over. At each guess, we will be checking if (root + Delta)² <= N, where Delta gets progressively smaller until it is beyond the precision of our data type. If (root + Delta)² is smaller than N, we will add Delta to root to get closer to our final answer. To do this intelligently (and efficiently on hardware), we will use powers of 2: Delta = 2^{n/2 - 1}, 2^{n/2 - 2},.., 2, 1, where n is the maximum number of bits in any N we want our algorithm to handle. For you computer-sciency types, we are essentially performing a binary search of the solution space of our problem. This gives us a first cut of our algorithm:

Try #1

Delta = 2^{n/2 - 1}, root = 0

while (Delta > 0)

{

if ((root + Delta)² <= N)

{

root += Delta

}

Delta >>= 1

}

This looks okay. We take advantage of the fact that Delta is a power of 2, and a shift-right can get us every value of Delta that we need. However, we still have a multiply at every step, and that is never going to be fast or easy in the PSoC UDBs. We can do better.

Instead of checking against N every step, let's instead keep track of the remainder instead. Let M = N - root². We can calculate that at the end of each step and hold onto it for the next step. In our first try above, we were checking ((root + Delta)² <= N). Expanding that out, it is equivalent to checking the condition (root² + 2*root*Delta + Delta² <= N), which we can reorganize as (2*root*Delta + Delta² <= N - root²), finally substituting in M to get (Delta *(2*root + Delta) <= M). There are now two multiplies necessary to compute our condition. Fortunately, one is a multiply by 2, the other is a multiply by a power of 2, so all we really have is shifts, which we can do just fine in the UDBs. This gives us a much more efficient algorithm:

Try #2

Delta = 2ⁿ^{/2 - 1}, root = 0, M = N

while (Delta > 0)

{

if (Delta *(2*root + Delta) <= M)

{

M -= Delta*(2*root + Delta)

root += Delta

}

Delta >>= 1

}

This looks a lot better. All of the operations can be done efficiently in the datapath. Shifts and adds and subtracts are all one cycle apiece. But, the datapath can only shift one bit at a time. Multiplying Delta by (2*root + Delta) can take up to n/2 shifts. This isn't so bad, but it causes our algorithm to scale quadratically as we increase the number of bits. That still leaves another chance for optimization.

If we keep track of Delta and root, we are going to have to do some sort of multiplication by Delta at every step. Instead, we can build in the "multiply by Delta" into the variables that we track. We know that we will be shifting Delta one bit to the right at every iteration, so we can coordinate that shift with the other variables that we track. Let's define a variable D to track Delta*Delta and a variable q to track 2*root*Delta. Now, our condition has been simplified to (D + q <= M). Our old Delta variable was shifting right one bit every iteration, so our new D variable (Delta*Delta) should shift two bits to the right every iteration. Also, our q variable has a factor of Delta built into it, so we now need to shift that to the right by a bit each time through. With these substitutions, we come up with the following:

Try #3

D = 2^n-2, q = 0, M = N

while (D > 0)

{

if (D + q <= M)

{

M -= (D + q)

q += 2*D

}

D >>= 2

q >>= 1

}

In the final iteration, when the "D >>= 2" causes D to change from 0x01 to 0x00, it actually represents changing our Delta value from 2⁰ to 2^-1. Therefore, q (which we are using to track 2*Delta*root) is now equal to 2*(2^-1)*root, our final answer.

We've now reduced our algorithm to a bounded number of shifts and adds for each iteration. In the next post I'll go over how we can get this algorithm executing in the datapath.

New Community Component - Character LCD Multi-Port

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:24:50 -0600

A new Character LCD Component has been posted to the Community Components page. This Component will allow you to use a standard 2x16 character display without having to use sequential pins. You can read more about the Component in Mark Hastings's Another year and another new PSoC component post on the PSoC Insiders Blog.

Design the way you think with PSoC Creator!

-Robyn

Another year and another new PSoC component.

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 18:29:14 -0600

Sorry for the long gap between postings. Seems like everyone has hit the ground running after the holiday break and those of us at Cypress are no exception.

Many of you have probably used the Character LCD component or User Module in PSoC Creator and PSoC Designer. It is a handy device that provides a simple and quick way to display information. The only problem is that it has one little flaw, it must be connected to sequential pins on a single port. Sometimes, depending on the design and package you are using, you may have the extra GPIOs but they are spread across multiple ports. Well after today this is no longer a problem. I posted a new component on our Community Components page. I bet many of you didn t even know we had such a page. This page is a place where users can download their own custom components for everyone to use. There are already several components there worth taking a look at, even a couple by yours truly. For Cypress employees, it is a way to get a cool prototype component out to customers without going through a very long internal process.

You can download this new CharLCDmp (Character LCD Multi-Port) component at this location. This component is 100% software compatible with the original Character LCD. Below is a picture of the new component (on the right) next to the original component. The most noticeable thing you might notice is the pins are no longer hidden.

Two other less noticeable features is that there are only 6 pins instead of 7, and the code size is a little smaller. So what is the catch you might ask? Well as you probably know nothing is for free in this world, but the downside isn t that bad. The original component uses the R/W signal so it can poll the status through one of the data ports, for optimal speed. The CharLCDmp, doesn t poll the status bit, but instead uses a standard command delay to make sure everything works OK. Although this makes the LCD a little slower, you can still update the display much faster than the LCD or your eyes can respond. Since none of the signals now had to be bidirectional, I was able to take advantage of one of the real cool features of the newer generation of PSoCs. A Control Register from the UDBs is used to drive all the signals. Since PSoC is able to route the signals from the Control Register to the pins, it really doesn t matter where you put the pins. The internal software just has to deal with the Control Register where the signals are always aligned perfectly. Below is an example circuit showing the connection between the CharLCDmp component and the real LCD module. Notice the annotation LCD component that is included in this library.

I hope this simple component will come in handy, it already has on my workbench playing with a yet to be released PSoC and development board, more about that later. I ll try to keep these posts a little more frequent from now on.

By Mark Hastings

The Power of Information

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 10:46:20 -0600

One rule of economics is that if the exchange of information is free, the optimal solution will be found. (The classic example is of a farmer renting a neighbors field so the neighbor cannot raise cows and eat his corn. The rent is cheaper than the cost of building a fence and he raises more corn.)

If one side has most of the access to liability data then that party should be held in strict liability. (An example is Coke bottles. Coke knows statically how many bottles blow up when touched as a function of manufacturing cost and. They can come up with the optimal solution for all, only if they include the cost of being made whole in their manufacturing cost.)

I find that companies can make information hard to get so to have you choose less than optima solution for you and beneficial to them.

I have been looking at a product that has two models and two power levels. The performance data for the different models was given in different formats making the comparison. Here are the choices and relative price:

3HP Higher End 100%

2HP Higher End 90%

3HP Lower End 80%

2HP Lower End 70%

The performance data for the different models was given in different formats making the comparison very difficult. With the help of people much smarter than me, I was able to determine relative performance.

3HP Higher End 100%

3HP Lower End 79%

2HP Higher End 67%

2HP Lower End 66%

The Performance to Price ratio is:

3HP Higher End 100%

2HP Lower End 100%

3HP Lower End 99%

2HP Higher End 74%

This new data tell a different story. A user may think by buying to lower cost profession model that they are getting a good deal. In actually they are getting the worst of deal of all of them and it is tied as the lowest performer. No wonder they made the data hard to read.

In the long run, if you don t provide the customer to best option, at the right price, for them, then some other company will and you lose that customer for life.

What do you want to be called?

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:25:47 -0600

I was lucky to have had the chance to come to Cypress and work on PSoC. At the interview,I immediately got it and told my wife this is the part I had been waiting for my whole career. I have also met Engineers with as much passion or maybe more (Robert Ashby. David Smith, Barry Bines, and Gray Smock come to mind.) I have referred to these people as zealots.

Well Cypress would like to put together a program to recognize these people and treat them with the respect they deserve as the Engineering gods that they are! The problem is that some in the company feel the term zealot may be offensive to some. Now this doesn t even make the top ten things offensive things I have said last year. (Cypress has a whole wing of HR people that deal with the problems I cause.) Cypress wants to call them Ambassadors. With that name we should give them sports coats, funny hats, and hope they don t get beat up in the school yard. (That last statement is even more offensive than zealot!)

Questions

Do you find the term Zealot offensive?

Do you have a suggestion?

What do you think of PNuT ?

PSoC Pearl ?

PSoC Patriot ?

What would you like to be called?

I'll give a 5LP kit away for the best response!

Self Dithering PWM

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 10:44:29 -0600

Our standard PWMs are made by continuously decrementing a register in a datapath (A0). The compare register is used to detect when the count is below some compare value (D1) and set an output high. For a 256 count PWM it can be implemented with a single instruction register of the datapath. For a compare value of 50, the periodic output stream would be 206 low, followed by 50 high. The frequency would by clock / 256.

If the output frequency is too low and you can t increase the clock, then convert to a self dithering PWM. If instead I change the datapath to continuously subtract 3 from the A0 and keep the same compare value of 50, the periodic output stream is:

69 low, 17 high, 68 low, 17 high, 69 low, 16 high

The output frequency is 3 * clock / 256.

Changing to subtracting 5 while keeping the same compare value, gives the periodic output stream:

42low, 10high, 41low, 10high, 41low, 10high, 41low, 10high, 41low, 10 high

The output frequency is 5 * clock / 256.

And so on. If the value n is a relative prime to 256 (odd) and less than 128 is continuously subtracted from a register, the stream has n pulses and an output frequency of n * clock / 256.

This will also work from 16, 24, and 32 bit PWMs. A 16bit PWM with a 24MHz clock has an output frequency of 366Hz. Change it to a self dithering PWM with n = 137 and you have an output frequency of 50.2kHz, but keeps a dithering resolution of 16 bits.

I never would have figured this out if datapaths didn't make it easy to build and try out.

PsoC and Pizza!

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 17:59:39 -0600

I am getting ready for two PSoC events this week, and one next week.

One is at Marquette on Thursday where we will host a PSoC 'N Pizza workshop starting at 5:15 PM. Students come for the Pizza, but they stay for the PSoC!

The other is at U Illinois on Friday at 1 PM.

Then I am heading off to Nuremburg Germany where Cypress will be exhibiting at Embedded World. I will also be at the sudent day event on Feb. 26th. If you are attending Embedded World please stop by the Cypress stand or my Cypress table on student day and say hello.

Until Then,

C. U. Around

Reality Shows

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 20:58:11 -0600

I will admit I watch a few. A peeve I have is when they ask a contestant why they deserve to win, in most cases their answer is because they really really want it. Maybe they will say that winning will validate their struggle to overcome some personnel demonm tragedy, or disadvantage.

Maybe I have been a disciple of the Temple of Precision Questions and Answers (PQ&A) but I would expect someone to say that they deserve to win because they did the better job than all the others and show examples to verify their claim.

When I am with a customer and they ask me why they should use PSoC, I don t explain how this sale would bump me over my quota, get a bonus, and take my wife to Hawaii. They don t care! They want their problem solved, period. It s about them, not about me. I need to explain why PSoC is the best option for them and answer every objection they have with a well thought out argument.

After thought: Luckily PSoC makes this easy to do!

Happy Lunar New Year!

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:16:39 -0600

Gong Xi Fa Cai! As many of my friends and colleagues are celebrating the New Year and welcoming in the year of the water snake, I wanted to take a minute and wish you all well. May the New Year bring each of you prosperity, good luck and a new PSoC design.

2012 was a fantastic year for PSoC Creator with the release of 24 new Components, numerous Component updates including MISRA compliance, Rubber-Banding, Document Manager, Starter Design templates and project datasheet generation. Looking forward, we're planning even more new Components and exciting features for 2013.

More Information:

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year

The beautiful photo was shared under a Creative Commons Free Cultural Works License by maywong_photos and can be found on Flickr.

Datapaths! Faster than the Speed of Me!

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:32:58 -0600

I have been developing Datapath Components this week and I find that if I am disciplined about the documentation of the signal connections, that many times I am able to develop the component with no errors. This was startling at first cause normally if something has a keyboard or a carburetor; it s going to give me big time trouble. But I am getting used to it. DATAPATHS ARE GREAT! I haven t had this much fun in a long time. If you aren t using datapaths, you should be. If you are having a problem getting your head around them then contact me I and I ll see you get pointed in the right direction.

Datapatha

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 09:35:24 -0600

I am excited that next week I will be filming some webisodes about datapaths. If you have had problems getting your mind around these then this is the series for you. Sometimes good ideas b looking back. Not always, but sometimes. I have done about 20 datapath projects in the last week and I find them a lot faster to develop logic than with standard programmable logic. Bert, you are a genius!

What is it with 20 year old men?

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 22:19:35 -0600

At mangement's request I have voluntarily removed thus entry.

Signal Processing in the Density Domain

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:14:31 -0600

The last part of my five part column on Density Signal Processing came out this week. http://electronicdesign.com/article/analog-and-mixed-signal/Signal-Processing-In-The-Density-Domain-Part-V-.aspx.

The more I study modulation the more convinced I am that it is the future on mixed signal design. I had a customer that wanted to rectify a signal, integrate its value for a fixed time, and digitize it. I figured out how to do it with a single Delta Sigma Modulator and some digital logic. (two flip flops, a dual input logic gate and a counter.)

It makes sense to start at part 1 and read the whole series. I have had several people tell me that they had not looked at it this way before and it intrigued them. It is a different way of looking at things but I think it is a good tool to have in your tool box.

There Goes The Neighborhood

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:11:15 -0600

According to Electronic Design I have become an analog expert. http://electronicdesign.com/article/analog-and-mixed-signal/contributing_technical_experts.aspx

Go figure! Bob Higbee has forgotten more about analog than I ever knew. I never started out to be an analog designer. I just wanted to build stuff and solve problems. While in college I made sure to take digital, analog, power, motors, and a lot of applied math. I took classes with the EEs, CEs, and PwoerGuys. I am grateful that I learned Boolean algebra from the Philosophy department and linear programming from the industrial engineering school taught me how to think like an engineer.

My first job as a COOP student at NASA was to design a fume hood for a 4-megawatt hydrogen arc jet. Hydrogen is perfectly save, even at 27,000 degree Fahrenheit as long as it isn’t exposed to air. My job was to design a hood that would collect any escaping hydrogen. You cannot imagine how beautiful plasma looks as it passes at Mach 6 over a leading edge of a heat shield. It is bright red on one side of the shear line and bright orange on the other. In 1978 I took on an assignment to program a micro-controller (Mostek 3870) because I wanted to learn about micro-controllers.

Being open to “not knowing want I am doing” has allowed me to learn a lot of interesting skills. Low noise analog skills transfer well to EMI suppression. The math for digital signal processing isn’t that much different Leplace transforms. Control theory sees a compensated op amp as a saturated integrator while the op amps designers think on them compensated very high proportional gains. State machine design is really just feedback theory. Delta Sigma Modulators are really just filters. Delta modulators are close to ADPCM. Both are really close to slew rate-limited filters. Tank circuits for power supplies are a lot like the laser tanks you get with two correctly spaced mirrors. Right now I see a lot of similarities between Net Promoter Scores and Statistical Quality Control from the 70s.

Each group has their own bag of tricks and I have borrowed from many a bag.

A really big bag of tricks and a fundamental understanding of engineering principles will allow you to solve most any problem you are assigned. In fact you might even do better than the specialists because you don’t know what can’t possibly work and stumble on a new solution.

The year is off to a running start!

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:29:50 -0600

The year has just started and I have already been to 6 universities (MIT, UW Madison, MSOE, Marquette, UPENN and RPI).

PSoC workshops are getting really popular! Tomorrow I am headed to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to advise some students on their PSoC projects and attend the winter career fair.

Hope your year is going well so far!

C. U. Around

Tips + Tricks: Menu Customization

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:10:32 -0600

Did you know you can create a customized menu in PSoC® Creator?

Right click in a blank area of the top menu and select customize from the dropdown menu (right).

Create a new menu (below). To add commands to the custom menu, go to the Commands tab. Select a category and drag the command out of the dialog box and onto your custom toolbar.

I created one with Start Page, Add Component Item, Auto Hide All and DMA Wizard.

Design the way you think with PSoC Creator.

Happy 307th Birthday, Benjamin Franklin!

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:10:11 -0600

Benjamin Franklin's life and history is taught to every US grade school student. With his famous electricity experiments with a kite, his inventions of bifocals and his daily schedule, Benjamin Franklin's legacy is still inspiring today. If you're interested, you can find out more about his life and history from the links below. I just want to share a quote from Benjamin Franklin that really resonates with the PSoC Creator team.

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

- Benjamin Franklin

We would like to involve all of you in PSoC Creator. Not just in using it but in helping us define the next generation because we realize this isn't just a Cypress tool it's your tool. Please be a part of our discussions here and on the Cypress Developer Community.

Find out more about Benjamin Franklin:

Find a discussion of some of his most famous inventions including the lightning rod in 1753. Did you know there was a television show by PBS about the life of Benjamin Franklin? There is a good Wikipedia article about Benjamin Franklin s life and a discussion of his famous kite experiment on a US History education site.

Ricky Gervais on Embedded Design

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:00:49 -0600

Really? Ya.

Ricky Gervais was interviewed in the Harvard Business Review (Ricky Gervais on Not Having a Real Job), if you subscribe to HBR you can read it, but anyone can listen to the 12 minute podcast.

If your knowledge of this comedian is from the original The Office BBC TV series or his hosting episodes on the Golden Globesawards, the man on this podcast is NOT that man. And while Ricky did not specifically address what to do on your next embedded design, he did have some gems which can be applied to your project.

1) "Ask yourself 'Why am I doing this? What's the best that can happen?'" also ask "What's the worst that can happen?" Always critically examine what you are doing and why. What was a "good" idea at the start of the project or the start of the week may be a waste later, based upon the learning since.

2) "What matters is the work you've done" Take pride in your work. Don't be afraid to be recognized for it. Kinda goes without saying, though. Still.

3) "Write about what you know" was Ricky's response when asked why he did "The Office", but he also meant "write" about what other people know, as in everyone gets the office setting and situations. So on a project if your code and comments and design explanations aren't being understood, you missed your mark. Rewrite them for others, not for yourself. Especially if you don't wish to be fixing it for years.

4) "Be fair and upfront and you can't go wrong" Keep it real on the project, if you bring up a "problem" make sure you are talking about the "real" problem. If the "refresh rate" problem is more about you wanting to do the filtering design, be honest with the team.

5) "If everybody likes something no one will love it" Love comes with hate, like means it's watered down. When something is average it doesn't generate strong emotions, when something is great, it will also have its critics. But depending on the project, good and reliable might be exactly what is desired. Then again, the iPhone and iPad are not average, people love them and some do hate them.

6) "One veto and it's out" - Anyone on the team doesn't like something, it's dropped. What's left is everything great, but, of course lots of good ideas are rejected to keep the great. This again is how you rise above ordinary, and if your product is not required to be just good and reliable, you will need to reject some good ideas.

7) "Ya, probably not, though" Keep the language precise when you're discussing the project. This response by Ricky' to a question was very interesting, might lead you to wonder the next time he answers "Ya" is he really finished or if you wait long enough will he get to the point like "can't pay your salary this week".

USB Reading

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:16:54 -0600

I feel that there is lot of USB related reading material out there – almost an information deluge - but there are few that encompass some of the key points of this protocol. I’m trying to compile here a few articles that I used to understand some of the basics. Hope this list helps!

1. USB in a nutshell (By Craig Peacock) - http://www.beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/usb-in-a-nutshell.pdf
This is an old article (written in 2002) – but describes the protocol in a lot of detail. May be a little too deep for some – I had found it very useful to understand what really goes inside a USB pipe

2. Upgrading Embedded Design Firmware via USB (By Rakesh Reddy) – http://www.eetimes.com/design/other/4026877/Upgrading-Embedded-Design-Firmware-via-USB
This goes a little deeper into the embedded design with USB for those who are not satisfied with the first article above!

3. Common USB Development Mistakes – You Don’t Have To Make Them All Yourself! – (By Steve Kolokowsky and Trevor Davis) http://uk.farnell.com/images/en/ede/pdf/usb_dev_mistake.pdf
This is a very handy article for embedded designers starting off with USB

4. USB Technology: Multi-TT Hub Goes Head-to-Head With Single-TT – (By Patrick Schmid for Tom’s Hardware) - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-technology,677.html
Don’t go by the title. Most of us have used a USB hub at some point in our lives. This article – written back in 2003, gives a good understanding on how a USB hub works!

5. Increase the USB performance of your handset design (By Steve Kolokowsky) - http://www.eetimes.com/design/other/4016183/Increase-the-USB-performance-in-your-handset-design?pageNumber=1
Now that 90% of world’s handset devices (>1.3Billion handsets sold every year) have a USB port, most popularly used for charging and data transfer – this article written in 2006 is very much ahead of its time.

6. Making USB Flash Drives Secure (By Anant Jhawar) - http://embeddeddsp.embedded.com/columns/technicalinsights/225402174?printable=true
Great read on how the most common USB device around (the flash drives / USB sticks / thumb drives – or whatever you call them J ) can be made more scure

8. USB3.0 – The Next-Generation Interconnect (By Ashwini Govindaraman)
http://electronicdesign.com/article/digital/usb_3_0_the_next_generation_interconnect.aspx
Good article on some of the basics of USB3.0

I'm writing after a long hiatus! Feels like a first entry. Need to keep this moving at a more constant rate. Thank you all for being patient!!

PSoC® Creator™ 2.2 is now available

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:40:45 -0600

PSoC® Creator 2.2 is now officially available for download! This release adds new Components, enhancements for Component distribution and the ability to generate custom project datasheets.

New Components include a Digital Utility Pack with five new Components and PWM-based Temperature Sensor Interface. There are now over 80 pre-verified, production-ready Components available for your PSoC Design. We've improved Component distribution with easy import and export tools to simplify the sharing of PSoC Creator Components. Generate a complete datasheet for your specific PSoC design project without creating a new component library.

New Features:

Additional Binding Error Symbols
Component Distribution (Import/Export)
Datapath Editor Enhancements
MISRA Support
Peripheral Register Debug in IDEs
Project Datasheet Generation
Variable Vdda New Parameter

New Components:

Read more about the PSoC Creator 2.2 release in the Release Notes.

Design the way you think with PSoC Creator.

1/8/2012: The MHz ECO Clock Wizard Enhancements were removed from the PSoC Creator 2.2 features. Look for these enhancements in a future 2013 release.

My Pseudo Random Number Generator

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:16:10 -0600

The way I have previously built pseudo random number generators is to take a register of some width and toggle some bits if the MSBit is 1. Then circular rotate left (MSBit becomes LSBit). The bits needed to be toggled, differ with the length of the register.

That is:

forever{

if( MSBit == 1) toggle some bits;

circular rotate left

}

This implementation has the problem that if the register value is zero, it remains zero. This means for an 8 bit register, you get pseudo random values between 1 and 255.

Instead I changed the process so that the bits are toggled if the MSBit is 0.

forever{

if( MSBit != 1) toggle some bits;

circular rotate left

}

It can be implements with two of the datapath registers

A0 = (A0 ^ D) <<1 (so conneted to si)

A0 = A0 <<1 (so connected to si)

Add two more states of A0=0 and you have a fix is case the register somehow gets a ff value.

Gawd I love datapaths!

Now the dead value is all ones and the PSoC logic starts up logic low. So for an 8 bit register, you get random values between 0 and 254. This is nicer for density signal generation. You do not have to initialize this hardware as it will start up with its initial values.

Tips + Tricks: Getting to a Chinese or Japanese Datasheet

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:31:59 -0600

The PSoC Creator team is continually working to make our tools easier to use and to let our customers have the best experience possible on PSoC. As part of that mission, we've been working on continually updating our component datasheets into Chinese and Japanese. In the future, we're planning on service packs to add the datasheets natively into the Creator build where they will open based on your host PC's native language setting. Until we're 100% there, you can access the datasheets directly from each component's web page.

Within Creator Today, you have three ways to get to Chinese or Japanese Datasheets.

Right clicking on a component will bring up a menu with Open Component Web Page. You'll find the Chinese and Japanese language datasheets with the documentation.
Help -> Documentation -> Japanese Language -> Component Datasheets will open a list of all of the datasheets translated into Japanese.
If you're in the Document Manager, selecting any Component Datasheet will bring up the Component Web pages with the associated translated datasheets.

Did you know? There is a web page dedicated to Programming PSoC devices!

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:22:46 -0600

The General PSoC Programming web page is central location that details every aspect of programming PSoC devices. Topics discussed include software, hardware, documentation, and 3rd party vendor relationships available to PSoC customers.

Here is the link (bookmark it!): http://www.cypress.com/go/programming

Perhaps most importantly we maintain a table of production programming solutions for all parts. Here is a snapshot summary of that information (there is more detail on the web).

As we extend the list of supported programmer tools we ll post a message to this forum and update the table on the web so you can always have an accurate and up-to-date record of your PSoC programming choices.

Happy Programming!

Hasbro Rocks

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:16:40 -0600

Hasbro is about to retire a Monopoly marker and replace it with another. The new markers candidates are; a robot, helicopter, guitar, cat, or diamond rings. You can vote at their facebook page. Somehow they overlooked a PSoC token. I have taken the liberty of designing one and I ask you to contact Hasbro and give PSoC a write in vote. If the write in vote is not successful then maybe I

can get Cypress to have a limited edition built. Your help is appreciated.

Wlecome to 2013!

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 15:11:09 -0600

Now that the Mayans have been proved wrong ... Happy New Year!

We are in the midst of our freesoc/Arduino Shield contest and still accepting entries. For more information visit www.freesoc.net .

I'll be at MIT next week with Dave Van Ess, Mike Daly and Greg Landry (all Cypress employees) co-teaching a PSoC short course.

We will have a guest lecture by Prof. Andrzej Rucinski on how PSoC is an integral part of the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure as well.

Until Then,

C. U. A.round

PSoC Today, Your Input

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 20:45:37 -0600

Last year we did over 70 webisodes and we will do even more this year. What do you want to see.

Do you have something you would like to show?

Do you have something you would like to show and will be in San Jose

Do you have a couple of friend that thin k they can beat our Engineers in a Challenge?

Is there some topic you would like to see?

Lets us know and we will try to accommodate you.

PSoC Today Will Be Starting Back.

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 20:40:08 -0600

Well we went on hiatus for the winter holiday and we are back and it is better than ever. We start off the New Year with the PSoC Challenge. Three teams battling it out to see who the best Engineers are. I really think you will like it. We plan to do future challenges and if you and some friends think you got the stuff, show us why and maybe you an compete.

Getting Started Video for PSoC Designer

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 23:59:01 -0600

Watching a brief walkthrough video can be a big help in conquering the PSoC Designer learning curve. Join Ganesh Raja and see how easy it is to build your first project:

http://www.cypress.com/?rID=70468

PSoC® 5LP Kit Upgrade Program Open

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:08:20 -0600

We want to offer all of our current PSoC®5 customers the opportunity to upgrade your CY8CKIT-050 kit to a PSoC 5LP for free. There are drop-in, pin-for-pin compatible replacement parts for each of the PSoC 5 products in the PSoC 5LP family. The PSoC 5LP offers increased Analog precision with our class leading 12-bit SAR and a 20-bit DelSig ADC, Boost technology allowing for start-up from only 0.5V and lower power modes. The Kit Upgrade Program allows existing PSoC 5 users to try out these new features for free.

The upgrade program for the CY8CKIT-001 and CY8CKIT-010 to PSoC 5LP silicon will be coming in the first weeks of January. Look for an announcement at that time.

No one wins the lotto and no one gets struck by lightning

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:34:29 -0600

But sometimes you do win the lotto, and heavens forbid, sometimes you do get struck by lightning.

Our hearts go out to those in Connecticut who are dealing with such a senseless tragedy and for any parents trying to raise children in a random vulnerable world full of risks.

A person that loses their parents is an orphan. Someone that loses a spouse is a widow or a widower. I know of no name for someone that loses a child. I think that is because it is an event to horrid to contemplate finding a name. I know I don't want to do it.

This just brings to light that our serious problems really are the ones we are not paid to solve.

No matter how slight the risks, some will get struck by lightening. It is a fear all parents share. Just don t let the fear rule your life and keep you from raising healthy, inquisitive, risk taking children. (If they are anything like me. you will have to worry about the pyrotechnic teen years.) Remember some will also win the lotto and maybe your child will change the world.

When the going gets tough, the tough go for coffee

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 10:49:50 -0600

Here is a PSoC World update. Jason Whiteman contacted us on PSoC World Day to say that the firewall at his work wouldn t let him get through. His solution was to go the Starbucks and watch there, all day. Great thinking Jason! As a reward for thinking outside the box, we are sending you a gift card to Starbucks. However, you should know that if you would have thought WAY outside of the box and gone to a Tavern with Wi-Fi, we would be sending you a gift card for a beer! It is always good to hear from the zealots.

PSoC World Content Still Available

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 03:10:17 -0600

Thousands of attendees were able to experience PSoC World last week. But even if you missed it, you can still view the content on-demand. For training, demonstrations and keynotes, please log into www.psocworld.com.

PSoC 3 Kit Upgrade Program Closing

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:56:01 -0600

The PSoC 3 (CY8CKIT-001, CY8CKIT-003) upgrade program will end January 4^th, 2013. I would like to thank everyone who participated over the last two years for trying out our new silicon. I hope you had an excellent upgrade experience. If you haven't yet had a chance to upgrade your system, you still have a few days. We are taking upgrade requests through the end of the day on January 4^th. You just need to fill out a short form on the PSoC Kit Upgrade Program website.

The team here at Cypress wants you to have the best experience possible with PSoC. That's why we offer free kit upgrades to production silicon or new silicon (look for a PSoC 5 to PSoC 5LP upgrade program coming soon). We strongly believe being an early adopter shouldn't penalize you. We will continue to offer these kit upgrades to production silicon and new key silicon. The PSoC 3 kit upgrade program was highly successful with just under a thousand total kits upgraded over the last two years and we hope that all PSoC 5 customers will use the kit upgrade program to try out the PSoC 5LP.

PSoC World Happening Now

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:43:08 -0600

If you've got a few minutes today, please consider logging into our PSoC developer's conference. TJ Rodgers is giving the keynote right now, and there are a host of applications engineers ready to answer any PSoC questions you may have. Please check it out now at www.psocworld.com!

PSoC® Creator™ 2.1 Service Pack 1 is available for download from the Cypress Website

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:34:05 -0600

PSoC® Creator 2.1 Service Pack 1 is now officially available for download! If you are considering using the new PSoC 5LP for its capability to run high-precision programmable analog on a single-cell battery, you need to download the PSoC Creator update. In addition to updating all the components to support the PSoC 5LP, we fixed several minor defects. Details for the release are in the Release Notes.

Read more about the PSoC 5LP, Cypress's newest ARM® Cortex -M3, in the PSoC 5LP Press Release or on the PSoC 5LP Product Page.

Design the way you think with PSoC Creator.

Register for PSoC® World - No Raincoat Required!

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:47:23 -0600

Although I wish everyone could come visit us in our Seattle office where we make PSoC, your programmable solution on a chip, it's a bit cold and grey this time of year. Instead, virtually visit us at PSoC World 2012 on Dec 12 & 13. I think you'll really enjoy the technical sessions, inspiring keynotes and a chance to chat with me and the whole PSoC team all from the comfort of your home or desk. I'm most looking forward to the PSoC pannel discussion between several of our customers, a university professor and a PSoC expert from Arrow all moderated by Dan Byers, Senior Director of World Wide FAEs. I think the discussion will be lively to say the least.

Tom Lantzsch, the EVP of Strategy for ARM, is discussing intelligence everywhere and the pervasive nature both of ARM processors and the fundamental shift in products for increasing technology at lower and less expensive price points. He also brings up some great thought provoking concepts on energy conservation and low power.

If you're an engineer who likes wine, you need to check out Cypress's CEO, T.J. Rodgers' keynote on the science and technology he's introducing to wine-making in his vineyard near the mountains of Santa Cruz, California and at the University of California at Davis. T.J. is an engineer's engineer and brings measurement, a knowledge of organic chemistry and fun electronics to everything he does and wine is no exception.

If you need more convincing, check out the following:

Watch the Sneak Peak with real session content
Take a look at the Agenda
Read the personal invitation John Weil, Director of PSoC Marketing and Applications, sent to the ARM community
Meet Alan Hawse, Executive Vice President of Software, in his PSoC Creator Commercial

Pressure Sensing with PSoC3 – Part 4/4

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 08:56:39 -0600

In this part, we ll see how to interface an amplified compensated pressure sensor with PSoC3 and evaluate the system performance. This type of pressure sensor is very expensive as it performs both amplification and temperature compensation. The Honeywell SSCDANN015PGAA5 will be used for interfacing with PSoC3. The important specifications of SSCDANN015PGAA5 are listed below

Important specifications:

Supply Voltage: 5V

Accuracy: +/-0.25%

Total error band: +/-2% FSS

Sensor Operation:

This sensor has an amplified and temperature compensated output and is driven by a voltage supply. The output curve and equation are shown below.

Design:

The design is very simple as both amplification and temperature compensation are done within PSoC. Resolution should be 1/1000th of full scale, hence a 10-bit ADC is required. The sensor output voltage goes to 90% of the supply voltage, so the ADC range should be vssa vdda. The ADC should operate with the rail-rail buffer enabled. Sensor output is ratiometric and the ADC reference should be Vdda/4.

PSoC Top Design and ADC configuration:

List of all errors:

S.No	Parameter	Error at 10 psi (in psi)
Sensor
1	Total error	0.2
2	Non-linearity	0.022
Signal Chain
5	Offset	0
6	Gain error	0.02
7	Offset drift (at 50°C)	0
8	Gain drift (at 50°C)	negligible
9	INL	negligible

PSoC Value:

Although not as many analog resources are required when interfacing a pressure sensor with an amplified output, integrating a sensor with other PSoC features such as capsense, segment LCD drive and communication protocols, etc, will lower overall system costs.

Conclusion:

PSoC3 and PSoC 5LP can sense pressure accurately while reducing BOM cost and board space by integrating the analog front-end, ADC, reference and MCU. PSoC ADC inputs can be multiplexed with many inputs (limited only by the GPIO count) allowing interfacing to multiple pressure sensors or other analog sensors. The PSoC Creator design environment makes it easier for you to design and debug, reducing the design time and your time to market.

By Praveen Sekar

Pressure Sensing with PSoC3 – Part 3/4

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:51:02 -0600

In part 3, we ll see how to interface an unamplified compensated pressure sensor with PSoC3 and evaluate the system performance. Measurement Specialties MEAS 1210 standard is used for interfacing with PSoC3. The important specifications of MEAS 1210 standard are listed below.

Supply current = 1.5 mA

Pressure Range: 0 -15 psi (Gage)

Sensitivity (max): 10 mV / psi

Sensitivity (min): 5 mV / psi

Temp error - span (max): 0.5 % FSS

Offset (max): 2 mV

Temperature error - offset: 0.5% FSS

Specified temp range: -40 to 125 °C

Bridge resistance (max): 6.4 k (50°C)

Accuracy: +/-0.1 % FSS BFSL

Sensor Operation:

The sensor is a piezo-resistive sensor excited by a current and has an output voltage proportional to the pressure and the current. The output voltage has a 50% tolerance and the sensor provides a gain set resistor to calibrate it to 1%. When the sensor is excited by proper current excitation levels specified in the datasheet, the temperature coefficient of span and offset will cause only a very small error in the final measurement (temperature compensated).

Design:

The design requires an excitation current of 1.5mA and an ADC to measure the output voltage. With a bridge resistance of 6.4k (max) and excitation current of 1.5mA (current level prescribed in the datasheet for proper temperature compensation), the load voltage of the current source is 9.6V. This means PSoC IDAC cannot directly be used for supplying bridge current because of very high load voltage. To limit external components and get maximum value out of PSoC we can use circuit below.

By controlling the V_GS of this circuit, the I_D can be controlled. V_GSis controlled by changing the current of the sinking IDAC. R_B ensures the IDAC output voltage is within compliance and optimum. The current sense resistor (0.1%), R_SENS,aids in setting the current to 1.5mA. The voltage across R_SENSis read by PSoC ADC (0.2%) and the IDAC current is adjusted until I_Dbecomes 1.5mA. With this circuit, we can ensure that the current is accurate to 0.3%. A current accuracy of 2% is the requirement so the temperature error due to offset and span are within datasheet limits.

Sensor Common mode output voltage:

With this design the sensor common mode output voltage is given by;

(1.5 * 6.4)/2 + 0.150 /2 + (1.5mA * 0.05)/2 = 4.8 + 0.075 + 0.0375 = 4.91 V

Here, 1.5mA is the sensor current, 6.4k is the max bridge resistance and 0.150 V is the maximum span, 0.05 is the sense resistance.

The sensor common mode voltage is very high to directly feed into PSoC. The ADC with input buffer can accommodate only to within 200 mV of Vdda. The ADC without buffer can t be used because it has low input impedance. The PGA can allow input voltage all the way to the voltage rail, but we ll be limiting the design to supplies with very strict tolerance levels. This is not desirable as various designers might want flexibility in their power supply design (at least support 5% supplies).

Hence to lower the common mode voltage we can use a charge pump that generates a negative voltage. The generated voltage is about -3V using a negative charge pump. The ripple voltage (of <10%) on the charge pump output doesn t have a major effect as long as we set the ADC input sampling frequency as an integral multiple of the ripple frequency (the charge pump clock frequency).

ADC input range:

The sensor span is 150mV (max). The ADC input range should be > +/- 0.256V.

Resolution:

Resolution required in 1/1000^th of full scale. At minimum span of 75mV, we require 75uV of voltage resolution. At 15-bit level, the ADC resolution is 64uV. With a gain of 4, the ADC resolution is < 16uV.

At +/-1.024V range, we require 15-bit resolution

At +/-0.256V range, we require 13-bit resolution

Reference:

This measurement requires an absolute reference. The final pressure accuracy depends on the reference accuracy, therefore the internal 1.024 V reference is a good choice.

The ADC has four channels:

0. Sense resistance channel: This channel is used to set the current to 1.5mA

1. Sensor Channel: Senses the sensor output

2, 3. Calibration channels: Measures the gain set resistance for calibration

The IDAC has two channels:

1. Passes current through the calibration resistance

2. Passes current through the sensor

The ADC configuration for the pressure sensing channel is shown below.

Pressure Equation:

The pressure is computed from the measured voltage using the following equation.

P = A* (V_o / S_i) * P_r

P Pressure (in psi)

V₀ Bridge output voltage in mV

S_i Span of pressure sensor output in mV

P_r Rated Pressure (in psi)

A I/1.5. I is the actual current flowing into the pressure sensor

Calibrations required:

Span Calibration:

The Span of the pressure sensor is calibrated using the gain set resistance provided in the sensor. Using the gain set resistance, r, the span can be calibrated. The gain set resistance is trimmed such that when it s used in conjunction with a differential amplifier, it ll give a 2V span. Working the equations back, you can find that the gain set resistance.

r = (2 * Rf * Si)/ (So Si)

Here, Rf is feedback resistor of the differential amplifier, Si is the span of the pressure sensor output (differential amplifier input) and So is the span at the differential amplifier output. By looking at the datasheet of the part, Rf and So can be found. For MEAS 1210, Rf = 100k and S₀ = 2V. By measuring r, we can find the span,

S_i = 2/(1 + (200/r))

Performance measures:

Offset:

The sensor has a 2mV offset (max). This can be calibrated out to zero.

Span error:

The gain set resistor can provide an interchangeability accuracy of 1%. In addition, the gain set resistor can be found with 0.1% accuracy only (limited by calibration resistor accuracy. If the calibration resistor is very accurate (0.01%) or calibrated, then the span error will be 1%.

Temperature Error offset:

This has a maximum error of 0.5% FS. This is 0.075 psi.

Temperature Error span:

This has a maximum error of 0.5% FS. This is 0.075psi.

Pressure non-linearity + hysteresis:

Together they contribute 0.15% FS. This is 0.022 psi.

Signal Chain:

Offset error:

The offset error of PSoC ADC is <100uV, which can be cancelled by Correlated Double Sampling (CDS).

Offset drift:

Offset drift of PSoC is 0.55uV/°C. At 50°C, this is 11uV. It is 1/7^th of minimum resolution (0.015psi). It can be cancelled by Correlated Double Sampling (CDS).

Gain error:

PSoC ADC s calibrated accuracy is 0.2%. There are 2 measurements, 1 voltage measurement and 1 current measurement (current set to 1.5mA). This can contribute to 0.4% error in total.

Gain drift:

Drift is 50 ppm/°C. For 25°C change, it ll be 0.125%.

List of all errors:

S.No	Parameter	Error at 10 psi (in psi)
Sensor
1	Offset	0.2 (Can be calibrated)
2	Span error	0.1 (best case)
3	Temperature coefficient of offset (50 °C)	0.075
4	Temperature coefficient of span (50 °C)	0.075
5	Non-linearity	0.022
Signal Chain
5	Offset	0
6	Gain error	0.06
7	Offset drift (at 50°C)	0
8	Gain drift (at 50°C)	0.018
9	INL	<0.015

PSoC Value:

Apart from integrating the analog front end, ADC, 0.1% precision reference, Op-Amp, IDAC and the MCU and providing a separate channel for accurate temperature measurement, PSoC can integrate miscellaneous features suchascapsense, segment LCD drive and communications protocols. Designing with PSoC creator reduces the design time considerably. The BOM cost and board size can also be significantly reduced.

In the next part we ll see how to interface unamplified compensated pressure sensor with PSoC3.

By Praveen Sekar

Is there 3rd party mass programming support for PSoC devices?

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:17:57 -0600

Cypress works with a number of third party programming vendors around the world to ensure mass programming support for all PSoC devices. We provide a list of these programming vendors on our general programming landing page:

www.cypress.com/go/programming

Many customers choose to purchase PSoC devices through a Cypress partnered distributor. These distributors will often support programming services for customers. Customers will be able to purchase devices and have those devices programmed prior to delivery or manufacturing. Since our distributors provide these programming services we have ensured that we are working with mutual third party programming companies in order to ensure timely support for our customers. Distributors often support multiple programming vendors for their programming services. We work to ensure that we have qualified at least one programming vendor for each of the Cypress distributors.

www.cypress.com/?app=distiInventory&source=buy

If one has questions or requires additional device support please file a tech support case so that your request can be expedited.

www.cypress.com/go/support

Questions about Programming Your PSoC?

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:02:40 -0600

We've put answers to all of your programming-related questions in a single place:

www.cypress.com/go/programming

Clicking the link above will take you to a page detailing the software and hardware you need to program your PSoC. You'll also find programming specifications and a list of our 3^rd party programming vendors. In short, it's everything you need to handle programming from your first prototype to high volume manufacturing.

Pressure Sensing with PSoC3 – Part 2/4:

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:26:55 -0600

In part 2, we ll see how to interface an unamplified uncompensated pressure sensor with PSoC3 and the system performance. We ll use the Honeywell NBPMANS015PGUNV for interfacing with PSoC3. The important specifications of Honeywell NBPMANS015PGUNV are listed below.

Supply voltage = 5V

Pressure Range: 0 -15 psi (Gage)

Sensitivity (max): 6.9 mV / psi (25°C)

Sensitivity (min): 3.3 mV / psi (25°C)

Temp Coefficient of sensitivity (max): -3.8 %

Offset: 35.6 mV (50°C)

Temperature coefficient of offset: 1.5%

Specified temp range: -40 to 125 °C

Bridge resistance (max): 5.9 k (50°C)

Accuracy: +/-0.25 % FSS BFSL

Sensor operation:

This type of pressure sensor is a piezo-resistive sensor (Wheatstone s bridge) driven by a voltage supply. The bridge output voltage is directly proportional to the applied pressure and the supply voltage. The primary sources of error to be factored in while designing with this type of sensor is the sensor offset error, span error and temperature coefficient of span and offset (since the sensor is temperature uncompensated, temperature coefficient of span and offset play a major role in the final error).

Design:

The design parameters of concern are the ADC resolution, input range and reference.

ADC input range:

This parameter is dependent on the maximum voltage output, V₀, from the pressure sensor. At 5V supply and using the maximum offset and sensitivity possible, we get;

V₀ (max) = 6.9 * 15 + 35.6 = 139.1 mV

ADC input range should be greater than +/-0.256 V.

Resolution:

1/1000^th of the full scale resolution is sufficient in pressure sensing applications.

Pressure resolution = 15 psi/1000 = 0.015 psi

Voltage resolution = 49.543 mV/1000 = 49.543uV

This requires a 16-bit ADC in +/-1.024V range or 14-bit ADC in +/-0.256V range.

Reference:

A ratiometric reference should be used in this case. Hence PSoC reference should be configured for internal vdda/4 , where vdda = 5 volts.

PSoC Creator Top Design:

The ADC has three channels, one for sensing pressure and the other two used for temperature measurement. The RTD temperature is measured as described in AN70698. ADC configuration for the pressure sensing channel is shown below.

Note that +/-Vref/4 range can also be used for this configuration in 14-bit mode.

Pressure Equation:

From the measured ADC voltage, the pressure is calculated from the equation below;

P = (V_o / S) * P_r

P Pressure (in psi)

V₀ Bridge output voltage in mV

S Span in mV

P_r Rated Pressure (in psi)

Calibrations required:

Room Temperature calibration:

Since span has a very high tolerance, we have to calibrate span before using it. Pressure sensor offset should also be calibrated before use.

Offset Calibration:

Offset of the pressure sensor has to be corrected by giving a zero pressure input and measuring the ADC output voltage, V_off.

V_off = V_offp + V_offs

V_offp Pressure sensor offset

V_offs signal chain offset

Span/Gain Calibration:

The span of the pressure sensor is calibrated by applying a full scale pressure input to the pressure sensor and measuring the ADC output voltage, V_fs.

S = V_fs

(Where S is the Span)

By doing span calibration we are calibrating both the span error of the sensor and gain error of the ADC.

Temperature calibration:

Both the pressure sensor offset and span varies with temperature and they have to be calibrated. But the sensor datasheet doesn t provide information on the span or offset calibration. It provides only the limits of the error. If the characteristic curve is found by experiment, we can correct for both span and offset temperature coefficient accurately.

List of all errors:

S.No	Parameter	Error at 10 psi (in psi)
Sensor
1	Offset	0 *
2	Span error	0 *
3	Temperature coefficient of offset (50 °C)	1.5 (Can be calibrated)
4	Temperature coefficient of span (50 °C)	-0.6 (Can be calibrated)
5	Non-linearity	0.0375
Signal Chain
5	Offset	0
6	Gain error	0 *
7	Offset drift (at 50°C)	< 0.004
8	Gain drift (at 50°C)	0.01 (can be calibrated)
9	INL	0.02

*Note: Assumes calibration source has zero error.

ADC INL and the sensor non-linearity are the only factors that can t be calibrated and will affect the final measurement.

PSoC Value:

Apart from integrating the analog front end, ADC and the MCU, providing a separate channel for accurate temperature measurement, PSoC can integrate miscellaneous features suchascapsense, segment LCD drive and communications protocols. Designing with PSoC creator can reduce the design time considerably. The BOM cost and board size can also be significantly reduced.

In the next part we ll see how to interface unamplified compensated pressure sensor with PSoC3.

By Praveen Sekar

What is the coolest thing you coulda shoulda woulda done?

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 18:42:17 -0600

For me it would have to be that while at Cal I had a chance to go see a lecture by Heisenberg. I had something more important and for the life of me I cannot remember what is was. The number of people who can say they ever saw Heisenberg speak is small, getting smaller and I can never be part if this group. A really stupid move.

Well on December 12^th Cypress will be having the first ever, virtual design conference. IT would be worth your time. You may have something more urgent to do but I bet that in a couple of years, you won t remember why.

Of the 400,000 people that went to Woodstock, I have personally met 2 million of them. I guess they wanted to go to Woodstock but more urgent just came up. Regret is a pretty powerful thing thay woul cause so many proplr to lie.

Well think of PSoC World as your cultural defining event and don t regret not going. Maybe we should call it PSToCK, a worldwide day of peace, love, and configurability.

Peace Dude! Peace SoC.

http://www.psocworld.com/

PSoC World: Virtual PSoC Developer's Conference

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:54:47 -0600

On 12 and 13 Dec 2012, Cypress will be hosting our first PSoC Developer's Conference, PSoC World (www.psocworld.com). We're extremely excited about this event and have packed in keynotes from our own CEO, TJ Rodgers and other industry visionaries from Arrow, ARM and Macnica. Additionally, we have introductory to advanced training sessions with video demonstrations detailing how you can take advantage of the PSoC programmable platform to implement a variety of applications and solutions. Further, we'll be hosting a special panelist session featuring engineers, like you, talking about the creative and different ways they have used PSoC devices and software to implement a variety of solutions. Register today and watch our sneak peek video at www.psocworld.com.

See you there!

PSoC World: Virtual PSoC Developer's Conference

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:56:11 -0600

On 12 and 13 Dec 2012, Cypress will be hosting our first PSoC Developer's Conference, PSoC World (www.psocworld.com). We're extremely excited about this event and have packed in keynotes from our own CEO, TJ Rodgers and other industry visionaries from Arrow, ARM and Macnica. Additionally, we have introductory to advanced training sessions with video demonstrations detailing how you can take advantage of the PSoC programmable platform to implement a variety of applications and solutions. Further, a special panelist session is planned that features engineers, like you, talking about the creative and different ways they have used PSoC devices and software to implement a variety of solutions. Register today and watch our sneak peek video at www.psocworld.com. See you there!

Pressure Sensing with PSoC3 – Part 1/4

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 09:41:56 -0600

Pressure sensors can come in a variety of technologies, such as piezoresistive, capacitive, electromagnetic etc. Piezoresistive pressure sensors are the most commonly used of this group.

In this four part series, piezo-resistive pressure sensing basics and the PSoC circuits for three types of pressure sensors will be examined. The first part covers piezo-resistive pressure sensor basics and introduces three categories of pressure sensors

Piezo-resistive Pressure sensor basics

A piezo resistive pressure sensor has a silicon diaphragm whose resistance depends on its tension. The diaphragm undergoes tension whenever there is a pressure. It can be modelled by a Wheatstone s bridge where all the resistors change with pressure. When pressure is applied to the diaphragm, resistance of the two arms (diametrically opposite to each other) increases and the resistance of the other two arms decreases.

Pressure sensor equations

The change in resistance can be converted to voltage by voltage or current excitation. The equations involved in voltage and current excitation are shown below.

Voltage Excitation Mode:

In this case, the Wheatstone s bridge is excited by a voltage. Span is defined as the bridge output voltage for rated pressure (full pressure). Span( S) is given by

S = V * R/R

R Change in resistance for rated pressure

R - Bridge resistance

V Excitation voltage

R = P * P_s

P Rated Pressure

P_s Pressure sensitivity (Change in resistance for unit change in pressure)

P_s = R * k

k - Normalized pressure sensitivity i.e. Pressure sensitivity for 1ohm resistor

S = V * P * k

Span is independent of bridge resistance. The temperature coefficient of span primarily results from the temperature coefficient of pressure sensitivity which is dependent on the diaphragm material.

Current excitation:

In this case, the bridge is excited by a current source. In this case span is given by,

S = I * R * P * k

Where I is the excitation current.

In this case, the span depends on the current source and bridge resistance.

The temperature coefficient of span results from the temperature coefficient of resistance and the temperature coefficient of pressure sensitivity. By proper design, the two can be made close to each other. Hence current excited pressure sensors have the design advantage of tweaking the process parameters so as to reduce the effect of temperature on span.

Pressure sensor types

The pressure sensor span is generally around 50-150mV. Depending on whether the pressure sensor output is amplified and on whether the pressure sensor is compensated for temperature variations of span and offset, we can have the following categories of pressure sensors

Unamplified uncompensated pressure sensors
Unamplified compensated pressure sensors
Amplified pressure sensors/transmitters.

The next three parts explains interfacing each type of pressure sensor with PSoC and the system performance measures.

By Praveen Sekar

Ain’t Modern Medicine Wonderful!

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 12:35:57 -0600

A particularly bad lung dusting while woodworking 30 years has made me susceptible to pneumonia every winter. If was not careful, bronchitis would lead to pneumonia and you can die from that.

Well the doctors have developed a vaccine for pneumonia and sure enough people don t die of it anymore. It turns out they now die of really really bad bronchitis.

Now that progress. But at least the deaths from pneumonia are down.

ps Wear a dust mask!

PSoC World Is Coming!

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 10:45:43 -0600

PSoC World is an online virtual event happening Dec. 12 and 13. It is 24 hours of all things PSoC and you do not have to leave your browser to attend.

This is a great opportunity to take a short break from finals and attend the virtual show of shows.

You can register by clicking here: PSoC World

See you there - there will be a few academic goodies on the show.

Until then,

C. U. A.round

PSoC World Is Coming!

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 10:45:41 -0600

PSoC World is an online virtual event happening Dec. 12 and 13. It is 24 hours of all things PSoC and you do not have to leave your browser to attend.

This is a great opportunity to take a short break from finals and attend the virtual show of shows.

You can register by clicking here: PSoC World

See you there - there will be a few academic goodies on the show.

Until then,

C. U. A.round

Let PSoC Brighten Your Holidays

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 11:37:48 -0600

If you have used microcontrollers as long as I have, you have most likely bit-banged a serial protocol a couple of times. For those of you new to microcontrollers, bit-banging is when you write 1s and 0s to a GPIO port to simulate hardware you controller doesn't have. It is almost always a pain, it takes excessive CPU cycles and is even worse if you are on the receiving end, like an I2C slave. If anyone ever asks you to bit-bang an I2C slave, just say NO! Just trust me on this one!

Anyway, it is impossible for your microcontroller to always have every serial interface that may come along. For example, I read about a string of 50 Christmas lights that had red, green, and blue LEDs in each bulb and here comes the best part, each bulb is addressable. Yes, you can control each individual bulb for color and intensity, four bits for each color (red, green, and blue) and 8 bits for intensity. Of course the string of lights came with its own controller that could generate 12 different patterns, but I wanted to create my own patterns. With a little Google searching I found that someone had already hacked the asynchronous protocol and bit-banged an IO port to control the lights with some microcontroller. Nobody had actually created hardware to make this easier or less CPU intensive, you know why? Because nobody else used a PSoC3 or PSoC5 with their powerful UDBs! Yes a PSoC3/5 can bit bang with the best of them, but why bother when you have extremely flexible hardware, plus bit banging is so 90's.

The protocol was a 26-bit packet with one start and three stop bits. Each data bit was divided into three 10uS periods. The first period is always low, the second period was low if the data was a 1 and high if the data bit was a 0 . The last period is always high. See images below for bit and packet formats.

The packet format is pretty straight forward with the address, brightness level and three colors packed into 26 bits. See figure below.

I had a choice, be lazy and use a 32-bit wide shifter or use a single 8-bit wide shifter with a slightly more complicated state machine. The 32-bit wide implementation would be easier but would be a bit wasteful in hardware. The 8-bit wide implementation would take a bit longer, but much more efficient. I choose to go with the 8-bit wide design. One other nice feature in the UDBs, is that you can create two 4 byte FIFOs for data flowing into or out of an interface. This turned out to be perfect since it took 4 bytes to transfer the full 26-bit packet.

The string of lights is 50 bulbs long and if you want to update all the bulbs at one time, it would take 200 bytes (50 bulbs * 4 bytes per packet). Since you don t want the processor to just sit and wait for an interface to move data, DMA is the perfect solution. This way I was able to update the entire string using DMA with almost no CPU overhead! Where the other guys are wasting their CPU cycles toggling bits, the CPU in the PSoC could concentrate on generating cool interactive patterns, converting DMX commands to the light string format, or any other task. What is even better, I could implement 8 of these interfaces in a single PSoC3 or PSoC5 at the same time.

Making this interface into a PSoC Creator component, provides a way to setup all the hardware and DMA with a single start command as with all Creator components. More APIs are added to generate cool lighting patters. The video below is an example of version 1.0 controlling three strings of light on my house.

This second video shows four strings on the floor in our lunch room.

This third video demonstrates yet another use for the lights.

Just think of the possibilities interfacing a string of lights to anything that can be measured with a PSoC!

Here are a few other images of the actual box the string came in, the string that I modified, my interface board, and a close up view of one of the bulbs.

Stay tuned for an upcoming video with the details of what it took to make the lighting component and how easy it is to interface the string with the Cypress PSoC3 First Touch Kit.

Mark Hastings

What can you do with PSoC 3 and PSoC 5LP UDBs

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:30:58 -0600

If you have used PSoC 3, PSoC 5 or the up and coming super cool PSoC 5LP, you have probably heard or and most likely made use of the internal UDBs, whether you knew it or not. UDBs are digital blocks that allow you to make custom digital gadgets. There are a couple of new application notes that were mentioned before in this Blog, that describe the UDBs in detail and teach you how to use them. See Cypress application notes AN82250 and AN82156. Many of the standard digital components in Creator s library are actually constructed with UDBs. Below is a list of some of the components that are constructed mainly of UDBs.

I2C, I2S, LIN, SM Bus, SPDIF, SPI, UART, Counters, CRC generator, Glitch filter, Quadrature Decoder, Shift register, Timer, Logic gates, Flops, Digital multiplexers and de-multiplexers, control and status registers, etc.

You get the picture, but what is currently in the library is by no means the limit of what can be created. Recently I sent an email to our application and field application engineers and asked what they had created with UDBs. Here is a list of some of the components people have created with PSoC UDBs.

60Hz Grid Lock PLL
Numerically Controlled Oscillator (Used for DDS)
Forward Error Correction (FEC) decoder
No clock stretch I2C slave
Simple components (8bit adder, PWM, digital compares etc )
Complex Counters
ADC mux sequencers
Holiday Light controller
Square root calculator
First order IIR filter
Hardware state machines
Delta sigma modulator
UDB discrete Fourier transform
Byte packer (sticks two 12-bit values into 3 bytes for RF transmission)
7-Segment Display controller
Remote control servo controller
Manchester Encoder/Decoder
1-Wire communication interface
ClipDetect, Monitors 16-bit audio and over rides output if value exceeds a certain limit.
Audioclkgen, Creates a factional N reference for the on-chip PLL. Used in digital audio designs.

Notice that this list contains some pretty weird stuff that you would never find standard in any microcontroller. You won t even find most this stuff in the standard PSoC Creator library, yet! The point is, that it doesn t matter. You can create your own custom interface or component, that makes your project unique without adding extra external glue logic or a CPLD.

Cypress does have a Community Components page where people can post any component they have created. Unfortunately it has been a very well kept secret until now. Do yourself a favor and check out the Community Components page.

Also, if you want to get more training on creating components, read the app notes I mentioned above or look at the community components guidelines on this this page.

If you have created a cool component (or even a weird one), don t be afraid to share it with the Cypress community for your 15 minutes of fame.

By Mark Hastings

Learn about M2M, Industrial control, Home Appliance User Interfaces - All from the comfort of your desk - PSoC World is here

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:54:22 -0600

See 60 sec video on why you should register

http://www.cypress.com/?rID=72148

Register today. We are also going to have some of our premier design partners exhibit in a state of the art virtual trade show environment.

You wait for ages, then two come along at once

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 06:55:33 -0600

Two pieces out on the same day for you! Firstly the promised Filter Wizard on getting AC voltage gain out of just resistors and capacitors. Just a nichy little bit of network theory, but still a bit of fun as the winter draws in: http://www.analog-eetimes.com/en/ac-voltage-gain-using-just-resistors-and-capacitors.html?cmp_id=71&news_id=222904234. And then the third part of the Class i amplifier series on EDN, for all you audio fans out there: http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4401234/The-Class-i-low-distortion-audio-output-stage--Part-3-. Always happy to hear from you with suggestions for topics that I should cover in future articles. Thinking of doing a regular active filter article next, with a little program for calculating component values for the Friend single-amplifier filter in lowpass notch and highpass notch forms, using preferred values but still getting good response accuracy. Interesting? Let me know.

PSoC World Is Coming

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:20:14 -0600

And it is time to register! My hobby is woodworking and after 35 years of it I have gotten pretty good. I still like to watch the DIY programs and I must say I usually find myself coming up with better implementations than the show s host. I still watch because with every show I still gleam something new and really clever.

The same is with PSoC World. It will have something for the beginners and yet there will be something for even the most experienced PSoC Zealot.

PSoC World is scheduled for December 12^th in the Americas and December 13^th in the Not Americas. It will be 24 hours of continuous PSoC. There will be region specific sessions.

So come to the Show of Shows without ever leaving your desk. No fuss with travel. No having to go through the Back scatter X-ray machine that the TSA tells us is safe, but who really knows. Take off your shoes only if you want to.

I have been doing PSoC for 12 years now and I am looking forward to seeing many different solutions. I am sure I will learn something new. I hope to see you there.

I have already registered (http://psocworld.com ) (Thanks JF!) and I found it extremely easy to register. They asked very few questions and they didn t ask any information about design cycles or the predicted yearly consumption of parts in the next 30 to 90 days. (I hate that!) So give it a try.

ECE Dept. Heads Association Meeting

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 01:21:01 -0600

This weekend I will be presenting and exhibintg at the ECEDHA conference on the UT Austin campus. If you are attending be sure and stop by the CUA table and say hello. I am also presenting a PSoC overview on Sunday March 25 at 12:30. Again, if you are at the conference please feel free to attend.

12:30 pm - 12:50 pm

ECEDHA - Cypress Semiconductor

www.cypress.com/go/psoc

Learn how PSoC (Programmable System on Chip) Can Enhance Engineering Education
PSoC is a device consisting of programmable analog modules, programmable digital modules and an MCU (ARM Cortex M3 or 8051) all on one piece of silicon. Coupled with the PSoC Creator IDE, PSoC enables the hands on teaching of many classes from fundamentals of digital and analog to embedded systems and beyond using one technology and one software platform. Students learn the device architecture and design flow once and can spend most of their time building projects. To learn more about this exciting technology visit www.cypress.com/go/psoc.

Presenter
Patrick Kane, Director, Cypress University Alliance; Cypress Semiconductor Corp.

Cypress Gold level Design Partner - Wildcat Development featured in PSoC Today

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:15:14 -0600

Dave Van Ess, PSoC Apps Guru meets with David Smith, President of Wildcat Development in this episode of PSoC Today. David talks about how he PSoC has been instrumental in solving some of his customers problems.

http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/Cypress-Semiconductor-PSoC-T-56

If you are a Cypress design partner and you would like to show case your PSoC based products in our show contact us at designpartners@cypress.com

More PSoC Designer 5.3 Webisodes Available on PSoC Today

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:39:28 -0600

For the last two weeks, PSoC Today has featured PSoC Designer 5.3. Please click the following link to check out the features and user modules we've added to the new release.

http://www.cypress.com/go/psoctoday

All five webisodes are now available, covering auto-routing, dynamic reconfiguration, the VoltageSequencer user module and much more!

Excerpt from my new book. It’s bound to be a best seller and you saw it here first!

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 02:17:35 -0600

Fifty Codes of Gray

0, 1, 3, 2, 6, 7, 5, 4, 12, 13, 15, 14, 10, 11, 9, 8, 24,25, 27, 26, 30, 31, 29, 28, 20, 21, 23, 22, 18, 19, 17, 16, 48, 49, 51, 50, 54, 55, 53, 52, 60, 61, 63, 62, 58, 59, 57, 56, 40, 32

Some Power Amplifier Wizardry in my spare time

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:43:51 -0600

Hello, Wizarders! sorry that I haven't posted anything in a while. Lots of other stuff going on. If any of you are getting withdrawal symptoms for circuits and equations, though, why not check out EDN (http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4398669/The-Class-i-low-distortion-audio-output-stage--Part-2- is part 2, which links back to part 1) for the first two parts of my four-parter on an audio power output stage I started designing a long time ago - before Cypress was founded, so that's when real dinosaurs still walked the Earth! The last two parts will be along during the next month or so.

When I finally get round to building one of these again, I'm sure that PSoC will be a fantastic supervisory controller, with its flexible analog and programmable digital hardware. This will allow the monitoring and calculation of temperatures, power dissipation levels, overload and operating points, built-in timers, power quality analysis, earth loop impedance measurement... so many useful things a great audio power amp might need. If any of you out there are doing or have done any power amplifier supervisory stuff, check out PSoC3, and ping me if you have any questions.

After I've got over the shock of the beginning of the new quarter, my next published Filter Wizard article will likely be on circuits that generate voltage gain using only pure lumped resistors and capacitors. Useful? Don't know, but certainly unexpected! best / Kendall

Making PSoC talk to your computer.

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 09:28:47 -0600

Let's face it, when you create a USB device, you will want it to communicate with some form of a host interface. Using a UART-USB interface is one way to go about this and COM ports are among the more familiar interfaces. But have you ever tried to develop a device that uses a USB COM port in a custom application, that functions across multiple operating systems, while not running into difficulties?

It used to be with creating host applications for a computer, you only needed to create one application for Windows. In today's world, operating systems such as Mac OS X and Linux are growing in popularity. Additionally, mobile devices running Android are increasing in numbers with the continuous production of smart phones and tablets. With so many different operating systems available, the need for cross platform functionality is ever so more important.

What if I told you there was a way to develop a PSoC 3 or PSoC 5 application to easily stream general data across USB and provide the foundation for cross platform functionality? Using the Human Interface Device (HID) class makes this possible. Yes, the same class that is used for mice and keyboards is breaking free from the stereotype that it is limited to a device that requires some form of human interface, such as a button press, to function.

The truth is that the HID protocol provides the perfect foundation to shuttle data back and forth between a PSoC and computer, in applications where high speed data transfer is not required. Best of all is that implementing a generic HID on PSoC is easy to do and creating Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) on various operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux is fairly straightforward. AN82072: PSoC 3 / PSoC 5 USB General Data Transfer with Standard OS Drivers will guide you through all the steps required to do so. You will have your PSoC streaming data to a host operating system of your choice in no time!

You can download this application note from the following link.
AN82072 - PSoC® 3 / PSoC 5 USB General Data Transfer with Standard OS Drivers

By Robert Murphy

Engineering Stories

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:37:11 -0600

There are three types of stories that you can tell what they are by how they start:

Children s stories
Navy stories
Engineering stories

Children s stories start with Once upon a time and end up happily ever after.

Navy stories start with Now this ain t no sh*t and end up with a big laugh.

Engineering stories start with All you have to do is and they never end up well.

Never!

PSoC Creator 2.1 Component Pack 4 Released

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 09:49:35 -0600

PSoC Creator 2.1 Component Pack 4 (CP4) adds 6 new components to Cypress growing library of inbuilt virtual chips or components. To those not familiar with Component Packs they are component-only enhancements to PSoC Creator. So what are these new components?

1. SMBus and PMBus

These complete Cypress power supervision portfolio for PSoC 3 and PSoC 5, by adding SMBus and PMBus slave communication capability to PSoC. Learn more about PSoC Power Supervision solution at http://www.cypress.com/go/PowerSupervision.

2. Debouncer

This is probably going to be the most-used component out of all six new releases because it is the easiest and best way to debounce and edge-detect switch inputs to your system, without using your CPU.

3. Glitch Filter

The hardware glitch filter removes unwanted pulses from a digital signal, and is a frequently used function in digital designs. The Glitch Filter v2.0 is a complete re-design from its previous version which was available as a PSoC Creator concept component.

For more information on switch-debouncing and glitch-filtering, see AN60024.

4. RTD Calculator

5. Thermistor Calculator

6. Thermocouple Calculator

These three new components add easy-to-implement temperature-sensing capability to PSoC Creator s component library. Find out more about temperature-sensing with PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 through the suite of application notes available:

· AN70698 - Temperature Measurement with RTDs

· AN66477 - Temperature Measurement with Thermistor

· AN75511 - Temperature Measurement with Thermocouples

In addition, you may be interested in:

· AN60590 - Temperature Measurement Using Diode

· AN65977 - Creating an Interface to a TMP05/TMP06 Digital Temperature Sensor

CP4 also provides an update to the I2C Master/Multi-Master/Slave component, with the addition of an I2C bus multiplexing feature, besides for some minor tweaks.

I have already installed CP4 on my system especially for the debouncer. Many of you may want one or more of these new components, or the more robust I2C. To get all of these, please download Component Pack 4.

New Getting Started Video for PSoC Designer

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:26:59 -0600

We've updated the PSoC Designer "Getting Started" video to show off some of the features of the new version 5.3. Join Ganesh Raja and see how easy it is to build your first project:

http://www.cypress.com/?rID=70468

Also, don't miss episode 2 of PSoC Today's continuing series on PSoC Designer 5.3:

http://www.cypress.com/?rID=70509

Arduino Friendly PSoC?

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:22:16 -0600

Here is link to an article on embedded.com regarding a new PSoC Project!

PSoC Designer 5.3 Available Now!

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:37:16 -0600

You may have noticed that Cypress Update Manager has notified you of a new PSoC Designer download available. We know a lot of Designer users want to hang on to their existing version of the software, so please be aware that installing PSoC Designer 5.3 will not impact the functionality of any previously installed versions of Designer. We think you'll like the improved the IDE, new user modules and bug fixes, but you can stick with your existing software as long as you like.

Getting Started With PSoC Designer

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 08:59:28 -0600

Here is a video that I created for Getting started with PSoC Designer 5.3. View it in 720p or 1080p for higher quality.

Creator Components Aren’t Just For Hardware

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:56:55 -0600

Often I write programs that can have multiple modes based on a constant or I just want to vary a parameter and rerun the program. Since the schematic is the main view of the project, it is often beneficial to see the current constants or parameters right on the schematic. This is done for components such as the DelSig ADC where the resolution of the first configuration is displayed. This same concept can be used for software only constants as well.

The Constants component is a very simple way to display constants used by the firmware on the schematic. Also this allows you to change firmware parameters without changing actual source code. I have created an example component that allows the user to assigns names and values to up to four constants. The component consists of just a symbol and a header file. Below is what the component would look like on the schematic. The four constants have already been assigned names, DEBUG, LOOP, DELAY, and COUNT, as well as values.

Figure 1 Example Project Constants Component

The configuration is very simple. The user simply assigns a name and value. The header file is automatically generated. The constants defined below will have the instance name pre-pended on the name. For example, the LOOP constant name will be MyConstants_LOOP .

Figure 2 Configuration dialog of Project Constants Component

The generated header file would look like this using the configuration in Figure 2.

 #defineMyConstants_DEBUG   0

#defineMyConstants_LOOP   100

#defineMyConstants_DELAY   95

#defineMyConstants_COUNT   5

The constants can then be used throughout the firmware, just by including the MyConstants.h header file. Below is an example of a code snippet that makes use of the constants provided in MyConstants.h.

 for(i = 0; i < MyConstants_LOOP; i++)

{

      LCD_Position(1,5);  
   
      LCD_PrintHexUint8(i);

      CyDelay(MyConstants_DELAY);

}

The same concept could be used for user created components for a specific application. For example a project phase component that displays on the schematic whether the project is in the release or debug phase. The header file would contain the #define statements for the different mode.

Figure 3 Project Phase Component

Other similar components can easily be generated by the user, with just some simple basic knowledge of how to create components. For example if you wanted a waveform generator to change the waveform without changing code.

Figure 4 Application Mode Example

The header file would contain the following:

 #defineAppMode_Mode     2

#defineAppMode_SINE     0

#defineAppMode_SQUARE   1

#defineAppMode_TRIANGLE 2

The firmware would look at the AppMode_Mode constant to determine which waveform to generate, requiring no code changes.

This is just one simple trick to make a project more flexible and easier to change its operation without editing code. It is also a good way to demo an application to a customer. The user can then try different operations without editing code. The MyConst component is generic and can be used with any project. The ProjectPhase and AppMode components can easily be created by the user in a matter of minutes.

By Mark Hastings

PSoC Designer 5.3 Featured in PSoC Today!

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 23:30:11 -0600

Check out the first of five webisodes on the new PSoC Designer 5.3 as Dave Van Ess interviews Paul Clark, Product Manager for PSoC Designer. PSoC Today site is here:

http://www.cypress.com/go/psoctoday

or go straight to the video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChNLMlbvh0A&feature=share&list=UUOPwgpx4mNwPULlfdCn1xiQ

A Really Clever Product

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:40:21 -0600

I have been talking with the folks at Esterline Interface Technologies. They have an interesting PSoC based keyboard for medical applications. It s called the Medigenic infection control keyboard. It has a flat wipe able (no crevice) keyboard. It is set up to count key presses and elapsed time to notify the user to clean the keyboard. After cleanng, the PSoC does conductive test to see it has really been cleaned. The Dirty light does not prevent the user from entering data, but the flashing is a dead give away that the user is violating protocol. Here is a video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYQ5ZZIbn_Q&feature=related

I used to design medical equipment and it was pretty gross the kind of stuff you would find in crevices around the keys. I guess I will be paying attention to the staff at my doctor s the next time I come in for a checkup! (For my proctologist I want that keyboard cleaned every five key strokes)

Seriously I could see this idea being used at any public data entry kiosk. (cash machines, airport check in, etc)

New Component Pack Available Now - 6 New Components!

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:24:30 -0600

This component pack extends the PSoC Creator 2.1 software with new components providing solutions for temperature calculation, SMBus and PMBus communications, and digital signal filtering.

Temperature Calculators: Three new components compute the temperature based on measurements from a thermocouple, thermistor, or RTD (Resistance Temperature Detector).

SMBus and PMBus Slave: This communication component is built on top of an I2C physical layer and can be configured for System Management (SMBus) or Power Management (PMBus) applications.

Debouncer: This is a hardware-based alternative debouncer to firmware debouncing that eliminates unwanted oscillations on digital input signals, such as those encountered with mechanical buttons and switches.

Glitch Filter: Another hardware-based alternative to firmware processing, the Glitch Filter eliminates unwanted short pulses (glitches) on digital input signals, which solves the problem of false signal transitions in noisy environments.

The fastest option for installing a component update is by using the Cypress Update Manager which typically takes less than 2 minutes to install with a high-speed Internet connection.
You can find the Update Manager under: All Programs - Cypress - Cypress Update Manager
This program will guide you through the component update process.
Optionally, you can always view the release notes and download the full installer at www.cypress.com/go/PSoCCreator.

Component Datasheets available in Chinese and Japanese!

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:59:12 -0600

Component datasheets are now available online for the Chinese and Japanese languages in addition to the English versions previously available.

You can view these translated datasheets by right-clicking on them in the Component Catalog and selecting Open Component Webpage or by clicking Help->Documentation and either Japanese or Chinese Language. Components are "virtual chips" represented by an icon in the PSoC Creator IDE and as such require the same amount of detailed information as discrete ICs about their implementation, APIs and theory of operation to enable you to take advantage of the capabilities they provide. Further, in a future release of PSoC Creator we will enable you to install the Chinese or Japanese versions of the component datasheets along with the tool simplifying access to this documentation. If you have any feedback along the way, please contact us at psoc_creator_feedback@cypress.com.

Vote for your favorite PSoC!

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 01:55:16 -0600

PSoC35

PSoC 3, PSoC 5 and PSoC Creator are finalists for EDN magazine's Innovation Awards. Vote at: http://bit.ly/bUkQhb . PSoC Rocks! #psoc

Heading to UNCC tomorrow for PSoC 3 workshops Friday and Saturday. If you are already going to IEEE South East CON come by and check us out.

Cheers

Starter Design Templates

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 00:45:40 -0600

This new feature is most important to new and inexperienced users because starting with PSoC Creator 2.1 you don't have to start with an empty design canvas any more. Once Creator is open go to "File -- New -- Project" in PSoC Creator 2.1. The tool offers 6 Starter Designs for PSoC 3 and PSoC 5. It is easier to write a program around a proven solution template, so try it out, become more productive faster. That is what PSoC Creator is all about; productivity, short time to market, easy hardware / software co-development and unique solutions.

Read more about Starter Designs in the Release Notes of PSoC Creator 2.1

New application Note: AN82250 - Introduction to PSoC PLD Design

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 09:25:42 -0600

Do you want to use the Programmable Logic Device (PLD) capability of PSoC, and don t know where to start? Or need to create your own custom digital components in PSoC Universal Digital Blocks (UDBs)? Then look no further.

AN82250: PSoC® 3 and PSoC 5 Implementing Programmable Logic Designs An Introduction provides you with an ideal start towards digital mastery with PSoC UDBs. By introducing the PLD architecture, and then walking through an example project, AN82250 teaches you how to create Verilog components in PSoC Creator. For those interested in advanced features of PSoC PLDs and PSoC Creator, these are touched upon in the additional reading material in the appendices.

This application note is actually the second of a three-part series of application notes written to help you learn and exploit PSoC s powerful digital capabilities. This series begins with the introductory AN81623: Digital Design Best Practices, continues with the PLD-centric AN82250, and culminates with the datapath-focused AN81256 : Designing PSoC Creator Components With UDB Datapaths.

After reading AN82250, you will be able to implement moderately complex PLD-based components in PSoC Creator. AN82250 also provides a good gateway to building more complex Datapath-based designs dealt with in AN82156. So what are you waiting for? Download AN82250 now!

By Antonio De Lima Fernandes

Jon Moeller ROCKS!

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 15:42:19 -0600

I found a Kickstarter proposal from a young man studying for his Masters at Texas A&M. He has built an Arduino equivalent PSoC. He calls it freesoc and it looks pretty cool.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/18182218/freesoc-and-freesoc-mini

I was impressed with his video and, in a nut shell; it explained why I am still hoofing around the world, after 12 years, pushing PSoC. I just sponsored him for $100 so I will get a couple of his freesoc. I figure it is a fairly inexpensive investment. I will try to get him on PSoC Today.

Kickstart is a funding scheme that allows people to invest in someone else s idea. Sort of collective micro funding.

So go look at his proposal and support him if you wish!

PSoC Rocks, Texas A&M Rocks, and so does Jon Moeller

Designing PSoC Creator Components With UDB Datapaths

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 13:17:28 -0600

New Application Note AN82156:

AN82156 - Designing PSoC Creator Components With UDB Datapaths

Have you ever wondered how PSOC Creator manages to pack so much functionality into its components? Chances are the component uses the UDBs in PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 to perform calculations, comparisons, and data management. The "secret sauce" in the UDBs is the datapath - a configurable 8-bit ALU designed to offload tasks from the CPU. The datapaths, when chained together across UDBs and/or combined with PLD logic, are powerful tools to have at your disposal. Understanding how to use them is an essential part of creating optimized PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 solutions.

AN82156 explains how the datapaths work and teaches you how to develop PSoC Creator components that use the UDB datapaths. It contains step-by-step instructions for creating your first datapath component. The appendices also review the Datapath Configuration Tool and the Verilog code it generates.

If you are planning to create a custom component, you should become familiar with the datapath and the advantages it can offer. AN82156, its example projects, and related on-demand training videos are available today from the Cypress.com website.

AN82156 Landing Page:

AN82156 - Designing PSoC Creator Components With UDB Datapaths

On-Demand Videos:

By Greg Reynolds

Introduction to PSoC 1 Architecture and Design Flow

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:43:04 -0600

Here is a video I made on introduction to PSoC 1 architecture and design flow.

PSoC on Kickstarter!

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 16:36:54 -0600

I was at the Open Source Hardware Summit in NYC this week where Jon Moeller introduced his freeSOC board. Find out more about the freeSOC . If you like what you see, you can get one on his Kickstarter page.

Power Line Transceiver User Module Now Available on CY8C29xxx Devices!

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:07:29 -0600

We've just made power line communication easier than ever. With the today's release of PSoC Designer 5.3, you can now use the PLT (Power Line Transceiver) user module on any CY8C29xxx family device.

Brand New Device Catalog Coming

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 23:54:35 -0600

The next major improvement in Designer 5.3 is the device catalog. We ve completely rewritten how you select your device to make it quicker and easier to find the right PSoC for your project. You can now filter the list based on device characteristics (such as pin count, package or available peripherals) or by typing in a substring of your part number. In the image below, for example, the list has been filtered to show only the 28pin SSOP CapSensePlus parts (they support CapSense and 4 or more digital blocks).

On the right side of the window, you can see the pinout and list of supported user modules for the selected device.

Note for power users: if you know a portion of the MPN for the device you want to use, you can also just type it in the Find box in the top of the window, and the list will filter live as you type. You can also right-click a device in the catalog to add it to your favorites. These two methods are the quickest ways to select your device.

PSoC1, Show Me Something Clever. I dare you!

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 11:36:13 -0600

I just finished an article for Electronic Design Magazine where I talk about how I learned a lot of clever tricks from other Engineers. Well I am interested in the tricks you know about PoSC1. You can either send them directly to me and I can later take credit for them, or you can post them on the PSoC1 forum and become famous. If you post something really clever, I will either send you a kit or a certificate, on really nice paper, publicly stating that you are smarter them me. It is signed by me and suitable for framing.

Truly linear phase filters - fixing that stopband phase flipping

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 10:21:52 -0600

For all of you who have been waiting patiently for the how-to-fix-it following the last Filter Wizard on linear phase not actually being phase response that fits onto a single straight line... here's how to fix it! Well, a few ways, anyway. http://www.analog-eetimes.com/en/turn-linear-phase-into-truly-linear-phase.html?cmp_id=71&news_id=222903957. Enjoy!

PSoC Designer - Getting Started Video

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 03:54:39 -0600

Note: As we constantly update our design tools with cutting-edge features, we realize some of the content of this training material may now be obsolete. Please bear with us while we upgrade our training content relative to this.

Here is a video on PSoC Designer Getting Started. This shows how to create a PSoC Designer project to measure an analog signal using a 12 bit ADC and display on LCD. Also a PWM is configured for 1Hz output to blink an LED. Write to me your feedback to graa@cypress.com

PSoC1 Getting Started Debugging - Part 1 - The Hardware

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 04:15:04 -0600

Here is a video I made for Getting Started debugging a PSoC1 project. This is a two part series and in the first part, I have covered the hardware requirements. The second part that covers the PSoC Designer part of the debugging will follow soon.

Application note "AN73212 - Debugging with PSoC1" provides all the information required to debug a PSoC1 project.

Happy Debugging!

when FIRs flip your phase...

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 03:24:52 -0600

Here's something that passes most filter users by - the flipping of stopband phase in a FIR filter. The first part of a two-parter Filter Wizard is now up on EETEu, go check it out! http://www.analog-eetimes.com/en/how-linear-phase-filters-can-still-cause-phase-distortion.html?cmp_id=71&news_id=222903874. A good demonstration of using PSoC Creator's Filter customizer as a tool to probe what goes on with your filters. best / Kendall