Category Archives: CMSIS-DAP

Low-Power Optimization Techniques for ARM Cortex-M Microcontrollers

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Europe is currently facing an ‘Energy Crisis,’ and ‘Sustainability’ is a popular topic among companies. However, embedded engineers go beyond talking—they take action and make tangible changes in the world. With the increasing use of electronic devices, minimizing their energy and power consumption is crucial. Optimizing systems for deep low power or deep low energy is a challenging task. Nonetheless, as I will demonstrate in this article, it is possible to reduce energy consumption by a factor of 100 or more. This article provides a brief overview of the foundational concepts and then applies them step-by-step to an ARM Cortex microcontroller.

Measuring on-board LPC804 with MCU-Link Pro
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MCU-Link-MR v0.2 Drone and Robot Debug Probe with UART-2-USB Bridge

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This week I have received the new PCBs for the MCU-Link MR for drones and robots and have populated the parts on the PCB, and it works fine as UART bridge and debug probe for the PixHawk i.MX RT:

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Updating MCU-Link CMSIS-DAP Debug Probe Firmware, Jumper-less

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The MCU-Link debug probes are versatile and very useful debug probes from NXP. This article describes how to update the firmware on it, both the ‘traditional’ way with using the ISP jumper, and the new way using a command line script without the need to use a jumper.

MCU-Link Pro Debug Probe ISP Jumper
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CMSIS-DAP Debug Probe for Robots and Pixhawk with KiCAD

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Need to debug your robot or drone? In a HSLU university research project I’m using a Pixhawk and PX4 based drone hardware. Pixhawk and PX4 is an open standard for drone hardware and firmware and runs with NuttX RTOS. It is mainly used for drones, but is very capable for any other kind of mobile robots.

With the Pixhawk 6x-RT there is a powerful flight controller, using the NXP i.MX RT1176 dual-core processor. While this and other controller hardware do offer a hardware debug probe, it is not a simple task as there are different pin-outs and connectors, making debugging a mess with different cables and adapters. To simplify this, I have now a unified debug CMSIS-DAP debug probe using the NXP LPC55S69 as processor, with all the different headers and UART adapters included: the MCU-Link-MR (Mobule Robots) debug probe.

MCU-Link-MR (v0.1)

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Versatile OSHW Mini MCU-Link Debug Probe: External, On-Board, or Embedded

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Who needs a debug probe, if you have printf()? If doing serious development, you most likely want a hardware debug probe. We at the HSLU IET use different hardware, boards and kits, and for many of the classroom equipment it is very useful to have the debug probe embedded on the target board: less cables, easier to use. For this we have developed a new Open Source Hardware (OSHW) debug probe in KiCad which can used in different ways: as external debug probe, integrated and soldered on top of the target board, or fully integrated and embedded into a custom design.

OSHW Mini MCU-Link Debug Probe
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Multi-Core Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) with FreeRTOS

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Maybe you are using a multi-core device in your projects, but have not tapped into multi-core usage yet? FreeRTOS V11.0 is out, and the big news is that it has finally Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) integrated into the mainline. This greatly simplifies FreeRTOS usage, as I finally can use the same RTOS for my SMP targets and boards, and I can easily switch between single-core and multi-core applications.

Dual-Core Boards running with FreeRTOS
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GNU Coverage (gcov) for an Embedded Target with VS Code

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An important part of every CI/CD pipeline is having a testing phase. In this article I show how to use GNU gcov (coverage) with an embedded target, using Visual Studio Code as front end:

GNU gcov with VS Code

With this, I can run the code on the embedded target which stores the coverage data on the host.

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Debug Probes for RP2040 with VS Code

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For systematic debugging, an engineer needs a debug probe. For the Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040) device there are plenty of debug options with VS Code.

In this article I show different options, from professional tools to DIY solutions and the settings in VS Code I’m using.

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Upgrading LPC4322-based Debug Probe Firmware on RT10xx

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Going with the factory default can be fine. But an upgrade could give a performance boost plus added functionality. Many of the NXP i.MX RT evaluation boards have an LPC4322 based debug circuit on it. One example for this is the i.MX RT1010 board.

NXP i.MX RT1010 EVK

On such boards, one of the first steps I do is: upgrading the firmware and change it to a better option: improved speed, SWO support plus avoiding issues with the USB MSD device.

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Laser-cut MCU-Link Pro Enclosure for the Masses

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With “Adding RGBW Wings and Enclosure to a Debug Probe” I have a really shiny enclosure for the MCU-Link Pro Enclosure.

But I did not had enough time to replicate this for a full set of classroom hardware. The original card boxes from NXP showed already after one semester severe wear, so I have to setup something more robust: a box to store all the cables, and an enclosure to protect the PCB, for 40 units.

3D printing would take to much time, so I ended up with buying storage boxes and creating an laser-cut acrylic (PMMA) enclosure for the debug probe itself:

MCU-Link Pro Enclosure
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