Category Archives: Eclipse

How to make sure no floating point code is used

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Float and double data types area a bad choice for embedded applications. At least in most applications, and can or should be avoided, even with hardware FPU support present.

But how can I be sure that no floating point operations are used?

wrapping float and double runtime routines

This article describes how to configure the GNU toolchain, so that no float or double operations are used, with the example of ARM Cortex-M. What I do? ‘Poisoning’ (!!!) the source code, force the gcc compiler to use software floating point operations and then catch them with the GNU linker :-).

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‘Experience Energy’ at the Verkehrshaus: The ‘House of Energy’ Construction Kit

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The ‘Verkehrshaus der Schweiz‘, the ‘Swiss Museum of Transport’ is Switzerland’s most popular museum.

In April 2023, it opened up a new building and the ‘Experience Energy!’ exhibition. For the opening event we created a unique construction kit to explore energy: from harvesting to storing and up to distributing and using energy.

“House of Energy” at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne
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Moving Pixel Clock Project

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Clock projects are cool. LED projects are cool too. And if it moves, the better. So why not building a moving pixel LED mechatronics clock? A matrix with addressable RGB LEDs, each can change color and is moved by a tiny stepper motor, to let pixels stand out?

Moving Pixel Clock
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Processor Expert Components: 24-Dec-2023 Release

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The new year 2024 is coming, so time to close the current year with a new release: I’m pleased to announce a new release of the Processor Expert components, available on SourceForge and GitHub.

Processor Expert Components in Eclipse (KDS)

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Selecting J-Link Debug Probe by Nickname

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I have lots of hardware and debug probes on my desk, and I discussed using nicknames for debug probes to better identify them.

‘Green’ and ‘Yellow’ Robots and J-Link Probes

So far so good. At that time of the previous article, it was possible to assign nicknames to J-Link debug probes, but not to use the nickname instead of the USB serial number. Well, SEGGER was fast again, and responded with a new J-Link software pack version 7.92d which implements that features: I can now use the nickname to connect to a debug probe :-).

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New SEGGER J-Link-OB LPC4322-based Firmware with Target Power

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Sometimes I have a wish. Not every time it gets fulfilled. But this time I’m lucky and happy developer. A few days ago I wrote about the LPC4322-based SEGGER OB (on-board) J-Link firmware. It works great, but the board requires another USB cable to power the target board.

Rolf Segger contacted me, and a few days later I had a J-Link firmware with a ‘power-on’ feature:

That way, only one USB cable is needed. All what you need to do is to update the firmware.

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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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VS Code: Importing pre-v2.13.0 MCUXpresso SDK Projects

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In my previous article I showed how to import, build and debug MCUXpresso SDK projects in VS Code. In my lectures and labs we are using a robot based on the NXP Kinetis K22FX512 ARM Cortex-M4F microcontroller, and there is only the v2.13.0 SDK available.

INTRO Sumo Robot
Sumo Robot with K22FX512

The software on the robot uses the latest NXP MCUXpresso SDK v2.3.1. The he Eclipse based MCUXpresso IDE 11.8.0 works fine with all the 2.x SDKs, up to the latest 2.13.0 one.

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MCUXpresso IDE 11.8.0

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Don’t worry: despite all the things going on with VS Code, Eclipse is here to stay probably for many more years. The Eclipse foundation is pumping out releases, and so does NXP with their latest MCUXpresso IDE 11.8.0. Lets have a look…

MCUXpresso IDE 11.8.0
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Consolidating with VS Code

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It is August 1st, and Switzerland is celebrating its National Holiday. Rather cold and rainy, so this gets me some time to catch up on things. The preparation for the coming university semester in September is in full swing, and I have the honor to take over building up a new Master of Science in Engineering education module. In the existing courses I teach on the topic of embedded systems, I do use devices and MCUs from vendors like Broadcom, NXP, STM, Nordic, Raspberry Pi and Espressif. This not only means different SDKs, but different IDEs with different debug probes.

Just a subset of different hardware kits used in different labs

Eclipse has been the common factor in the mix with all these, and with all the pros and cons, it worked very well. With NXP having released support for Visual Studio Code, adding an announcement, and other vendors going into the same direction, I took the decision that I want to migrate my lab and lecture infrastructure to VS Code.

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