Sasana Year 2569 , Myanmar Year 1387 , Waso waxing 14 , Tuesday , Sb Eve.

Thursday, June 5, 2025

Exploring Edge AI with NXP's FRDM-MCXN947

I recently attended NXP technology day in Auckland, where the latest innovations from NXP were showcased - including their microcontrollers, i.MX microprocessors, and other advanced semiconductor technologies. NXP, a leading Dutch semiconductor company, designs and manufactures a wide array of products for automotive, industrial, and IoT applications. Among their latest developments is the MCX series of microcontrollers, which unifies the legacy Philips and Kinetis families into a new, modern MCU architecture.

What particularly caught my attention was the MCXN947 from the MCX N series. This device delivers high performance and low power consumption, while integrating a neural processing unit (NPU) to enable on-device AI processing. As computing increasingly moves to the edge, it's exciting to see compact, energy-efficient hardware like this supporting real-time AI workloads. NXP also hosted a hands-on machine learning session with the MCXN947, which inspired me to explore its potential as an edge AI platform.


Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Grbl_ESP32 MKS DLC32 Board with FluidNC CNC Firmware

When constructing robotic rigs capable of movement along the x, y, and z axes, I have often relied on CNC controllers such as GRBL paired with the Arduino CNC shield, as detailed in my previous post:
DrawBot XY Plotter with Arduino GRBL Controller

With recent advancements in this field, I would like to explore emerging controllers like FluidNC and new hardware boards such as the Makerbase MKS DLC32.
FluidNC is a CNC firmware that utilizes the ESP32, offering an alternative to using Arduino UNO. It is compatible with GRBL, enabling the seamless transmission of GCode. It also officially supports a lot of third party hardware boards such as Makerbase MKS DLC32 V2.1 Controller.

Figure 1. MKS DLC32 V2.1 board.

In my experience, CoreXY mechanisms that employ timing belts tend to operate more quickly and quietly compared to those utilizing lead screw rods. For those interested, I have discussed the process of updating the FluidNC firmware for the MKS DLC32 board tailored for a CoreXY type machine.