Category Archives: HCS08

A Generic I2C High Level Driver

Posted on by
59

I’m working with the I2C bus recently a lot. I’m using it in a project to reverse-engineering skimming (credit card fraud) devices. I needed to improve one of my applications for the lecture classes where a MCF52259 is communicating with a TWR-LCD display over I2C. And I want to add RTC (Real-Time-Clock) capabilities to my Arduino Data Logger Shield which requires I2C.

The same time I want to have things working with ARM Cortex-M4 and M0+ devices. And here the challenge started: using the I2C_LDD (Logical Device Driver) Processor Expert components for the ARM Kinetis devices is definitely not simple and easy. I want to use my software compatible for both the ARM cores and say for S08 and ColdFire cores. So what I ended up is to write a ‘generic’ I2C driver on top of the low level Processor Expert components: named GenericI2C.

Generic I2C Component

Generic I2C Component

Continue reading →

USB Component Splitted and Updated

Posted on by
59

Checking the download statistics of my Processor Expert components on http://www.steinerberg.com/EmbeddedComponents/, there is a clear winner: FSL_USB_Stack 🙂

It has been a while I presented that universal USB CDC component in this blog. The component has received a larger re-architecture, I wanted to support more than just USB CDC. For this, the CDC part is now present in a separate sub-component:

FSL_USB_Stack with Sub-Components

FSL_USB_Stack with Sub-Components

Continue reading →

Defining Variables at Absolute Addresses with gcc

Posted on by
79

Many compilers offer a way to allocate a variable at an absolute address. For example for the Freescale S08 compiler, I can place my variable at a given address:

unsigned char buf[128]@0x2000;

This is very useful (and needed) e.g. if the hardware (like USB) needs a buffer at given address. The advantage of the above (non-ANSI and thus not portable) syntax is that I can define a variable at an absolute address, without the need to allocate it in the linker.

I wanted to do something similar with gcc for Kinetis/ARM, and searched many forums on the internet. Obviously, I’m not alone with this question. The solution I have found comes close to what I use e.g. for the S08 compiler.

Continue reading →

Compiler Defines and Eclipse Editor Highlighting

Posted on by
20

In this post I have found settings for Eclipse Indexer to show the state if defines correctly. Usually I have something like this in my projects:

debug me

debug me

So I define the macro DEBUG_ME on the compiler command line. And it is cool to see that the Eclipse editor correctly grays out the code which is not enabled. But for this the Eclipse Editor view needs to know about the macro, but how does this work?

Continue reading →

SMAC with Processor Expert

Posted on by
11

Freescale offers a free wireless SMAC stack  for their ZigBee and IEEE802.15.4 transceivers as found in the MC1321x (SRB and NCB) wireless kits, or as used on the MC13201 daughter card. The ‘S’ in SMAC stands for ‘Simple’. But it is not that simple to use that stack. So that’s why I’m using it transformed into a Processor Expert components. I have received recently requests and questions about it, and finally it is available on this site. If you are wondering for what it can be used, then read this post.

Created Tower Radio Card with MC13201 daughter board, SD card and Realtime Clock

Created Tower Radio Card with MC13201 daughter board, SD card and Realtime Clock

The stack is using the Freescale SMAC stack as base, and consists of four components: MC13192, SSEC, SPHY and SMAC. This post provides hopefully an entry point how to use them.

Continue reading →

Trimming S08 with P&E

Posted on by
Reply

Freescale S08 controllers have an internal clock generator (ICG) which allows the device to run without an external clock signal. But as devices differ, they need to be calibrated and trimmed. The microcontrollers are usually trimmed in the factory. How can I trim it myself if I need something better?

Continue reading →

Dissection of MCU10 Projects

Posted on by
10

Creating an eclipse managed make project with MCU10 is easy: Starting the wizard with File > New > Bareboard Project and after a few clicks I have a project. I don’t need to worry about all the files in the project structure, until……..well, until I need to put the files into a VCS.

Continue reading →

Men In Black are back! Flashing and FX’ing…

Posted on by
11

I have mentioned in MCU10.2 released a new feature in CodeWarrior: support for the USB Universal Multilink FX from P&E Microcomputer Systems. Two Multilink FX arrived last week at the University, and finally I had my hands around it. The first thing which came to my mind when I saw the picture of the device on the P&E website: the black boxes are back!

Can I hope for a “Special FX Edition” in that box with cool sunglasses and a flash stick to erase and reprogram FLASH memory of microcontrollers? That would definitely make the flash erasing and programming easy and fast, as in the movie. 🙂
Continue reading →