Category Archives: MCUXpresso IDE

LinkServer for Microcontrollers

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GDB is the de-facto debugging engine and debug connection for micro-controllers these days: it is versatile and with its client-server architecture very flexible and powerful, and pretty much every debug probe and vendor (PEMICRO, SEGGER, OpenOCD, pyOCD, …) offers it. But a GDB server or command line implementation was not available for the NXP LinkServer family of debug probes (LPC-Link, MCU-Link, MCU-Link Pro). This has changed now: LinkServer is available as command line tool and can be used as GDB Server:

LinkServer as GDB Server with Eclipse

With the new LinkServer package I do not only get a gdb server implementation: I have now a command line tool I can use for automation and all kind of different things: programming boards, erasing flash, and so on.

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Booting J-Link as CMSIS-DAP Debug Probe

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Mostly unnoticed (at least for myself), SEGGER has enabled some of the J-Link debug probes to support the CMSIS-DAP debug protocol.

SEGGER J-Link as CMSIS-DAP Debug Probe

This greatly enhances the use of J-Link debug probes for CMSIS-DAP based tools.

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Building a Triumvirate: From Eclipse CDT to CMake, CMD and Visual Studio Code

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A Triumvirate is or Triarchy is built by three individuals which lead or rule something. In this article I want to rule a project with Eclipse CDT, Visual Studio Code and with building it from the command line for automated builds.

So what if I have an Eclipse project (say MCUXpresso IDE and SDK), and want to build it on a build server, and and I want to use the same time the project with Eclipse IDE and Visual Studio code?

Key to this is CMake: I’m keeping the Eclipse CDT features, adding CMake with Make and Ninja to the fix, and have it ‘ruled’ by three different ’emperor’: Eclipse, Visual Studio Code and from a shell console:

MCUXpresso SDK CDT project with CMake for Eclipse, Visual Studio Code and Command Line Building
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Added Heap Memory Monitoring and Tracking to FreeRTOS V10.5

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We all should know it: dynamic memory usage can be dangerous. There can be memory fragmentation, use-after-free, out-of-memory and memory leaks. While I do prefer static memory allocation for embedded systems, using a dynamic memory allocation in some applications is not avoidable or just makes sense.

In one of my lecture modules we develop a ‘Boulder’ game, where the player has to collect underground diamonds and avoid moving monsters:

LPC845-BRK with OLED using dynamic memory allocation

I’ll show you have FreeRTOS memory usage can be tracked and monitored.

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Changing the Startup: Custom initial PC and SP Register Setting with the Debugger

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By default, the debugger cares about the initial register settings after connecting to the target. But for special cases like using a bootloader combined with a loaded application, this requires a bit more than the usually ‘standard procedure’. For example I need to set both a custom program counter (PC) and stack pointer (SP).

How to set custom PC and SP for startup of the application
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Using Semihosting the direct Way

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Most embedded developers have probably used ‘semihosting’. And yes, it is generally seen as a bad thing. Maybe you have used it, without realizing what it really is and what it does. It is simple to add a printf() to the code (again: you should not use printf), and with the right standard library, it magically it shows up in a console view:

printf a hello world

That looks great, but what is behind this, to make it happen? Actually, it is really amazing technology. And it can be used for better things than just printing text.

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IDE Custom C/C++ Local Build Environment

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On my host machine I have many different development environment installed. From different make, cmake and python versions up to different versions of GNU tool chains. Adding them to the PATH environment variable on Windows is really a bad thing: instead I want to keep my PATH as clean as possible. If I need to set up a different environment with different tools, then I prefer to have a ‘local’ environment.

PATH Setting
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Avoiding Stack Overflows: Application Monitoring the Stack Usage

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One of the biggest fears of embedded systems developers are stack overflows. FreeRTOS includes a cool feature to monitor and catch task stack overflows. But what about the MSP (Main Stack Pointer) on ARM, or the interrupt stack? What if not using an RTOS and running a bare-metal application?

Checking stack size used

There is a simple way monitoring stack usage at runtime, and for this I want to share the routines and what is now available inside the McuArm module.

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You_Shall_Not_Use_Printf: How to make sure no printf() is used

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Every embedded system developer should know by now, that using printf() is not a good thing for smaller systems. Printf() and the like are not only problematic from a code and data size perspective, they are infamous for vulnerability attacks too.

In this article I’ll show you multiple ways how to ban printf() or anything similar you want to avoid.

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Adding the Picolib C/C++ Standard Library to an existing GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain

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It looks like my previous article “Which Embedded GCC Standard Library? newlib, newlib-nano, …” stirred up something: I saw and knew about the Picolib created and maintained by Keith Packard, but never had the time to try it out. With the university grading mostly over, I have put aside a few hours to try it out. And the result is very interesting:

Footprint of different embedded libraries

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