Category Archives: Boards

Posts around specific boards

Tutorial: Timer (LED) with Processor Expert for Kinetis

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In the ‘Pre-LDD age’, setting up a periodic timer event with Processor was really easy. With the concept of LED’s (see “There is a Time and Date for both Worlds”) things are a bit different. But once things are clear, it is not that hard. So here I’m doing a very exciting thing: blinking an LED using a timer! 😎

So I’m going to have an LED blinking every second. I’m using the TWR-K60N512 with an ARM Cortex-M4 and the Eclipse based CodeWarrior for MCU10.2. But it is easy to adopt it to any other Kinetis board.

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A Shell for the Freedom KL25Z Board

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I’m a big fan of physical UART/RS-232 ports on boards. So I was somewhat disappointed not to see a serial 9pin connector on the Freedom KL25Z board. But it is perfectly understood that for this price costs are critical, and a serial header or connector is pushing the budget for that board very likely out of the water. Still, I want serial connectivity for my applications.

Freedom Board with RGB LED

Freedom Board with RGB LED

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FatFs with Kinetis

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An SD (Secure Digital) Card interface is kind of standard for many applications today: it provides a lot of memory at a reasonable cost. Still, I need a software stack for it, up to the level of a file system. So far I was really happy with using FatFs: an open source FAT file system provided by Elm-Chan. I’m using the FatFs Processor Expert component already in multiple designs. What was missing: a port to the Freescale Kinetis ARM Cortex-M4 family of processors.

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FreeRTOS with GCC, Cortex-M0+ and Kinetis KL25Z Freedom Board

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Yesterday was my ‘lucky day’: My Kinetis-L Freedom board arrived :-). This board is really nice and features the KL25Z from the recently announced Kinetis L Family. And guess what is the first thing I want to flash on that processor? Yep: some FreeRTOS tasks. But to get there, a few important things have to be sorted out:

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Tutorial: FreeRTOS on DEMOJM

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If you are new to Processor Expert in MCU10, and new to FreeRTOS, then you need to learn two new things in parallel the same time. That might be overwhelming. But don’t worry: if you do things step by step and slowly the first time, this much easier than you might think. This tutorial shall help you with this.

This is a step-by-step tutorial about how to create a project with CodeWarrior for MCU10.2, Processor Expert and the DEMOJM board. The goal is to create a project from scratch with two tasks blinking an LED. This tutorial uses the DEMOJM board, but in practice any other ColdFire/Kinetis/S08 board can be used as well.

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USB CDC, reloaded

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The Processor Expert USB CDC component posted in USB or not: CDC with Processor Expert has found many friends :-). A new version is available for download here with examples. It adds a bunch of new features and makes many things: simpler dependencies and setup, generation of an easily accessible cdc.inf and availability of error hooks. I have it running now with the TWR-MCF52259 and the DEMOJM (MCF51JM128 and S08JM60). Continue reading →

USB or not: CDC with Processor Expert

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I had a PREN student showing up into my office. He wanted to choose a microcontroller for that project. One requirement put on the table was “it needs USB”. Well, I asked why USB is required. I was not surprised by the answer: “to use USB instead of RS-232”. Wow. So what he really wanted was USB CDC (Communication Device Class). Yep. Most notebooks today have no serial COM port (see “Processor Expert Configurations“). But because “USB is serial” does not mean “USB CDC is simple”. Nope. USB is not simple. But it can be with Processor Expert.

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