Minos 2010 Draft Schedule

minos micromouse logoWith Minos only a couple of weeks away, we now have a draft programme of presentations. If you have not yet registered, there is still time or you can do so on the day. I’m sure we can squeeze in some more speakers, so if you would like a slot to show off your latest toy then please let me know and we’ll add you. I’ve put a show-and-tell session at the end to allow people to just stand up for a minute or two.

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APEC 2010 contest report

The twenty fourth annual APEC MicroMouse Contest was held at the Palm Springs Convention Center in Palm Springs, California on February 22, 2010. A record total of 24 mice were registered for the contest, including 22 foreign entries. BR10SW from Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore came in first with the best…

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Minos 2010 Registration now open

Minos is upon us. It is now possible to register for the 2010 Minos event which takes place on April 10th and 11th at Royal Holloway, University of London. Following the success of all the previous MINOS events, we are hosting the tenth weekend conference on micromouse design including a competition.

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ARM Cortex text book

The Definitive Guide to the ARM Cortex-M3
Joseph Yiu
This is one of a very small number of books about the relatively new ARM processor, the Cortex-M3. Now in a second edition, the book covers all the essential information required to get to grips with this elegant and powerful core and concentrates mostly on the core itself. While several manufacturers, such as ST, Luminary, Atmel and Philips among others, implement Cortex-M3 based processors, they differ in the range of peripherals connected to the core. At its heart, each uses the same logic, registers and instruction set to get the job done.

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APEC is coming

The annual APEC micromouse will soon be upon us. This year the contest will be held in Palm Springs, California at the Palm Springs Convention Center on Monday, February 22nd. APEC is the Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition. It is held annually in the US in a different venue each year. I believe it tends to be in the warmer parts of the USA to provide a bit of winter relief…

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Imperial College Robot Team aims for Eurobot

Imperial College are intending to field a team in the Eurobot competition in May 2010. On their public blog they are busy providing interesting updates on their progress. For those not familiar with Eurobot, this is a large, international amateur robotics contest that has been running since 1998.Find out more…

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STM32 USART basics

A USART is a universal synchronous asynchronous receiver transmitter. A serial port if you like. On the STM32 however, it really is universal. This peripheral has a raft of features for a huge range of serial protocols including all the usual asynchronous modes plus IrDA, LIN, Smartcard Emulation and the ability to function as an SPI port…

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ARM STM32 JTAG

JTAG is a common standard for communicating with modern electronic devices like FPGAs and microcontrollers. A JTAG connection will allow you to do in-circuit debugging in a bewildering variety of ways and will generally allow you to program your device. The standard, apparently, defines five connections for this purpose. Add in power and ground and you have a minimum of 7 connections needed to implement JTAG. The trick is getting them delivered to your board or device…

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