The maze solving robot based on the Freedom FRDM-KL25Z and Pololu Zumo shield has new features:
FRDM-KL25Z Robot on Practice Area
Maybe this article gets the attention of a local optometrist or eye shop: I have a business opportunity for you! ;-).
I ran into a weird problem: I received an ARM GNU gcc project which failed during the generation of the S19 file in strange way:
'Executing target #80 Freedom_Zumo.siz' 'Invoking: ARM Ltd Windows GNU Create Flash Image' “C:/Freescale/CW MCU v10.3\eclipse\../Cross_Tools/arm-none-eabi-gcc-4_7_3/bin/arm-none-eabi-objcopy” -O srec Freedom_Zumo.elf "Freedom_Zumo.hex" ' ' Der Befehl "“C:" ist entweder falsch geschrieben oder konnte nicht gefunden werden. mingw32-make: *** [Freedom_Zumo.hex] Error 1
Probably I need to add 3rd monitor to my laptop system, or maybe I’m not organized enough. But as a matter of fact: I want to have as many source files as possible open in Eclipse. But there is simply not enough screen real estate to show them all:
Many source files open
With that many source files open, I need an effective way to switch between the files.
Sometimes I’m looking for a functionality, and I cannot find it. But this does not mean that it does not exist ;-).
The Eclipse preference pages have a great filter text field: If I want to change a setting which has something to do with ‘color’, I can enter that text and it will show me all setting pages having something to do with ‘color’:
Eclipse Preference Filter
The challenge with small microcontroller like the ARM-Cortex-M0+ is that they have very limited debugging resources. As such, the number of hardware break points is very limited (see this post). For example for the KL25Z on the Freedom board, I only have 2 break points available if I want to do stepping:
No more hardware break points available
In “Using the Reset Button on the Freedom Board as User Button”, I had the problem to find out why a setting did not make it into my generated code. There is the fundamental question: “How does a setting impact my microcontroller register settings?”. There is an answer to that question: The Configuration Registers view:
Configuration Registers View
In ‘A Library with ARM gcc and Eclipse’ I was using the CodeWarrior MCU10.3 beta version to create a library project. At that time I had to do things manually. Now with the final MCU10.3 there is an option in the New Project Wizard which makes things easier:
Library Creation
This will create a library (or better: an archive) with gcc for me. But how to use it from another project?
The great thing with Eclipse is that you can configure a lot. In general, I’m happy with most of the defaults in Eclipse and CodeWarrior. Here are my top 10 things I change in Eclipse to make it even better:
Either you hate it, or you love it: Line numbers in the Eclipse Editor:
Line Numbers in Eclipse Editor View
Personally, I love it!
Usually, one of the first things I see if I launch Eclipse is this dialog:
Select a Workspace Dialog
Actually, that ‘workspace’ thing is one of the most important things in Eclipse to understand. To mess around it can cause a lot of pain. So I have collected some ‘lessons learned’ around workspaces.
MCU on Eclipse 