Friday this week NXP has released a new version of their flagship IDE: the MCUXpresso IDE V10.3.0. The version number indicates an incremental update from the earlier V10.2.1, but there are many exciting features and new features which make me switch my lecture material to this new IDE for the next semester.
MCUXpresso IDE V10.3.0
You might wonder what ‘Zork‘ is? Zork is one of the first and earlist fictive computer games, written around 1977 and 1979, written in MDL on a DEC PDP-10 by members of the MIT Dynamic Modelling group (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork). I believe the first time I have played Zork was around 1984 on a Commodore 64.
Zork
Not ready for the complexity of a full blown Embedded Linux, but need that extra compute performance? Need an ARM Cortex-M7 running at 600 MHz module on a half-sized business card, ready to be integrated? Here we go: the Embedded Artists i.MX RT1052 OEM module:
Embedded Artists NXP i.MX RT1052 OEM Module
Compute modules are very common in the Embedded Linux space, for example see this Toradex module. The reason is simple: these high-performance boards simplify the design, as I don’t have to care about the BGA packages and the external SDRAM and FLASH devices: everything is on a module I can easily integrate into my base board.
Eclipse is great: it gives me the tools and capabilities to solve the really hard bugs to find. An example of that ‘hard’ category are ‘rogue’ memory accesses: something in the application is accessing an unwanted memory location and corrupts the data. This might be very sporadic, or takes a long while until it happens. With normal ‘stop-mode’ debugging (setting a normal breakpoint) and stepping usually won’t let me find that bug, as it might be coming from a pointer somewhere. Maybe from an interrupt routine. Or maybe an unitialized or corrupted pointer corrupts to my memory. Usually all what I know is the memory adddress of the data, maybe what is written, but not what or who is writing to that location.
In this article I’m using one of the ‘less-known’ debugging techniques available in Eclipse and CDT and how it works: watchpoints!
Watchpoint with Condition
In this article I’m using one of the ‘less-known’ debugging techniques available in Eclipse and CDT and how it works: watchpoints!
Powerful ARM Cortex-M7 microcontroller are on the rise, bridging the gap between traditional microcontroller and Embedded Linux systems. I already published articles for the NXP i.MX RT1052 which is an ARM Cortex-M7 running at 600 MHz. Because the RT105x is available in BGA196 package only, I have as oredered the i.MX RT 1050 EVK which has a similar device on it, but in LQFP package:
i.MX RT1021
I noticed on Mouser.com that there is a new i.MX RT1050 board: the EVKB one. I have used the EVK (the one without the ‘B’) for several weeks (see “MCUXpresso IDE V10.1.0 with i.MX RT1052 Crossover Processor” and “Adding a Rocktech Capacitive Touch LCD to the NXP i.MX RT1052 EVK“). I needed anyway a second board, so I ordered that EVKB from Mouser, and after some delay and waiting it arrived on my desk. So far this boards seems to be a better one:
i.MX RT1050 EVKB Board
FreeRTOS includes a nice feature to give me information about how much time every task is spending running on the system:
FreeRTOS Runtime Information
This tutorial explains that FreeRTOS Runtime Statistics feature and how it can be turned on and used.
NXP has just released the 10.2.1 update of their flagship Eclipse based IDE. While the number increase from 10.2.0 to 10.2.1 indicates a minor release, there are a several things which make me move over to that new release.
MCUXpresso IDE 10.2.1 build 795
I recently discovered a nice feature in Eclipse CDT: the ability to show the return value of a function:
Return Value shown as Variable
Is BLACK the color of the season? My students really seem to love these ‘dark’ Eclipse themes. Well, I tried ‘dark’ themes in the past, but I have not been vey excited about it. Somehow I preferred more the ‘black on white background’ thing. But: I have now managed to install the ‘Darkest Dark’ Eclipse theme into the NXP MCUXpresso 10.2 IDE for my daily work, and I feel it hurts my eyes less? Maybe I’m getting older? Or could it really be that ‘dark’ look and feel?
Darkest Dark Theme with MCUXpresso IDE
Find out for yourself in the following article….
MCU on Eclipse 