As mentioned in Part 9: There is a new GNU ARM Eclipse plugin 2.1.1, and this one makes project creation for Freescale devices easier than ever 🙂
GNU ARM Eclipse 2.1.1
On Monday the new semester starts, and yet again: we will do a Sumo thing :-). They can choose which tool chain they would like to use to develop their application for the ARM Cortex-M0+ used from Freescale. One option is to create a ‘Do-It-Yourself’ toolchain. Since the start of the series, things have evolved: there is a new GNU ARM tool chain available, Segger has updated their drivers, and most important the GNU ARM Eclipse plugin has been greatly extended to support Freescale parts and Processor Expert. So instead to read through all the previous tutorials, this one is about putting together a free tool chain less than 10 minutes (not counting the time to download around 500 MByte).
DIY Eclipse Toolchain
I have I project which I want to debug on multiple boards the same time. So how can I download and debug the same application to multiple boards/processors, and debug them all the same time from within the same workspace and Eclipse IDE?
This is a typical scenario I have with my RNet stack: the same application runs on multiple boards, and I want to debug all the boards with the same project with the same Eclipse. For example to wireless sensor nodes with the RNet nRF24L01+ stack as in the picture below:
Two FRDM-KL25Z with nRF24L01+ Transceivers
Tired by the tool chains provided by your silicon vendor? Do you want to use a free and open tool chain? Then you probably followed by “DIY Free Toolchain” series already. In “DIY Free Toolchain for Kinetis: Part 2 – Eclipse IDE” I used the standard GNU Eclipse plugins. As mentioned in above post, there is an even better and more powerful plugin available: the GNU ARM Eclipse plug-ins. There is a dedicated blog site which provides excellent documentation and direct access to new and frequent releases. And these days there is a true a Christmas gift for every Eclipse lover: the version 1.1.7 with the addition of J-Link debugger plugin :-).
GNU ARM Eclipse
Good news for everyone having Windows 8.1: P&E has released Dec 11th 2013 a new FRDM board firmware which solves the bootloader issue found with Windows 8.1. The new firmware can download from https://www.pemicro.com/opensda/.
New PnE OpenSDA Firmware
For the Eclipse and Processor Expert lovers of this world: there is another Eclipse based IDE you can use: ThunderBench made by Emprog:
ThunderBench for ARM Eclipse Startup Screen
They support a range of ARM based devices, including the Freescale ones I’m using. So I downloaded the v3.24 30 day trial from their download page last week. Finally I have found some time to try it out. Could this be an alternative to use my Freescale FRDM boards with Processor Expert?
Eclipse based IDE’s have typically one limitation: the IDE has not much scripting capabilities. Yes, I can use things like JUnit for testing, but if it comes to build and debug C/C++ applications, then support gets really rare. An exception to this is CodeWarrior for MCU which features a command line version of the IDE which can be used for test automation as I used it in one of my tutorials. What I missed so far is to have a command line interface for Processor Expert to generate code. This is now possible with CodeWarrior for MCU10.5 :-).
Freescale might not have thought about this: how to use Freescale boards and silicon to develop for non-Freescale silicon? 😉
I tinkered around using the FRDM (e.g. FRDM-KL25Z) board as a general purpose programming or debugging device. See the links to the posts at the end of this article. I have used it to program and debug other Freescale ARM processors. It requires board changes and the usage of a different OpenSDA firmware which has its own limitations (no USB CDC serial bridge). But for about $15-20 I have a device to program my own external boards :-).
If you are using Keil tools, then the good news is: With CMSIS-DAP you can debug any other (even non-Freescale) ARM device as long it is supported by the IDE :mgreen:
FRDM-KL25Z debugging the nRF51422-DK (Source: Keith Wakeham)
Now I have implemented a watchdog with Processor Expert for my system. But what I have found out? I ended up with a looping system, and the watchdog did not fire 😦
What went wrong?
Self-Motivation: I write this post in the hope to cut the number of ‘please help me’ emails in my inbox ;-):
If you want to debug one of the Freescale boards with OpenSDA (FRDM-KL25Z, FRDM-K20, FRDM-KL05Z, FRDM-KL46Z48M, FRDM-KL02Z, TWR-KL47Z48M, …), and if you get this dialog …
No Device Available
… then read on.
MCU on Eclipse 