One week after the storm “Petra”, the new one named “Sabine” is approaching Switzerland. This winter is really special so far: nearly no snow, record high temperatures and it feels more like spring than winter…
It should be winter now?
Most of my projects are using FreeRTOS, and I’m using different Debug Probes (SEGGER, P&E and LinkServer) to debug NXP devices.
The NXP LinkServer debug connection is able to show the RTOS threads in Eclipse/MCUXpresso IDE which is incredibly helpful:
FreeRTOS Thread Aware Debugging with LinkServer Connection
However, by default this is turned off. In this article I show how to turn this on by default.
The GNU size utility which is part of the GNU build tools shows code and data size for archive or object files. It is usually used as a post-build step in Eclipse CDT to show text, data and bss at the end of the build:
Detailed size information for each file
One great feature of Eclipse is its built-in spell checking engine. So no more excuses are possible for typos in the source code ;-). Eclipse scans the source code in the background and offers to correct it:
Eclipse Spell Checker
Right before Christmas 2019, NXP has released a new version of the MCUXpresso IDE, the version 11.1.0. This gave me time to explore it over the Christmas/New-Year break and evaluate it for the next university semester. There are several new features which will make my labs using it easier, so I plan to get the course material updated for it.
MCUXpresso IDE V11.1.0 Welcome Screen
After the break you will find the highlights …
When using an RTOS like FreeRTOS, sooner or later you have to ask the question: how much time is spent in each task? The Eclipse based MCUXpresso IDE has a nice view showing exactly this kind of information:
FreeRTOS Runtime Information
For FreeRTOS (or that Task List view) to show that very useful information, the developer has to provide a helping hand so the RTOS can collect this information. This article shows how this can be done on an ARM Cortex-M.
Human since 1982 claims
“Human since 1982 have the copyright to works displaying digital time using a grid arrangement of analog clocks…”
I’m not a lawyer, but without obligations (imho) I have removed the content.
You can read more of the details here: Copyright Law for Makers and Educators
Thanks for understanding,
Erich
In last week’s blog I explained that the LPC55S69 microcontroller from NXP has two Cortex® M33 cores, named core0 and core1. There was a lot of theory, and so this week I put it all into practice and show you how to debug 2 cores with MCUXpresso IDE.
Throughout this series I’ve been using the LPC55S69 microcontroller from NXP as a platform to investigate the ARM Cortex® M33 core. NXP designed the LPC55S69 with two Cortex M33 cores and so this week I’m investigating these in more detail.
You’ll remember that when ARM launch a processor core it will have a number of optional features. This is shown very clearly on the LPC55S69. The 150 MHz primary core – cpu0 – is a full implementation of Cortex® M33 and includes the optional components FPU, MPU, DSP, ITM and the TrustZone® features.
I’ve always felt that the Fourier Transform (and in particular the embedded implementation Fast Fourier Transform) is the GOAT* of the DSP algorithms. The ability to convert a time-domain signal into a frequency-domain signal is invaluable in applications as diverse as audio processing, medical electrocardiographs (ECGs) and speech recognition.
So this week I’ll show you how to use the Transform engine in the PowerQuad on LPC55S69 to calculate a 512-point FFT. All of the difficult steps are very easily managed and the PowerQuad does all of the very heavy lifting.
MCU on Eclipse 