Tero's blog

Ahven 2.2 released

2012-03-05T10:52:00Z

This (2.2) is long overdue bug fix release for Ahven. Ahven.XML_Runner had same bug as Ahven.Text_Runner and this release fixes it. Now your XML test result files should have skipped tests correctly reported. Another bigger change is API documentation generator change from Adabrowse to Sphinx.

As usual, you can get the source from Sourceforge.

Building custom Arduino LCD shield to be used with AVR-Ada

2012-02-28T00:30:00Z

Using 16x2 LCD display for text output purposes is sometimes more convenient than serial communication via UART/USB.

But if you do the wiring on the breadboard you get quite a mess:

So, I wanted to create a shield for Arduino to make the LCD usage easier.

AVR-Ada includes library for HD44780-compatible LCD using 4 bits for data.

That means we need to use 4 pins for data, one pin for Enable signal, and one pin for Register select. Wiring on the shield therefore is something like this:

We also want a trimpot on the shield:

The middle pin of the trimpot is connected to the LCD pin 3 (Contrast adjust), other two pins are connected to GND and VCC.

After placing the wires and the trimpot, we put the display there:

Finally, using code from my Bitbucket repository, we get some visible text:

Some notes:

I used here Arduino UNO r3 with Arduino Protoshield r3.
The Ada code requires AVR-Ada 1.2 (the latest development version from AVR-Ada git repository at the moment).
If you fear that the LCD display might get damaged, you probably don't want to solder it directly to the proto shield but place female header between instead.
My LCD display did not have working backlight, so I left those pins (15,16) disconnected.

Year 2011 summary

2012-01-09T20:00:00Z

When it comes to Ada and its community, last year (2011) was pretty interesting to me. Here is a small summary what I managed to do:

I did three Ahven releases (1.9, 2.0, and 2.1). I had hoped to do yet another (2.2), but didn't find time for that.
I became AVR-Ada contributor. I started playing with Arduino and AVRs some years ago (2009, I think) and AVR-Ada is quite pleasant to use on them, after you overcome the installation issues.
Ada Connection 2011 conference in June was the real highlight of the year. I saw a lot of Adaists face to face and they are no longer only random email addresses on newsgroups and mailing lists.
Dan Eilers kindly accepted me as second writer for his papers about ACATS (and Ahven). The first paper was presented at Ada Connection 2011 and the second at SigAda 2011.
I registered domain http://www.ada-language.com/ (.net, .info, .org also). For now, the content there is pretty light, but I do have some plans for it.
My Twitter and Identi.ca client Beautiful Ladybird is progressing nicely (although somewhat slowly). Homeline and status update functionality works from the command line, I just need to do UI with Claw and GtkAda.
Jdaughter library for reading and writing JSON data was a by-product of Ladybird. It is still missing some features, but I can parse Twitter and Identi.ca feeds with it.

Finally, here some pictures from AdaConnection 2011 in Edinburgh:

The John McIntyre conference centre (rainy day, like most days that week):

Jacob Sparre Andersen giving a presentation:

I also visited Holyrood Park, which was nearby:

PS. Notice, that Ada Information Clearinghouse is showing videos from the conference. Be sure to check them out!

Oops, I really messed up skipped tests in Ahven 2.0

2011-10-11T15:06:00Z

I managed to mess up skipped test reporting also in the XML test result reporter. I filed an issue about it.

Since the bug appears only if you skip some tests and use the XML result format, it isn't really fatal and therefore I won't immediately fix it. However, I do plan to create a bug fix release within a month or two.

Version numbers are cheap - Ahven 2.1 released

2011-09-24T15:06:00Z

A small but unfortunate and annoying bug slipped into Ahven 2.0 release: Ahven.Text_Runner silently ignored all skipped tests and did not report them. This is now fixed in Ahven 2.1.

Again, you can get the source from Sourceforge.

Ahven 2.0 released

2011-09-23T16:07:00Z

I just released Ahven 2.0. You can grab the source code from SourceForge.

This release includes two new features:

Test timeouts
Test skipping programmatically

When running tests, you can specify a timeout value for the tests. If test runs longer than the timeout value, the test is stopped. This is implemented by running each test in a separate task and aborting the task if the test runs too long.

The feature of course depends on code being abortable, which might not be the case always. For example, many Ada compilers do not abort task which runs in a tight loop and does some calculations, like "loop Counter := Counter + 1;end loop;".

The another feature is simple procedure called "Skip". Calling this inside a test allows you to skip the test and move to the next one. The skipped test is considered as passed, but some test runners might add extra "SKIP" info for them.

Adadomain merged to sphinx-contrib

2011-08-04T15:07:00Z

I merged my Adadomain to sphinx-contrib. This way it is one step more official extension.

For those who do not know: Sphinx is a documentation tool and it is used in Ahven. In release 1.9 of Ahven, I included the generated HTML documentation to the tarball, but I might emit the generated content from 2.0 since the Adadomain extension is now merged.

Reading I2C EEPROM with Arduino and AVR-Ada

2011-05-21T16:43:00Z

Recently, I wanted to access I2C EEPROM with Arduino. However, AVR-Ada (1.1.0) provides no support for I2C interface which many AVR processors and Arduinos have. So, I had to write a package ("Two_Wire") for it.

Example code is available at arduino-eeprom repository and below is the used circuit:

The package is far from perfect, but it should provide a place to start if someone needs to use I2C with AVR-Ada.

Small attiny13 development board

2011-05-07T15:25:00Z

To test AVR-Ada with small attiny13 processors, I made a little "development board" for me:

It can run hello example out of the box and blink the green led. The red led indicates power.

Ahven 1.9 released

2011-04-14T16:03:00Z

I finally managed to release Ahven 1.9 (download zip).

This is a small bug fix release only to allow Ahven compile with GNAT GPL 2010 also.

If everything goes as planned, the next 2.0 will include new features, like timeouts, improved documentation, and possibly an ability to skip some tests.

Arduino Mega 2560 and Attiny13a/Attiny2313 support to AVR-Ada

2011-02-14T22:04:00Z

I recently got write access to the AVR-Ada repository and now I have pushed my changes there.

These changes improve support for Atmega2560, Attiny13a, and Attiny2313 processors. Attiny13a and Attiny2313 are pretty uninteresting, although common, AVR processors. I happen to use them in my projects because they are cheap and that is why I also wanted better support for them.

On the other hand, Atmega2560 processor is used in the new Arduino Mega 2560 board. This means that next release of AVR-Ada will support the new Mega board out of the box. Some bits, like support for timers 3..5 and extra UARTS, are missing, but at the moment Atmega2560 should have about same features as Atmega328p supported.

Ada bindings for cURL

2010-10-13T22:23:00Z

I put my Ada bindings to libcurl available at http://hg.stronglytyped.org/curl-ada/. At the moment, they are pretty simple and contain only a small subset of libcurl, but they allow me to fetch data over http/https and that is good enough for my current purposes.

The bindings should work with GNAT and Janus/Ada on 32-bit and 64-bit systems. The build scripts are less than optimal, but with some effort you should figure out how to build the bindings

Arduino Ethernet Shield support for AVR-Ada

2010-09-20T20:53:00Z

I finally got my code working with Arduino Ethernet Shield and put it available at http://bitbucket.org/tkoskine/arduino-ethernet/.

Only receiving data via TCP client connections is supported, but I plan to improve the library as my time permits.

AVR-Ada 1.1.0 port with AVR-GCC 4.3.2 for OpenBSD

2010-09-01T07:00:00Z

I updated my AVR-Ada port to version 1.1.0. It consists of three parts:

AVR-GCC 4.3.2 with Ada support - http://bitbucket.org/tkoskine/avr-gcc

AVR-Ada 1.1.0 runtime files - http://bitbucket.org/tkoskine/avr-ada-rts

AVR-Ada 1.1.0 library files (AVR.* packages) - http://bitbucket.org/tkoskine/avr-ada-lib

For now, only Arduino (atmega328p) is supported in avr-ada-lib package.

Documentation using Sphinx

2010-08-06T21:04:00Z

I recently converted Ahven's DocBook documentation to use Sphinx and reStructuredText.

I did this to make it simpler to write documentation. reStructuredText is almost like plain text, so in theory it should be easier than XML-based DocBook.

As an unfortunate side-effect, this change introduces Python dependency to the project, while on the other hand, I get rid of Java-based XSLT tool dependencies.

Ahven 1.8 released

2010-06-02T20:22:00Z

Today I released Ahven 1.8. You can find release notes from here.