If working with different tool chains, SDKs, and vendors, then one must use different environments.
With VS Code, this can end up in counter-intuitive situation. When I start a new Visual Studio Code instance, it will open a new window. But if there is already an instance running, it actually will re-using that environment. This can cause lots of subtle problems, including failed builds.
So how to start a new Visual Studio Code Window, with a new instance?
Continue readingIn CI/CD for Embedded with VS Code, Docker and GitHub Actions, I used GitHub to build a pipeline. This setup supports continuous integration within a CI/CD environment.
This time, let’s do a similar thing. But instead of GitHub, I use GitLab with VS Code. And I use it for a project where three different MCUs are used: the Raspberry Pi Pico-W, an Espressif ESP32 plus the NXP K22FX512 on the Sumo robot:
The year 2024 is coming to its end, time for a Year-End-Processor-Expert-Component-Release.
Also, this is now the 10th anniversary of the releases on Sourceforge, starting with https://mcuoneclipse.com/2014/10/21/mcuoneclipse-releases-on-sourceforge/ back in 2014.
Continue readingThe 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.
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.
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.
Continue readingI’m pleased to announce a new release of the McuOnEclipse Processor Expert components, available on SourceForge.
In JTAG Debugging the ESP32 with FT2232 and OpenOCD I have used a FTDI FT2232 breakout board to JTAG debug with OpenOCD. With an adapter board on top of the TDI FT2232 the wiring is much easier and simpler to use:
JTAG Debugging the ESP32 with FT2232
In “Eclipse JTAG Debugging the ESP32 with a SEGGER J-Link” I used a SEGGER J-Link to debug an ESP32 device with JTAG. I looked at using one of the FTDI FT2232HL development boards which are supported by OpenOCD. The FT2232HL is dual high-speed USB to UART/FIFO device, and similar FTDI devices are used on many boards as UART to USB converters. With OpenOCD these devices can be turned into inexpensive JTAG debug probes. This article shows how to use a $10 FTDI board as JTAG interface to program and debug the Espressif ESP32.
FTDI JTAG Connection
When Espressif released in 2014 their first WiFi ESP8266 transceiver, they took over at least the hobby market with their inexpensive wireless devices. Yet again, the successor ESP32 device is used in many projects. Rightfully there are many other industrial Wi-Fi solutions, but Espressif opened up the door for Wi-Fi in many low cost projects. Many projects use the ESP devices in an Arduino environment which basically means decent debugging except using printf() style which is … hmmm … better than nothing.
What is maybe not known to many ESP32 users: there *is* actually a way to use JTAG with the ESP32 devices :-). It requires some extra tools and setup, but with I have a decent Eclipse based way to debug the code. And this is what this article is about: how to use a SEGGER J-Link with Eclipse and OpenOCD for JTAG debugging the ESP32.
Robot with ESP32 and JTAG Debug Port
The Espressif ESP32 devices are getting everywhere: they are inexpensive, readily available and Espressif IDF environment and build system actually is pretty good and working well for me including Eclipse (see “Building and Flashing ESP32 Applications with Eclipse“). The default way to program an ESP32 is to a) enter UART bootloader by pressing some push buttons and b) flash the application with ESP-IDF using a USB cable.
That works fine if the ESP32 is directly connected to the host PC. But in my case it is is behind an NXP Kinetis K22FX512 ARM Cortex-M4F microcontroller and not directly accessible by the host PC. So I had to find a way how to allow boot loading the ESP32 through the ARM Cortex-M which is the topic of this article.
TTGO ESP32 MICRO-D4 Module
MCU on Eclipse 