USB or not: CDC with Processor Expert

I had a PREN student showing up into my office. He wanted to choose a microcontroller for that project. One requirement put on the table was “it needs USB”. Well, I asked why USB is required. I was not surprised by the answer: “to use USB instead of RS-232”. Wow. So what he really wanted was USB CDC (Communication Device Class). Yep. Most notebooks today have no serial COM port (see “Processor Expert Configurations“). But because “USB is serial” does not mean “USB CDC is simple”. Nope. USB is not simple. But it can be with Processor Expert.

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Shared Files maintained by Processor Expert

As outlined in Quickstart for Processor Expert in Eclipse, it is easy to create a new Processor Expert project. There are three shared files which are maintained by Processor Expert. At the same time I need to change them with my code. So how does this work, and how can I configure it to my needs?

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Drag&Drop in Processor Expert

I have that wonderful project in MCU10.2 with Processor Expert using Embedded Components. It took me a while to carefully configure the settings, and now it works like a charm. I have another project and need the same components and settings in there. But how?

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Configurations with Processor Expert

I have to make an application configuration decision: Using USB CDC or RS-232?

In the lab I use a Tower system which offers both RS-232 and USB connectivity. It uses a FSShell component to communicate with a terminal on the host. Typically this is using an RS-232 serial cable connected to the host. Well, the challenge is that today most notebooks do not have a serial port any more. But they have USB.

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Back to Classic: FreeRTOS for Freescale S12(X)

One thing which is missing with the CodeWarrior for MCU10.2 announcement: MCU10.2 does not support the S12(X) from Freescale.

With this I still have several projects not ported to eclipse. So they are still implemented using the ‘classic’ (non-eclipse based) version of CodeWarrior for S12(X). And I’m using FreeRTOS in the eclipse based IDE with Processor Expert for S08, ColdFire and Kinetis, but not yet for the S12(X). What now?
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