Cutting the Ribbon (and the flashing of LED)
// June 15th, 2009 // London Diary
I was rightly furious when I found that a courier that I was anxiously waiting for was not delivered to me because apparently I wasn’t home when a man rang my doorbell to deliver the package. I was furious because I was in fact at home and it was impossible to miss the doorbell. The courier company should have left a note in my mailbox, which was not to be found anywhere. I called them up asking for the delivery which they promised to deliver ‘again’ on the next working day. Since I made this call on Friday, I was not in a mood to wait for two days and asked for self-collection option. Thankfully, I was able to get my package early Saturday morning. The package is shown in the picture below.
Slowly, I unpacked the box removing most of rubbish filled in to the stuff the box and finally took out the box I was looking for.
This is, as you can see, something to do with some Microcontrollers. This in fact is the development kit on which I will be working during the course of my project. It contains the debugger/programmer for the 100-pin MSP430F5xx series microcontroller which are ultra-low power, very small, and highly efficient microcontrollers from Texas Instruments.
The package came with two microcontrollers and the two pictures below can give you a good idea of the size.
Now, I kept on admiring the little chip for few minutes, but the fun part is to start playing with it. Programming is fun, and getting a desired output from a program gives a very satisfying feeling. I remember writing my Hello World program. Almost all software programming tutorials begin with a Hello World program. In the world of hardware flashing a LED is similar to Hello World in software. I also remember flashing the LED when I used a microcontroller for the first time. The remarkable thing here is that the feeling and excitement never dies down. I felt almost the same thing when I wrote Symbian Hello World few months ago, compared to what I felt when I wrote my first ever Hello World in C.
So, the first task here in this MSP430 MCU was to flash an LED. I felt excited having been able to do that successfully, after a number of failed attempts (they never work the first time!!). Out of excitement, I recorded this moment of excitement. Here is a video of the inaugration of my MSP430 MCU, and my project as well.
14 Responses to “Cutting the Ribbon (and the flashing of LED)”
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That is sooo coool
I know Hello World is like, the first step. But it’s different on every platform isnt it 
Best of luck! And this bit should override any furious-ness of the delivery failure
Majjal hai jo kuch bhi samajh aya ho :/
thats the only thing i envy the engineers for; they can use tons & tons of terms which are incomprehensible to other ppl
It looks ultra low power but u forgot to mention how much power it takes.
I would like to see few pics of development board.
@pinky…what ever u had said applies to all professional fields other than management. My guess is u belong to field of management.
oh my god! oh my god! oh my god!
ur dissertation project!? wow, good luck!
@Uni: I’ve already forgotten about the delivery part
Yeah, being different on each platform results in the renewed excitement each time.
@Pinky: That’s the only thing you envy the engineers for? Comeon there are more, engineers are smart too, and intelligent
BTW even the meds and biz ppl use terminology which no one can understand, but yeah we’re special 
@MAK: It requires 165 microAmps/MHz at 8 MHz of clock speed in active mode. But there are many modes, and usually the MCU will be in stand by mode when not processing and in that case current requirement comes down to 2.60 microAmps with the supply voltage being around 3.0V…u will see the pics soon, i need to do some soldering and add my own components first
@Leena: sab k god hain, sirf aapke nai
thanks, btw 
itna bara dabba, itna choti see chip!!
Lol @ Farooq! Farooq, tu ne MAR-4SM ka chip nahi dekha! That thing was tiny!
Anas, yar kya tu ne NERC ke zillat-aamoz din yaad dila diyay!
Fayyaz’s words are still ringing in my head as he woke me up with a “Dekh, ab phatay ga!” Of course, he was talking about the MOSFETs in our H-bridges as he held them to my nose while I was sleeping! 
programming is fun?! :’(
Good luck on your project!
@farooqk: lol haan yaar kch zyada hi choti hai :S
@Absar: i still feel u guys shud hv gone to the stage and fried some MOSFETs live
@Gaia: thanks…programming is THE best part of my engineering career
Those were the days (NERC days)…one if the best memories i had.
*of
yup..the robotic age