Category Archives: SDK

Tutorial: How to Optimize Code and RAM Size

Posted on by
2

It is great if vendors provide a starting point for my own projects. A working ‘blinky’ is always a great starter. Convenience always has a price, and with a ‘blinky’ it is that the code size for just ‘toggling a GPIO pin’ is exaggerated. For a device with a tiny amount of RAM and FLASH this can be concerning: will my application ever fit to that device if a ‘blinky’ takes that much? Don’t worry: a blinky (or any other project) can be easily trimmed down.

Binky on NXP LPC845-BRK Board

Binky on NXP LPC845-BRK Board

I use a ‘blinky’ project here just as an example: the trimming tips can apply to any other kind of projects too.

Continue reading →

Advertisements

New NXP MCUXpresso Eclipse IDE v11.0

Posted on by
26

A few days ago NXP has released a new version of their Eclipse IDE flagship: the MCUXpresso IDE v11.0.

NXP MCUXpresso IDE V11.0.0

NXP MCUXpresso IDE V11.0.0

The previous v10.3.1 was released back in Feb 2019, and the 11.0 now in June this year matches up with the Fall university semester. I appreciate that the releases are about every 6 months, so this gives me time to use it in my university lecture material and lab work. I had the weekend for trying it out, and I’m very pleased.

Continue reading →

Building a Raspberry Pi UPS and Serial Login Console with tinyK22 (NXP K22FN512)

Posted on by
7

There are different ways to ruin a Linux system. For the Raspberry Pi which uses a micro SD card as the storage device by default, it comes with two challenges:

  1. Excessive writes to the SD card can wear it out
  2. Sudden power failure during a SD card write can corrupt the file system

For problem one I do I have a mitigation strategy (see “Log2Ram: Extending SD Card Lifetime for Raspberry Pi LoRaWAN Gateway“). Problem two can occur by user error (“you shall not turn it off without a sudo poweroff!”) or with the event of a power outage or black out. So for that problem I wanted to build a UPS for the Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi with UPS System and tinyK22

Raspberry Pi with UPS System and tinyK22

Continue reading →

TrustZone with ARMv8-M and the NXP LPC55S69-EVK

Posted on by
23

The ARM TrustZone is an optional secu=rity feature for Cortex-M33 which shall improve the security for embedded applications running on microcontroller as the NXP LPC55S69 (dual-core M33) on the LPC55S69-EVK.

NXP LPC55S69-EVK Board

NXP LPC55S69-EVK Board

Continue reading →

First Steps with the LPC55S69-EVK (Dual-Core ARM Cortex-M33 with Trustzone)

Posted on by
6

For the long Easter weekend I have organized a new toy: the NXP LPC55S69-EVK board: a dual ARM Cortex-M33 running at 100 MHz with ARM TrustZone:

LPC55S69 Microcontroller

LPC55S69 Microcontroller

Continue reading →

Tutorial: MCUXpresso SDK with Linux, Part 2: Commandline Debugging with GDB

Posted on by
13

In “Tutorial: MCUXpresso SDK with Linux, Part 1: Installation and Build with Maked” I used cmake and make to build the SDK application. In this part I’m going to use the command line gdb to debug the application on the board.

Cross-Debugging with GDB

Cross-Debugging with GDB

Continue reading →

Tutorial: MCUXpresso SDK with Linux, Part 1: Installation and Build with Make

Posted on by
18

I admit: my work laptop machine is running a Windows 10 OS by default. But this does not prevent me running Linux in a Virtual Machine (VM). Each host platform has its benefits, and I don’t feel biased to one or the other, but I have started using Ubuntu more and more, simply because I have worked more on Embedded Linux projects. While I have used mostly Windows with Eclipse for NXP LPC, Kinetis and i.MX platforms in the past, I started using Ubuntu too from last year with the NXP MCUXpresso SDK. I did not find much documentation about this on the web, so I thought it might be a good idea to write a tutorial about it. So here we go…

Building NXP MCUXpresso SDK on Linux Ubuntu

Continue reading →

Tutorial: Changing ARM Cortex Core or Microcontroller in Eclipse CDT Projects

Posted on by
2

Sometimes I start a project with an ARM microcontroller, and in the middle of the project I find out that it was a wrong choice at the beginning and I need to switch the microcontroller derivative or even the used ARM core. With little knowledge of the project structure and the files needed, such a switch is not the easiest thing, but definitely possible.

switching cores

switching cores

Continue reading →

New NXP MCUXpresso IDE V10.3.0 Release

Posted on by
27

Friday this week NXP has released a new version of their flagship IDE: the MCUXpresso IDE V10.3.0. The version number indicates an incremental update from the earlier V10.2.1,  but there are many exciting features and new features which make me switch my lecture material to this new IDE for the next semester.

MCUXpresso IDE V10.3.0

MCUXpresso IDE V10.3.0

Continue reading →

McuOnEclipse Components: 30-Sept-2018 Release

Posted on by
3

I’m pleased to announce a new release of the McuOnEclipse components, available on SourceForge. This release includes several bug fixes, extra support for the NXP S32 Design Studio and SDK and includes FreeRTOS V10.1.1.

SourceForge

SourceForge

Continue reading →

Porting Processor Expert Projects to MCUXpresso IDE

Posted on by
3

The McuOnEclipse GitHub repository hosts many Processor Expert projects and is very popular (cloned more than 1000 times, thank you!). Processor Expert is a powerful framework which generates driver and configuration code, simplifying application development for a wide range of microcontroller and families. But Processor Expert won’t be developed further by NXP and is not part of MCUXpresso IDE. While it is possible to install Processor Expert into MCUXpresso IDE 10.2, how can these projects used ini an IDE *without* Processor Expert? This article describes how to port an existing Processor Expert project into the NXP MCUXpresso IDE.

Adafruit SSD1351 with FRDM-K64F

Ported Project with FRDM-K64F using Adafruit SSD1351 and Processor Expert

Continue reading →

Flash-Resident USB-HID Bootloader with the NXP Kinetis K22 Microcontroller

Posted on by
30

The tinyK22 board (see “tinyK22 Boards arrived“) gets rolled out at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, so I thought I write-up an article this weekend how to use that board with a Flash Resident Bootloader.

tinyK22 with USB HID Bootloader

tinyK22 with USB HID Bootloader

Continue reading →

Debugging the Teensy 3.6 with Eclipse MCUXpresso IDE and CMSIS-DAP LPC-Link2

Posted on by
6

The Teensy boards are great, but as they are they are not really useful for real development, as they lack proper SWD debugging. In “Modifying the Teensy 3.5 and 3.6 for ARM SWD Debugging” I have found a way to get SWD debugging working, at that time with Kinetis Design Studio and the Segger J-Link. This article is about how debug the Teensy with free MCUXpresso IDE and the $20 NXP LPC-Link2 debug probe:

Teensy 3.6 with NXP LPC-Link2

Teensy 3.6 with NXP LPC-Link2

Continue reading →

New FreeRTOS V10.0.0: Amazon, Segger SystemView and Percepio Tracealyzer

Posted on by
28

“Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers”: The announcement of FreeRTOS V10.0.0 was one of the biggest news last week for me. Not only is there now a Version 10, the bigger news is that FreeRTOS is now part of Amazon. Wow! Now this explains why Richard Barry (the founder behind FreeRTOS) was kind of hiding away for about a year: he joined Amazon as a principal engineer about a year ago. I think we all have to wait and see what it means for FreeRTOS.

Amazon FreeRTOS

Amazon FreeRTOS (Source: Amazon Web Site)

Continue reading →

Eclipse MCUXpresso IDE 10.1 with integrated MCUXpresso Configuration Tools

Posted on by
48

Back in March 2017, NXP had rolled the MCUXpresso IDE starting with Version 10.0.0. With the intent to unify the SDK, LPCXpresso, CodeWarrior, Kinetis Design Studio and Processor Expert into one unified and integrated set of tools. V10.0.0 was a good start. The MCUXpresso IDE V10.0.2 in July was more of a smaller update, and the Pin and Clock configuration tools were not integrated, no added tool for peripheral configuration.

A week ago the MCUXpresso V10.1.0 has been released which shows where the journey is going: an free-of-charge and code size unlimited Eclipse based integrated set of tools to configure, build and debug Cortex-M (Kinetis, LPC and i.MX RT) microcontroller/processor based applications.

Clock Tool inside MCUXpresso IDE

Clock Tool inside MCUXpresso IDE

I have used it for a week, and although many things are still new, I thought I’m able to give an overview about what is new.

Continue reading →

Exploring a Microcontroller and Software and Tools for the next Project

Posted on by
6

I’m using many microcontroller in my projects. And a lot more are available out there in the ecosystem. Like many others, I tend to select what I am familiar with. But is this the correct approach to select the hardware and tools for a next project?

Microcontroller Boards

Microcontroller Boards

Continue reading →

McuOnEclipse Components: 25-Sept-2017 Release

Posted on by
11

I’m pleased to announce that a new release of the McuOnEclipse components is available in SourceForge. In this release more ARM Cortex devices/vendors are supported with different SDKs, plus it comes with several FreeRTOS enhancements for debugging highly optimized code.

SourceForge

SourceForge

Continue reading →

Troubleshooting Tips for FreeRTOS Thread Aware Debugging in Eclipse

Posted on by
13

FreeRTOS seems to get more and more popular, and I think as well because more and more debugger and Eclipse IDE vendors add dedicated debugging support for it.

FreeRTOS Threads in Eclipse

FreeRTOS Threads in Eclipse

Continue reading →

McuOnEclipse Components: 09-July-2017 Release

Posted on by
29

I’m pleased to announce that a new release of the McuOnEclipse components is available in SourceForge, with the following major changes and updates:

  • Complete refactoring for 1-Wire stack and DS18B20 temperature sensor components
  • Added HID Joystick device class to the FSL_USB_Stack
  • New SDK_Timer component to work with Kinetis SDK
  • New ST756P LCD driver component
  • New TSL2561 digitial temperature sensor driver
  • Added ReadByte() and WriteByte() GenericI2C functions
  • Added 64bit mapping functions to Utility
  • added configUSE_NEWLIB_REENTRANT and newlib reentrancy support to FreeRTOS
  • Pull resistor support for SDK_BitIO
  • Many smaller bug fixes and enhancements
SourceForge

SourceForge

Continue reading →

Using FreeRTOS with newlib and newlib-nano

Posted on by
15

For reliable applications, I avoid using functions of the standard libraries. They are banned for most safety related applications anyway. I do not use or avoid malloc(), printf() and all the other variants, for many reasons including the ones listed in “Why I don’t like printf()“. Instead, I’m using smaller variants (see “XFormat“). Or I’m using only the thread-safe FreeRTOS heap memory allocation which exist for many good reasons.

Things get problematic if malloc() still is pulled in, either because it is used by a middleware (e.g. TCP/IP stack) or if using C++. Dave Nadler posted a detailed article (http://www.nadler.com/embedded/newlibAndFreeRTOS.html) about how to use newlib and newlib-nano with FreeRTOS.

FreeRTOS Newlib Memory Allocation Scheme

FreeRTOS Newlib Memory Allocation Scheme

Continue reading →