Processor Expert in Eclipse and CodeWarrior is cool thing, and acts as the ‘expert’ for anything around the microcontroller used. But by default, it is acting in the ‘Basic’ level only.
Component Inspector Levels
But there are ways to get it to the Expert level :-).
The ‘Basic’, ‘Advanced’ or ‘Expert’ level is used to filter the amount and level of properties shown in the Component Inspector: So the idea is that with Basic only the most important properties are shown, with Advanced you get more, and with Expert you get everything. While this sounds like a good idea (and actually it probably is), I always end up to switch to the Expert level as I always think I need to see ‘the full Monty’ ;-).
And maybe it is really hard to distinguish what should be in the Basic, Advanced or Expert level?
Basic, Advanced and Expert
To switch the different levels, the Component Inspector View offers 3 buttons:
Basic, Advanced and Expert
Basic
Below is the I2C_LDD component in ‘Basic’ view:
Basic Properties
Advanced
Switching to ‘Advanced’ shows more properties:
Advanced Properties
Expert
And finally with Expert mode I get the full stuff:
Expert Properties
Fixing the Mode
For myself, I feel the Expert mode is the right thing :-). For this, I always switch to Expert mode in the Inspector View. The only problem: Processor Expert does not remember my settings: When I load the workspace again, its defaulting again back to Basic :-(.
❓ It might be debatable if this setting reversal is a bug or not?
But there is a trick to fix the mode :-). There is a setting in the menu Window > Preferences > Processor Expert > General:
Processor Expert General Settings
❓ Now I would expect that ‘Apply’ would change the Inspector View settings? Nope. The setting is used at the time opening a workspace. Not a big deal, but worth to mention.
Happy Experting 🙂
MCU on Eclipse 
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Kinetis Design Studio only seems to have a “Basic” and “Advanced” level – there is no “Expert” level available. Is there some hidden switch to enable this, or is it just something that has been left out of KDS ??
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Yes, the newer Processor Expert version (in KDS, or in MCU Driver Suite 10.4) only have ‘basic’ and ‘advanced’, no ‘expert’ any more. Which makes sense to me because the ‘expert’ mode was pretty much the ‘advanced’ mode anyway. So your are not missing anything.
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Processor expert advanced does not have the option to set the pull resistor for a BIT IO where this option did exist in the Expert tab. Is there a setting in the component inspector that I’m missing or does this need to be hard coded now?
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That depends on the version of Processor Expert and the device you are using. E.g. for Kinetis there is a setting in the Init_GPIO component, see https://mcuoneclipse.com/2012/11/12/tutorial-bits-and-pins-with-kinetis/
I hope this helps,
Erich
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In addition to that, you can do it manually with PDD macros, see https://mcuoneclipse.com/2012/11/12/tutorial-bits-and-pins-with-kinetis/
For example
/* SW1: enable and turn on pull-up resistor for PTA14 (push button) */
PORT_PDD_SetPinPullSelect(PORTA_BASE_PTR, 14, PORT_PDD_PULL_UP);
PORT_PDD_SetPinPullEnable(PORTA_BASE_PTR, 14, PORT_PDD_PULL_ENABLE);
Turns on internal pull-up for PTA14.
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Doing it manually was the original solution that we came up with. The Init_GPIO is what we were looking for. Thank you very much.
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Hi,
I have the same issue with KDS 3.2.0 that there is no Button for Expert Mode, only Basic and Advanced.
My problem is that the option “Pin sharing enabled” is always grayed out. Any ideas how to do pin sharing here?
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Hi Hans,
later versions of Processor Expert consoldidated the Avanced and Expert mode into the Advanced mode. As for the pin sharing disabled: this might depend on the microcontroller you are using. Which one are you using?
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Hi Erich,
I am useing a MK22FN256. I think pin muxing during runntime should be possibe with this MCU. I want to use a Pin as UART or GPIO depending on the HW variant with the same software built. It would be prefered to use Processor Expert rather than change the registers manually.
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Is that you who has posted a reply to the forum entry in https://community.nxp.com/message/1055759 ?
I’m travelling and I cannot check this with hardware, but my thinking is that it should be possible to workaround this using PDD macros (https://mcuoneclipse.com/2013/05/11/low-level-coding-with-pdd-physical-device-driver/)?
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Yes exactly, I have written this entry. You mean to write a macro that change the pe generated code after generate it with an other pin e.g.?
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Yes, you sould be able to do the switching directly in your code using the PDD macros, while still having all other things generated by Processor Expert.
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