Please Check Your License

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21

The good thing with many vendors is: they offer development tools free of charge. And the limitations are typically reasonable for many projects. The Eclipse based CodeWarrior for MCU10 is not an exception: it comes in a free (‘Special’) Edition which allows up to 128 KByte of code to download for my ARM/Kinetis projects.

But, when I tried to debug an Example I have downloaded from the web, I get this dialog:

“Download size limit has been exceeded. Please check your license.”

Download Size Limit Has Been Exceeded

Download Size Limit Has Been Exceeded

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A Shell for the Freedom KL25Z Board

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I’m a big fan of physical UART/RS-232 ports on boards. So I was somewhat disappointed not to see a serial 9pin connector on the Freedom KL25Z board. But it is perfectly understood that for this price costs are critical, and a serial header or connector is pushing the budget for that board very likely out of the water. Still, I want serial connectivity for my applications.

Freedom Board with RGB LED

Freedom Board with RGB LED

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Virtual COM/USB CDC for OSBDM/OSJTAG

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Many new notebooks do not have a serial port any more: everything is USB. This can lead to problems (see USB or not: CDC with Processor Expert) as many embedded targets  use normal RS-232. In my classes I’m using the Tower boards: some Tower boards have an on-board 2 pin RS-232 header, e.g. the Tower TWR-MCF52259. Others like the TWR-K60N512 use the added TWR-SER board. The Tower boards have as well a USB capable S08JM60 which is used for debugging (OSBDM/OSJTAG), so why not using the OSBDM microcontroller as Serial-to-USB gateway?

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CodeWarrior Flash Programming from a DOS Shell

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I can do test automation or standalone flash programming using the Debugger Shell. But this requires me to use a view inside of Eclipse. What would be nice is to do such things from a lower level: from a Windows Command window (CMD or DOS Shell). This is possible with usage of Eclipse/CodeWarrior in command line mode.

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Standalone Flash Programmer

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In Scripting, the Debugger Shell and Debugger Shell: Test Automation I was exploring how to use the Debugger Shell for automation. For my lectures at the university I need to program multiple boards with the same application. I don’t want (and need) a debugger for this: all what I need is a ‘Standalone Flash Programmer’: the ability to flash one or multiple boards without debugging.

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Show Workspace Location in the Title Bar

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11

A central concept of the Eclipse framework is the concept of a workspace. The workspace holds project and project references, among with other settings. I’m using multiple workspaces all the time, and in parallel. How to know which workspace I’m using? By default, the CodeWarrior Eclipse IDE main window comes up like this:

Default CodeWarrior Eclipse Main Frame

Default CodeWarrior Eclipse Main Frame

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FatFs with Kinetis

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An SD (Secure Digital) Card interface is kind of standard for many applications today: it provides a lot of memory at a reasonable cost. Still, I need a software stack for it, up to the level of a file system. So far I was really happy with using FatFs: an open source FAT file system provided by Elm-Chan. I’m using the FatFs Processor Expert component already in multiple designs. What was missing: a port to the Freescale Kinetis ARM Cortex-M4 family of processors.

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Icon and Label Decorators in Eclipse

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From time to time, I scratch my head and ask myself: Gee, that file icon looks interesting and different, what does it mean? What I’m wondering about is on Eclipse Icon Decorators. Label and Icon Decorations allow additional information to be displayed in an item’s label and icon. Very powerful. But as with many powerful things: if you don’t know it, it might cause harm or confusion. Unfortunately, that’s not so easy to find out.

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Debugger Shell: Test Automation

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The development cycle does not end with debugging. Debugging is something manual, but for testing and automation I want to develop scripts I can run in an automated fashion. For this I use a tool in CodeWarrior: the Debugger Shell as command line debugger and using TCL as scripting language. This gives me a powerful way into automation and scripting with the debugger: from basic access to memory, to stepping and controlling the execution up to programming the flash memory.

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Software and Hardware Breakpoints

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Using breakpoints is central part of debugging. I’m usually debugging my applications in flash memory. Because nearly all the microcontrollers I use have on-chip flash memory, and have more flash than RAM. With debugging in flash I limited by the number of hardware breakpoints. And here is the advantage with debugging code in RAM: availability of ‘unlimited’ software breakpoints. But how does this all works, and how to make efficient usage of hardware breakpoints?

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