This year I managed to attend the Embedded World in Nürnberg/Germany after missing the 2016 show. And 2017 has been a blast! With more than 1000 exhibitors and >30’000 visitors it was huge! There were too many exciting things, so I just pick a few: NXP demonstrated the new MCUXpresso Software and Tools with a new Eclipse Neon based IDE, lots of IoT and Hexiwear, the tiny LPC800-DIP board, and I have met Alan Hawse in person!

MCUXpresso Software and Tools!

Andy Beeson (I think everyone using LPCXpresso IDE and the Red Suite knows him 🙂 ) showcased the new and updated NXP MCUXpresso Software and Tools at NXP:

The MCUXpresso Pins and Clocks Tool get an update to v3: this means extended device support (both Kinetis and LPC supported), with an improved look&feel: I love the detachable windows I can use in a multi-monitor system.

The highlight is the new MCUXpresso IDE which combines the Kinetis Design Studio and LPCXpresso IDE. As the name indicates, it is based on the LPCXpresso IDE, or as Andy worded it: “LPCXpresso on steroids” :-). It is free, code size unlimited, based on Eclipse Neon with latest GNU ARM Tools plus RedLib optimized library, works with P&E, Segger and NXP (CMSIS-DAP, OpenSDA, LPC-Link, LPC-Link2) debug probes with automatic probe discovery and configuration. It supports both the MCUXpresso SDK for Kinetis a newer LPC parts, plus it includes support for LPCOpen. The IDE includes a SDK package manager and a project wizard to create or clone Kinetis and LPC projects. There is full FreeRTOS thread and debug awareness (see “Better FreeRTOS Debugging in Eclipse“), with peripheral viewers, Live Variable/Expression View and ARM SWO ETM/ETB Trace and Profiling with probes like LPC-Link2. The version at the show was ‘close to the production version’ which shall come out early April 2017.

With that new IDE I could now use one environment for both NXP Kinetis and LPC micro controllers (now I’m using Kinetis Design Studio and LPCXpresso), and I cannot wait to use it in my classes and projects. So I plan to publish a series of tutorials in preparation for the next semester.

Student Day with Boards!

The third day at the show was the ‘Student Day’: Lots of other students and teachers like me, with many give-aways. I managed to get a handful LPC800-DIP boards:

It has the LPC824M201JHI33 on it (32 bit Cortex-M0+, 32 KByte Flash, 4 KB RAM) in breadboard friendly pin out:

The microcontroller can be programmed using SWD or through the Silabs CP2102 UART-USB bridge: with pressing the ISP button I can program the device through the USB connection to the host and the FlashMagic utility. Once the MCUXpresso IDE is available, I plan to write a tutorial, as this tiny board suits many small student projects.

Hexiwear and RFID Everywhere!

‘Internet of Things’ of course was present on nearly every booth. The Hexiwear was present in several booths too. Here is one demonstration with it at the NXP booth:

Another cool usage is with with RFID and the NTAG I²C kit: Using a mobile phone or any suitable NFC reader I can do energy harvesting and power connected devices, plus I can use it with an I²C interface: that makes a nice combination of a microcontroller with NFC plus energy harvesting:

Many Android mobile phones already include that NFC capability, and I’m sure (or hope) that Apple will follow.

Meet Alan Hawse!

My other personal highlight at the show was Alan Hawse (https://iotexpert.com/): his presentations and demos at the Cypress  PSoC Maker Lab were educational, entertaining and full of fun:

I tried to sneak into the audience, but Alan recognized me :-). Check out his website https://iotexpert.com/ or watch his videos on YouTube, (I especially like his videos about BLE and PSoC Creator).

As for how things were at Embedded World Nürnberg 2017, see the following video (video by RS):

Summary

In still need consolidate all the impressions from Embedded World, it was a huge blast with many impressions. I have collected many new ideas for projects going forward. I’m sure you will read about them in the coming months :-).

Happy Nürnberging 🙂