Flying a quadrocopter without some sensor and microcontroller intelligence will be a challenge. Definitely I will need some intelligent sensor data to help me out :-). Luckily, there is a Freescale ‘Sensor Fusion Toolbox’ and Library which gives me a nice start and visibility into the sensors I plan to use:
Sensor Fusion Data
It is possible to use the Freescale FRDM-KL43Z to debug another board (see “Using the Freescale Freedom (FRDM-KL43Z) to Debug other Boards“). The FRDM-KL43Z has an on-board debug probe integrated, the OpenSDA. But it is easily possible to debug the board directly with a SWD debug probe like the P&E Universal Multilink or the Segger J-Link.
Debugging the FRDM-KL43Z with SWD
I don’t own a Mac computer, and I try to keep my tutorials as multi-host-platform as possible. So it is always cool to see if someone else posts a nice tutorial on a different host machine: For all Mac (and as well non Mac) users, have a look at this tutorial Nash Reilly has posted: “An Introduction to Freescale’s Kinetis Design Studio.”
It nicely explains downloading and installing KDS with the Kinetis SDK and then run a ‘hello world’ program on the hardware.
And very worthwhile to check out Nash’s other articles here too: http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/author/nash-reilly
Happy Nashing 🙂
In “Kinetis Drone: Frame Construction with Graupner Race Copter Alpha 250 Q” I have assembled the frame for my Kinetis Drone. In this post I’m going to drive the ESC’s (Electronic Speed Controllers) with the Freescale FRDM-K22F board:
Graupner S3055 ESC (Source: Graupner)
FreeRTOS is probably the most popular RTOS used and I love it: it is efficient, has a lot of features, simple and easy to use. But despite its popularity, debugging it with open source tools as with Eclipse and GDB is really not that user-friendly: debugging threads/tasks is a pain compared to commercial solutions. For my university classes this semester I was looking for something easy to use by my students. Finally I managed to use a GDB helper which makes things easier now: I can switch task threads in Eclipse with GDB now 🙂
Switched to Shell Task
Every day, there is something new to learn. And having problems is always a good learning opportunity :-). Yesterday we were able to find a strange problem with our tinyK20 prototypes, just before we were about to send the design for manufacturing.
Kinetis K20 on tinyK20 Board
Many tool chains and linker are able to produce S19 files, such as with the GNU tools it is the ‘objcopy‘ which does this job (see “Binary (and S19) Files for the mbed Bootloader with Eclipse and GNU ARM Eclipse Plugins“). But these tools usually cannot handle the special cases. For example on the Freescale Kinetis K64F my serial bootloader (see “Serial Bootloader for the Freedom Board with Processor Expert“) had a problem with these lines in the S19 file:
Not aligned S19 file entries
In “How to Add Register Details View in Eclipse” I showed how to add the Register detail support in Eclipse using the EmbSysRegView plugin. This was for Luna/Mars, and for the version v0.2.4 of the plugins.
Since then, there is a new version of Eclipse (MARS, see “Going to Mars: Building a DIY Eclipse IDE for ARM Embedded Microcontrollers“) and the EmbSysRegView plugin has been updated to v2.0.5. Makes everything much simple, so here is an updated post with the details how to add register detail view to Eclipse Mars.
Eclipse Mars
Given all the posts I already have published on a similar topic, this one will be a short one: how to use the Freescale FRDM-K64F board with OpenSDAv2 to debug another board:
FRDM-K64F Board to Debug FRDM-KL25Z Board
It has been a while since I published my ‘build my own DIY IDE’ (see “DIY Free Toolchain for Kinetis: Part 1 – GNU ARM Build Tools“). I have used that approaches in my classes successfully. Now a new semester is coming up, so time to update the instructions using the latest Eclipse IDE (Mars) and tools (GCC ARM Embedded (launchpad) with GNU ARM Eclipse).
Eclipse Mars Splash Screen
MCU on Eclipse 