The silicon shortage is still going on. While the NXP Kinetis KE devices might not be my first choice, they still seem to be available, in at least in lower quantities. This has been recognized by others, as I’m getting more and more questions and requests for the KE and KV family. This is why I un-dusted my old FRDM-KE02Z to be used with the latest MCUXpresso SDK and IDE.
And in case you want to use that board or device with semihosting, I have you covered.
Continue readingGetting a board from a distributor like Farnell/Element14/Mouser (add your own distributor) means that chances are high that the default firmware on it is written years from now because the inventory has not been updated, or because boards are still produced with that original firmware (because of testing?). So what happens if I use board with a firmware developed pre-Windows 8/10 area?
Freshly Unboxed NXP FRDM-KL25Z Board
It might work, but chances are high that the bootloader and firmware is not ready for the ‘modern age’, and as a result the board might be bricked. If you still have a Windows 7 machine around (I do!), you are lucky. If not, then you need to read this article….
I have received a bunch of Freescale FRDM boards to be used in an Embedded Systems programming crash course. There are multiple issues with the boards coming from the factory:
This post is a step-by-step instruction how to update Freescale FRDM boards (e.g. FRDM-KL25Z) to the latest firmware.
FRDM Board
Good news for everyone having Windows 8.1: P&E has released Dec 11th 2013 a new FRDM board firmware which solves the bootloader issue found with Windows 8.1. The new firmware can download from https://www.pemicro.com/opensda/.
New PnE OpenSDA Firmware
For my RNet stack I need a way to identify nodes in the network using a unique address. What I need is Media-Access (MAC) address. Base on such a unique address I can assign short addresses (e.g. with a DHCP or similar protocol to automatically assign shorter network addresses). So how to uniquely identify my network nodes?
The Freescale Kinetis microcontroller have nice feature: they have a Unique Identification Register (UID) which would be a perfect fit for a MAC address :-).
UID Output
Microsoft has released the Windows 8.1 Preview. So you can try out the next update of Windows 8. In short: Do NOT use Windows 8.1 Preview if you are using a Freescale FRDM board! Otherwise you will not be able to change the OpenSDA firmware (MSD or debug application).
❗ Update: P&E has released a new firmware v114 which combines USB CDC, MSD bootloader and debug application, and this firmware fixes the issue described in this post.
Well, I have not used it personally: I never use ‘test’ or ‘preview’ versions on my ‘production’ machine. It is ok to try things out on separate ‘scratch’ machines, but not on something I need to have stable for my work. Well, some of the students in my INTRO class were not able to resist and downloaded and installed Windows 8.1 Preview on their machines. With the result that the OpenSDA Bootloader does not work with Windows 8.1 Preview:
❗ It seems that the problem exists as well with the Windows 8.1 ‘final’ release.
In case you have this problem with the FRDM boards: You are using the FRDM bootloader mode (it shows up as BOOTLOADER) or the MSD mode (e.g. it shows up as FRDM-KL25Z) (see OpenSDA on the Freedom KL25Z Board) and it does not respond any more, or does not work as expected, then read on…
Self-Motivation: I write this post in the hope to cut the number of ‘please help me’ emails in my inbox ;-):
If you want to debug one of the Freescale boards with OpenSDA (FRDM-KL25Z, FRDM-K20, FRDM-KL05Z, FRDM-KL46Z48M, FRDM-KL02Z, TWR-KL47Z48M, …), and if you get this dialog …
No Device Available
… then read on.
Looks like a flood of new Freedom boards is coming out 🙂 : I have found out about this new one: The FRDM-KE02Z.
FRDM-KE02Z Board
MCU on Eclipse 