freemcan

Contents

• What is freemcan?
  • Why the name?
  • The Plan
• Building
  • Software Requirements
• Usage
• The License
• Hacking
  • Subdirectory Contents
• Ideas

What is freemcan?

Originally the basic approach of freeMCAn was to implement a multi channel analyzer software used for e.g. gamma spectroscopy on easy obtainable silicon chips like ATMega (Atmel) or ADuC (Analog Devices). Improved over time freeMCAn is no longer only a so called "multi channel analyzer". Moreover it employs several functions of a data logger like data time recording (the software provides an oscilloscope functionality) and statistics counting.

There are two different software branches available:

• Related to the ADuC7026 (Analog Devices) asic w. ARM7TDMI core: https://github.com/samplemaker/FreeMCAn_on_ADUC7026
• Related to the ATMega644 (Atmel) silicon device: https://github.com/ndim/freemcan

Why the name?

• We wanted it to be Free Software.
• MCA is the acronym for Multi Channel Analyzer which is the common term for the device.
• "freemca" produced a few hits on Google. "freemcan" did not. Brand name collision wise, an unused word appeared to be the better choice.

The Plan

(FIXME) No plan.

Building

$ make

Installation is not supported at this time.

Software Requirements

• GNU make
• POSIX/GNU/Linux/Unix host system
• gcc compiler for host system
• gcc based ARM toolchain

FreeMCAn_ADUC7026 code comes with full target initialization. That means beside a compiler and a standard c-library no extra software is needed. It is known to be build with following toolchain on a feedora 16 system.

For building the internal code documentation (mostly of interest to hackers), you additionally need

• doxygen
• graphviz

For creating the source lines of code (SLOC) summary, you additionally need

• sloccount

Usage

TBA.

The License

LGPLv2.1+

Hacking

Subdirectory Contents

aduc/

Software driver for ADuC7026 / ARM7TDMI microcontroller

aduc_docs/

Some extra documentation. E.g. configuration of the level to edge ADC-trigger via PLA

firmware/

The device firmwares for ADuC7026 microcontroller (multichannel analyzing, oscilloscope ...)

code-comparison/

Some common tasks our firmware needs written in portable C and compiled for all platforms we have a cross compiler for. This lets us compare the assembly language generated for those platforms.

hostware/

All the software running on the PC host. For lack of a better word, we called it "hostware" to distinguish it from the "firmware". The firmware is running inside a linux terminal

Ideas