At Tibbo, Modules Help Make More Modules

In the true spirit of Japanese cartoons about robots and other cool stuff, we at Tibbo use our own technology to produce more of the same. What you’re looking at is a test bed for our EM100 modules. This is controlled by the the EM1000TEV system (using the EM1000 module).

The EM1000TEV, running a simple Tibbo BASIC application, is making sure that each orange module gets a proper and unique MAC address. This is just one of the examples of how our technology can automates production and testing of electronic devices.

Security, Security, Security…

Hello there folks,

it is a holiday season all around the world but we are not slowing down. It looks like Q1 will bring our BASIC-programmable products several important security-related enhancements. Here is just some stuff we are working on: additional security modes for Wi-Fi (cause WEP is cr**), SSL support, and protection of customer’s Tibbo BASIC application loaded into the module.

Stay tuned…

SSI Object is Ready!

Busy day here at Tibbo folks. We’ve just assembled TIDE V2.20.16 (see experimental build at the bottom of the page). This includes the EM1000 firmware and platform files supporting our new Synchronous Serial Interface object.

Do SPI, I2C, as well as custom clock/data interfaces using this new object. You get four independent channels, programmable bitrate, endianness, clock phases, etc. you have a total flexibility needed to work with RTCs, EEPROMs, DACs, ADCs, and other serial ICs.

With speed reaching 1.2MBit/sec, the SSI object gives you performance that far exceeds anything you were able to do with direct bit-banging using IO object. Any I/O pins of your module can be used as CLOCK, DO (MOSI), or DI (MISO) lines. Moreover, the DO and DI lines can be mapped onto a single physical I/O line, which is necessary for I2C.

Stay tuned for actual code examples. We’ve got some serial ICs we are going to try…

Note: this excellent Wikipedia article explains SPI modes 0-3.

TIDE = Speed (re: Modbus)

Case in question: our own in-house test of an energy meter with RS485 interface running MODBUS protocol.

One of our potential Customers wanted to us to create a small Tibbo BASIC app that would query the meter and show the data on a simple HTML page. Two hours later (spent mostly on connecting and arranging things) we had a working application prototype. The source code is published here.

We didn’t go as far as to format the data (in KWatts, etc.). This demo displays raw contents of MODBUS registers.

Now that we’ve got Wi-Fi working (and ZigBee coming) it is possible to use our modules in power metering applications — a huge market worth gazillions*.

* Based on numerous reports by multiple totally trustworthy sources, or so we remember.

Bit-banging to get easier/faster

Here is a quick update re what’s been going on at our lab.

We are working (and will soon publish) a new object called SSI. That stands for “Synchronous Serial Interface”.

Pretty soon you will be able to do speedy data exchange with externally connected I2C, SPI, etc. devices such as EEPROMS, RTCs, ADC/DACs, etc.etc. Manyfold increase in tx/rx speeds compared with bit banging based on T-BASIC code. We have this working at 1.5MBit/second*.

You will get 4 independent channels with multiple programmable options. Each channel can use any I/O lines you wish to use. It is all configurable.

This is coming to your EM1000, EM1202, and EM1206 devices pretty soon. Stay tuned for updates.

*not a sustained throughput metric