3.5″ Diskette Drives are not widely used any more: CDs, DVDs, memory/thumb drives and downloads from the web are the usual distribution method these days for software. Back a few years ago, software was distributed on one or many 3.5″ diskettes, and even before that time on 5 1/4″ floppy disk drives. So what to do with all these not-used-anymore hardware? Play music with it š
Floppy Music
My wife tells me that I have too many boards on my desk. That is only *partially* correct: there are many, but not *too* many. But I’m working on too many tasks, but that’s a different aspect :-). I’m using more and more the Kinetis SDK V2.0, and as a result of this I have multiple SDKs installed on my machine. Because with the SDK V2.0 I get a download for each device/board installed (see “First NXP Kinetis SDK Release: SDK V2.0 with Online On-Demand Package Builder“). So my list of SDK folders is growing, as shown with the ‘New SDK 2.x’ wizard in Kinetis Design Studio:
Multiple Kinetis SDKs
The same time, the amount of free disk space is reducing. What if I could combine all these SDK’s?
“Learning-by-doing” is one of the core principles of my embedded systems and robotics course at the Lucerne University. For this the students apply what they learned using a robotics platform. In earlier semesters we did a Sumo battle at the end. This time the challenge was to build a remote controller plus to add the ability to explore and solve a line maze:
maze solving robots
I’m using FreeRTOS in most of my applications. There were only a few exceptions where an RTOS has to be used in safety critical systems: there usually it is not permitted to use any dynamic memory allocation because this adds the risk that a memory allocation could fail at runtime because of memory fragmentation or memory leak. And FreeRTOS uses a dynamic memory (heap) for the task stacks and the RTOS resources including semaphore, mutex and queues.
This is now a thing of the past. This week a new FreeRTOS Version 9 was released which does not need any dynamic memory allocation anymore: it is possible now to build completely statically allocated systems with FreeRTOS :-).
Dynamic and Static Memory Allocation in FreeRTOS V9.0.0
In “Tutorial: Blinky with NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 and Processor Expert” I used Processor Expert components with the NXP Kinetis SDK to blink some LEDs. This tutorial extends the earlier project and adds FreeRTOS.
FreeRTOS running on a NXP FRDM-K22F Board
In “Mother of Components: Processor Expert with NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 Projects” I presented an approach how to use Processor Expert components with the NXP Kinetis SDK. This article is a tutorial how to create a blinking LED project with that approach, using McuOnEclipse Processor Expert components and the Kinetis SDK V2.0. As board the FRDM-K22F is used:
Blinky on a FRDM-K22F with SDK V2.0 and Processor Expert
Unfortunately, now the NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 does not include Processor Expert support (see “First NXP Kinetis SDK Release: SDK V2.0 with Online On-Demand Package Builder“). But at the Lucerne University we are using more than 150 different custom Processor Expert components we would like to use with that new SDK. So how to make them working with the Kinetis SDK V2.0? Using a Processor Expert as “the mother of all components”:
NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 and Processor Expert Side-by-Side under Eclipse
By default I’m programming the Elf/Dwarf (.elf) file present in the GNU ARM Eclipse debug configuration:
Elf File to be Downloaded
But how to program the board with something different from the .elf file?
With Processor Expert projects it is very easy to change the heap and stack size: There is a setting for this in the Cpu component settings, under the ‘Build options’ tab:
Heap and Stack Size with Processor Expert
As there is no Processor Expert in the NXP Kinetis SDK V2.0 (see “First NXP Kinetis SDK Release: SDK V2.0 with Online On-Demand Package Builder“), how to do the same in a SDK V2.0 project?
MCU on Eclipse 