Unexpected naming conventions

In IEC 61131-3 compatible programming environments, string manipulation have many inbuilt functions. Unfortunately, sometimes the routines are a little bit hard to find. Even though it is possible to do a search through available functions, just searching by name sometimes won't …

How many bytes does time and weight need?

In my previous article I have explained how to divide the memory into equal parts, so called blocks. I have concluded that to utilize the entire memory, I could divide it into 256 blocks of 16 bytes or maybe even 128 blocks for 32 bytes. Having full 32 bytes seem like the overkil…

Dividing the AT24C32 EEPROM space

The AT24C32 EEPROM that comes with the DS3132 RTC module has 32kbit of space, meaning it can store 4096 bytes or 4096 characters when using an 8-bit character encoding like ASCII. To save some useful data on it, we need to divide it into equal blocks that would contain the data. …

Notes on circular queue data structure

While researching the method to store the data into the electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) I have found out the problem is not as straightforward as I have previously thought. Consider the following requirements: Store the last N measured variables in o…

Wakeup Pro Micro 3.3V with DS3132 module

After a previous few days of struggling to get the Arduino Pro Micro 3.3V version to get to sleep and wakeup I've finally had an epiphany and got the desired result to surface up. It was made possible by the massive amount of documented work I have finally stumbled upon. Links ar…

Use pin 7 to wakeup an Arduino Pro Micro

When designing a circuit that is meant to run on low power, I have found that is is a good start to choose a microcontroller board that is has a lower base voltage level than 5V. The reasons are twofold. First, a lower voltage means lower power consumed, period. Second, there are…

Fix platformio avrdude input/output error

I have get to work on the very low priority side project with the codename bee weighter yesterday. It is not meant to weight the actual bees, but instead their entire house to determine if it is a full of honey that could be extracted. However, I got greatly slowed down by the un…