A bootloader shall be small and concise. I very much like bootloaders which do not need a ‘special’ program on the host, so I prefer a simple terminal for this. While porting my serial bootloader to the NXP FRDM-K64F board, I have found RealTerm which offers a lot of cool features:
RealTerm
Sometimes it is very convenient to load a new firmware to a board without the need for a hardware debugger. This is usually done with a bootloader. The NXP Freedom and Tower evaluation boards have on-board debug device/microcontroller (OpenSDA) which can load different firmware implementations like CMSIS-DAP/mbed, P&E Multilink or a Segger J-Link OpenSDA applications. Both mbed and P&E implemenations support to program the board with drag&drop: simply send a file to a virtual MSD (Mass Storage Device) to get it programmed. The latest Segger OpenSDA firmware has this ability added now too: Programming the board with a virtual MSD device:
Virtual MSD Device
My wife tells me that I have too many boards on my desk. That is only *partially* correct: there are many, but not *too* many. But I’m working on too many tasks, but that’s a different aspect :-). I’m using more and more the Kinetis SDK V2.0, and as a result of this I have multiple SDKs installed on my machine. Because with the SDK V2.0 I get a download for each device/board installed (see “First NXP Kinetis SDK Release: SDK V2.0 with Online On-Demand Package Builder“). So my list of SDK folders is growing, as shown with the ‘New SDK 2.x’ wizard in Kinetis Design Studio:
Multiple Kinetis SDKs
The same time, the amount of free disk space is reducing. What if I could combine all these SDK’s?
Sometimes it is all about knowing the simple tricks in Eclipse which make life easier. Like this one: how to have a split editor view so I can edit multiple different sections of a source file:
Split Editor View in Eclipse
I don’t know if it is the same for you. But for me, configuring the pins on these new ARM microcontroller is a challenge: Most pins can do multiple functions, such as be used as I²C, UART or GPIO pins.
Configuring the pins ‘by hand’ is difficult, error-prone and usually the first thing I need to do for a new project/device. NXP developed a new tool for this task and previewed it at FTF 2016. It is available now both as web (online) and desktop (locally installed) tool. At FTF it was possible to play with an engineering release: time to get my hands on the public release :-). And as more and more student projects will start using that tool for their boards, I better have a tutorial for it :-).
Desktop Version of Pins Tool
Sometimes it is very useful to clean or build a selected set of files. For this I select the file(s) in the Eclipse Project Explorer and use the context menu:
Build Selected Files
Eclipse has a cool feature which might not be known to everyone: the ‘To-Do’ (or Tasks) List which keeps track of what I have to do:
Tasks View
Air travel and especially across many time zones is no fun. I returned from the NXP FTF conference in Austin, Texas. Travelling to the west works pretty good, but travelling east is a beast.
My best tip beating timezone tiredness is to get out and tank as much sunlight as I can after. It has been a beautiful day today, I got a lot of sunlight, so here is a share of that:
Sun against Jetlag (click to enlarge)
In “Mother of Components: Processor Expert with NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 Projects” I presented an approach how to use Processor Expert components with the NXP Kinetis SDK. This article is a tutorial how to create a blinking LED project with that approach, using McuOnEclipse Processor Expert components and the Kinetis SDK V2.0. As board the FRDM-K22F is used:
Blinky on a FRDM-K22F with SDK V2.0 and Processor Expert
Eclipse based IDE’s have a powerful feature to make ‘variants’ of the same projects: Build Configurations. Build configurations are a powerful thing in Eclipse: they allow me to make ‘variants’ of a project. The project will share the common things, and I can simply tweak things one way or the other for example to produce a ‘release’ or a ‘debug’ binary of my application without duplicate the project.
Build configurations are manged through either the context menu on the project or with the top menu:
Eclipse Project Build Configuration
MCU on Eclipse 