For the GNU ARM tools it is easy to print out the code and date size information, see
But this is all for ARM cores. What if I use other architectures like S08 or ColdFire in Eclipse?
Code Size Information in Build Console
The existing OpenSDAv1 (see “OpenSDA on the Freedom KL25Z Board“) bootloader is using the industry standard Motorola S-Record (S19) Files. However, new FRDM-K64F board (see “FTF: FRDM-K64F, Kinetis Design Studio and Kinetis SDK“) has OpenSDAv2 on it, which is an mbed bootloader. So how to create files with an IDE other than mbed for that bootloader which is present on the FRDM-K64F board by default? Well, creating binary files is one thing, but to have it working with the mbed bootloader is another challenge :-(.
FRDM-K64F with mbed MSD bootloader
my students sometimes are afraid to ask questions, although I urge them ask any question. In my opinion there are no ‘dumb’ questions: only questioning things let us think and learn new things. I see that many readers of this blog are *not* afraid to comment or ask questions. The WordPress statistics shows 5’687 questions/comments for this blog (thank you all!), and the spam filter protected me from 202,341 items (ok, these *are* dumb) :-).
The ‘question of the week’ comes from Andy. That question caused me some serious head scratching, but the same time I have learned something important and useful for my next project: how to tell the ARM GNU linker *not* to initialize variables?
GNU ARM Embedded Linker Options
I have been asked this question several times:
“How can I define my own interrupt vector with Processor Expert?”
So I think it deserves a short tutorial, if more than one person is asking this ;-).
My user interrupt in the vector table
I’m attending the Freescale Technology Forum (FTF) in Dallas this year: As they say here: “everything is bigger in Texas”, that’s the motto of this conference ;-). The conference is packed, and I have a hard time to keep up with all the things going on. My focus is obviously everything around Eclipse and ARM microcontroller. The conference started yesterday afternoon with hands-on labs, and I was in the one were Freescale presented the new ‘Kinetis Design Studio’: a free of charge/unlimited Eclipse tool chain based on Eclipse Kepler, GCC and GDB. Freescale presented their new software library ‘Kinetis SDK’. And: There is a new Freedom board which gets handed out to the attendees: the FRDM-K64F :-).
Texas Style Glass Coverage
Using Processor Expert is an awesome tool: it generates source code for me, and I can can ‘dynamically’ tune my projects to my needs. Still, sometimes it is better or desirable to have a ‘normal’ or ‘static’ project. This is very well possible with Processor Expert (see “Sneaking from Processor Expert” or “Disable my Code Generation“): I can generate the code one time, and then use it without Processor Expert.
To make this even easier, I have added an option to the FreeRTOS Processor Expert component to generate ‘static’ code I can copy-paste to projects and tool chains which are either not supported by Processor Expert, or just for ‘static’ projects.
FreeRTOS Custom Port Settings
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
University research projects can be a lot fun, and are very challenging the same time. The good thing is that there is always someting new to learn :-).
This week-end I was working on my Internet of Things (IoT) project, based on a Freescale KL15Z and a nRF24L01+ transceiver. In essence it is a wireless data logger. For this, I only can afford a few micro amps consumed by the whole board over an extended period of time. I mean 21 micro amps for running a whole board with sensor, EEPROM, wireless transceiver, operating system and an ARM Cortex-M0+ ready to crunch numbers at 20 MHz 🙂
21 micro amps for wireless sensor node (when not sending)
I have created and published on GitHub a new component ‘CriticalSection’:
Critical Section Component Methods
This component is a wrapper between my components and the problematic current implementation in Processor Expert (see EnterCritical() and ExitCritical(): Why Things are Failing Badly). It uses a flexible approach and uses macros to either use my modified version of EnterCritical() and ExitCritical(), or simply defaults to the original implementation.
MCU on Eclipse 