Tag Archives: Eclipse

Debugging ARM Cortex-M0+ Hard Fault with MTB Trace

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And here it is again: a Hard Fault exception raised by the ARM Cortex-M0+ on my Freedom board:

Hard Fault in Debug View

Hard Fault in Debug View

A reason for hard faults are for example dereferencing a NULL pointer. The issue with the ARM Cortex hard fault exception stack is: it is not easy to find out where in the code the problem is.I have created a Processor Expert component to help me to find the location of such an exception. With the Eclipse based CodeWarrior for MCU10.3 there is another way: Trace with the MTB (Micro Trace Buffer)!

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Reducing the build time with gcc for ARM and CodeWarrior

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Eclipse based CodeWarrior for MCU10.3 comes with gcc build tools for Kinetis/ARM cores. While it features the parallel build make, I noticed that especially for larger projects build times are not as fast as it should be. The good news is: I was able to cut down my build time to less than half with a simple change :-).

When I looked at the output folder where all the object and make files are stored by Eclipse, I noticed that it has as well the listing files generated:

Listing Files in output folder

Listing Files in output folder

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McuOnEclipse goes Git

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When I have asked by a student last year if I’m uing Git, I said “Git what?”. Yep, a shame I did not know what Git was a this time. But it is never to late to learn new things.

I was coming from CVS, moved to the successor of it (SVN) and was happy with it. Especially with having a local SVN server and repository, that was (and still is) a great thing. But to truely collaborate with a worldwide community, it is time to use something different: Git.

GitHub Bootcamp: 4 simple steps to git

GitHub Bootcamp: 4 simple steps to git

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Free Static Code Analysis with Eclipse

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I know for myself: the earlier I’m able to fix a bug, the better. So I’m always grateful for things which help me to find issues in my sources as early in the development process as possible. Eclipse and CodeWarrior already help me to find syntax errors in my code while I’m typing:

Eclipse highlighting syntax error

Eclipse highlighting syntax error

With the built-in syntax checker of Eclipse, this helps me many times to get things right without the need to build my code with the compiler. But when I’m able to compile successfully my code, this does not mean it is without bugs. It would be good to catch as many errors *before* downloading and running it on the target.

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Tutorial: Ultrasonic Ranging with the Freedom Board

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Question: What makes 8 times ‘beep’, but I cannot hear it?

Answer: My ultrasonic range finder 🙂

FRDM-KL25Z with HC-SR04

FRDM-KL25Z with HC-SR04

What I have added to my FRDM-KL25Z board is an ultrasonic distance sensor, measuring distances up to 4 meters.

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Migrating Kinetis-L Projects from Beta to Final MCU 10.3

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I have successfully used CodeWarrior for MCU10.3 beta version for many projects. With the advent of the final CodeWarrior for MCU10.3, I want to migrate my existing projects to the new and final version. First: my existing projects work as well in the final version, which is good news. But there are two things to change to take advantage of the final 10.3:

  1. Linker file memory split
  2. ARM Micro Trace Buffer (MTB) support

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HD44780 2×16 Character Display for Kinetis and Freedom Board

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In my earlier Nokia LCD post I described a ‘free of charge’ way to add a LCD display to my FRDM-KL25Z board. If that Nokia display is not available, or an alphanumeric display is enough, then the Hitachi HD44780 display is a low cost option as well.

The HD44780 (or compatible) display is one of the most common displays available. And they usually conly costs around $10 or less. I have used a ‘blue’ 3.3V version of such a display already in my lectures with a Freescale S08 microcontroller. So I thought it would be nice to port the driver to the Kinetis and the KL25Z on it.

LCD Boards with FRDM-KL25Z

LCD Boards with FRDM-KL25Z

A recent post of TKJ Electronics about such a really inexpensive (only $5) HD44780 display caught my attention. And finally I had two of such TKJ displays in my postal mail box yesterday. Time to have some fun on a weekend 🙂

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Adding Symbols to the CodeWarrior Debugger

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On the TWR-LCD, I’m using a USB MSD bootloader. In Programming part of flash I showed how to download and debug the application on top of the bootloader. But how to debug both the bootloader and the application? At the same time with CodeWarrior for MCU? The magic key is tell CodeWarrior to use ‘Other Executables’.

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Debugging Hard Faults on ARM Cortex-M

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It is as bad as this: my application stopped in an unhandled interrupt service routine:

Cpu_Interrupt
Cpu_Interrupt

That does not tell much. I’m using Processor Expert generated code, and with this all my ‘unhandled’ vectors are pointing the same handler:

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Foreign Characters for the Eclipse Build System

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Having a problem with Eclipse and building files with foreign characters in the file name? If you are developing software, then read and follow this advice:

“Do ❗ NOT ❗ use foreign characters in file names, paths or for anything else!”

What I mean with ‘foreign characters’ are things like éöüàäü, or simply anything which is outside the 7bit ASCII or Windows-1252 code page table, even if they are allowed by the file system of your operating system (e.g. Windows).

Or in other words: only use these characters for file or directory names:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGEHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890_

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