Doug's picks this week are Simulink Support Packages for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT , Beagleboard [link], Arduino Uno [link], and Arduino Mega [link] by the Classroom Resources Team.

This week, I'd like to highlight a new feature in the R2012a release of Simulink called Run on Target Hardware.

You may remember back in November 2010 Greg Wolff highlighted my Arduino Target submission that let you run a Simulink model on an Arduino Deumilanove by leveraging Simulink Coder and Embedded Coder to convert the model to C code.

So what's different about this new Run on Target Hardware capability? Well starting in R2012a you can now run your Simulink models on hardware even if you do not have Simulink Coder or Embedded Coder. That means that even those of you using the Student Version can take advantage of this capability! Run on Target Hardware currently supports the Uno and Mega varieties of the Arduino as well as the BeagleBoard-xM and LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT.

While there are File Exchange submissions for the supported hardware targets, you should install them directly from MATLAB by typing "targetinstaller" at the command prompt. This brings up a tool that automates the download and install process. Watch the video below to see it in action:
Introduction to Simulink Support for Target Hardware 1:57

If you do have Simulink Coder and Embedded Coder, the original target is still available and is known as the Embedded Coder Support Package for Arduino. It supports the ability to do processor-in-the-loop simulations. For more information on the different ways Arduino is supported with MATLAB and Simulink see this solution page.

Comments

We can't wait to see what kind of interesting projects you come up with by taking advantage of this capability. Please check it out and let us know what you think here.