Using IP (Ethernet) based debug probes is a very handy thing: I don’t have to be directly connected to the debug probe (e.g. with the USB cable). This article explains how to use an IP-based Segger or P&E probe with the Eclipse based MCUXpresso IDE.
LAN Based Debugging
Windows 8 and 10 have added a ‘feature’ to scan and index devices attached to the host machine. This means that bootloaders or MSD (Mass Storage Device) programming implementations on evaluation boards developed in the Windows 7 age might not be prepared for that. Up to the point that it can impact the bootloader as outlined in “Bricking and Recovering OpenSDA Boards in Windows 8 and 10“. So far one of the easiest way to get out that situation was to use a Windows 7 machine. But if you only have a Windows 10 machine available, this article describes the needed steps to update the bootloader with Windows 10 host machines.
OpenSDA LED
The map file produced by the GNU linker includes lots of information, however it is very cryptic to read. In “Listing Code and Data Size for each Source File with GNU and Eclipse” I showed how the GNU size utility can be used to report the code and data size for each object file. The Eclipse based MCUXpresso IDE comes with another nice view which shows detailed information about code and data allocation:
Symbol Viewer in MCUXpresso IDE
If you follow me on Twitter, then you are aware that I’m working on a larger project building an SMT pick and place machine :-). The fun with this project is that it includes electronics, mechanics and all kind of 3D printing and laser cutting. That machine picks SMD components and places them on a PCB. One sub-project is to build a SMD cut tape holder:
SMD Tape Holder
To switch between perspectives I can use the toolbar in Eclipse:
Eclipse Perspective Toolbar
But there must be another or better way to do this?
I love my laser cutter because it makes it easy to create nice wood boxes:
Wood Box
Laser cutter and engraver are the kind of cool thing after 3D printers which get more and more common. One interesting thing to use a laser engraver (or cutter) is to use it with tesa Laser Labels.
Tesa Laser Label (Source: http://www.tesa.com)
I’m dealing a lot with bootloaders recently (see “Flash-Resident USB-HID Bootloader with the NXP Kinetis K22 Microcontroller“), and bootloaders are sometimes very picky about what file format they are able to consume. So what if I have a binary (see “S-Record, Intel Hex and Binary Files“) file and I need to convert it into the Intel Hex format?
converted binary to intel hex
One of the great things with the FreeRTOS operating system is that it comes with free performance analysis: It shows me how much time is spent in each task. Best of all: it shows it in a graphical way inside Eclipse too:
FreeRTOS Runtime Information in Eclipse
To solve the real hard problem of Embedded Systems development, I usually need all the data I can get from the target. The Percepio Tracealizer is such a tool which can stream application and FreeRTOS trace from the target over a Segger J-Link connection using the Segger RTT protocol. I’m using that combination a lot.
Streaming trace data that way does not need a dedicated hardware like ETM Trace. Using RTT is usually not much intrusive and affects the performance of the target in the 1-2% range (of course depending on the amount of data).
But what worried me for several weeks is that after moving to FreeRTOS V10.0.0 and the same time updating the Segger libraries, the target performance was heavily affected:
RTT streaming affects target performance?
MCU on Eclipse 