MCU on Eclipse

On a lifelong learning journey …

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

Posted on April 14, 2019 by Erich Styger

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

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Running FreeRTOS on the VEGA RISC-V Board

Posted on March 16, 2019 by Erich Styger

In “Debugging the RV32M1-VEGA RISC-V with Eclipse and MCUXpresso IDE” I described how to build and debug applications for the VEGA RISC-V board. In this article I describe how to enable FreeRTOS for RISC-V, based on the latest FreeRTOS V10.2.0 release.

Blinky with FreeRTOS on the VEGA RISC-V Board

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Tutorial: Blinky with the NXP LPC845-BRK Board

Posted on February 3, 2019 by Erich Styger

The NXP LPC845-BRK board is a sub-$6 breadboard friendly development board with an ARM Cortex-M0+ on it. This tutorial is about developing a ‘blinky’ on it using MCUXpresso.

Binky on NXP LPC845-BRK Board

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Unboxing the NXP LPC845-BRK Board

Posted on January 31, 2019 by Erich Styger

I really love tiny and bread board friendly boards, especially if they are very affordable and can be use with Eclipse based tools. So I was excited to see the NXP LPC845-BRK board to be available at Mouser, so I ended up ordering multiple boards right away. Why multiple? Because they only cost CHF 5.95 (around $6)!

NXP LPC845-BRK Board

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Tutorial: HD44780 Display Driver with NXP MCUXpresso SDK

Posted on January 27, 2019 by Erich Styger

In the age of high-resolution graphical LCDs using a character display might look like a bit anachronistic. But these displays provide a lot of value for me as they are robust, available in different shapes and number of lines. And such a character display can be a better solution for an industrial application.

hd44780 display with NXP FRDM-KW41Z Board

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Tutorial: Booting the NXP i.MX RT from Micro SD Card

Posted on January 22, 2019 by Erich Styger

It is a common thing to boot a Linux system (see the Raspberry Pi) from a micro SD card. It is not that common for a microcontroller. The NXP i.MX RT ARM Cortex-M7 fills that gap between these two worlds. No surprise that it features a ROM bootloader which can boot from a micro SD card.

SD Card with i.MX RT1052

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FreeRTOS: how to End and Restart the Scheduler

Posted on January 20, 2019 by Erich Styger

Most host or desktop systems (say Linux, Mac or Windows) have a normal use case where you start the operating system say in the morning and shut it down in the evening, and then you leave the machine. Embedded Systems are different: they are not attended, and they are supposed to run ‘forever’. Not every embedded system needs to run an OS (or in that world: Real-Time Operating System or RTOS), but the same applies here: after the RTOS is started, it is not intended that it will shutdown and restart. To the extend that you won’t they support the ‘shutdown’ and ‘restart’ functionality at all. In case of gathering coverage information this would be really useful:

coverage information from FreeRTOS application

In the case of FreeRTOS: what if I really need to shutdown the RTOS and restart it again, as by default this is not supported. This is what this article is about …

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Freelink LPC4322JET100 based Debug Circuit on NXP i.MX RT1064-EVK Board

Posted on December 31, 2018 by Erich Styger

As noticed in “First Steps with the NXP i.MX RT1064-EVK Board” there is a new LPC4322 based debug interface on the RT1064-EVK board.

LPC4322JET100 based Debug Interface

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Using Camera Modules with NXP i.MX RT10xx EVK

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Erich Styger

In “First Steps with the NXP i.MX RT1064-EVK Board” I mentioned that the board kit came with a camera module, but it was unclear to me which module was included in the kit. I know it now: it is the ON Semiconductor MT9M114 :-).

Image from the MT9M114

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First Steps with the NXP i.MX RT1064-EVK Board

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Erich Styger

I always reserve time between Christmas and New Year to get my hands on technology pieces which I might not have any time otherwise. Among different things I ordered the NXP i.MX RT1064-EVK board from Mouser.com, and it arrived right before Christmas. Time to have it unboxed and started….

i.MX RT1064 Processor

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