Not everyone is familiar with Git, and not everyone wants to use it. Although I think using Git or SVN is something every software engineer today needs to master 😉 To make it easier for the ‘non-Gitter’ to use the Processor Expert components, they are available now as *.PEupd files as described here. However, the *.PEupd files are just a snapshot, and not the latest and greatest. So how to use the latest component sources and example projects without Git?
gits in a box
Last Thursday the new Formula Student race car named ‘julier’ had its rollout to the public at Sauber Motorsports in Hinwil, Switzerland. Again a fully electrical racing car, but this time with 4-wheel drive, improved aero-pack and electronics, and able to get from 0 to 100 km/h in 2.6 seconds!
Julier racing (Source Benjamin Hildebrandt)
Beside of USBDM, there is another Open Source implementation of a debug interface for the Freedom Board OpenSDA: CMSIS-DAP.
CMSIS-DAP (Source: http://nimblemachines.com/cmsis-dap/)
CMSIS-DAP stands for ‘Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard – Debug Access Port’) has been published by ARM Inc. With this, there is an open source alternative to proprietary implementation (e.g. P&E OpenSDA or Segger OpenSDA).
Beside of the ARM MDK IDE, CMSIS-DAP is supported by Coocox and IAR. And IAR is what I’m using in this post.
Looks like there is some movement on the ‘OpenSDA Front’: After CodeRed has released their RedProbe OpenSDA firmware, now Segger has released an OpenSDA firmware.
With this, I get a low-cost debugging solution similar to the well-known J-Link run control devices. The OpenSDA Segger Firmware is something like a J-Link-lite.
FRDM-KL25Z with Segger OpenSDA Debug Firmware
Yesterday was a great day: The book “Software Engineering for Embedded Systems” finally arrived 🙂 :
Software Engineering for Embedded Systems
Why I’m excited about this? Because I had the honor to contribute a chapter to that book 🙂
My other robots based on the FRDM-KL25Z use Bluetooth as connectivity. This one is using a Freescale IEEE802.15.4/ZigBee/SMAC module:
Robot with SRB MC13213 Board as Remote Controller
As with any software drivers: they are never perfect. The same applies to the Processor Expert components delivered in CodeWarrior for MCU10 or the DriverSuite too. That’s why I have created many more components which are available on GitHub here. All these components are using other components to reach the hardware. But what if a functionality is not exposed through the low-level component? Or what if I want direct access to the hardware? Up to now I had to choose either the Processor Expert way, or to do it in the ‘traditional’ way using an SDK like CMSIS or vendor supplied header files.
With MCU10.4, I noticed that there is another way: PDD (Physical Device Driver).
PDD in the Components View
The MCUonEclipse GitHub repository is great for everyone which is familiar with Git or GitHub. Previously I was hosting my Processor Expert components on steinerberg.com. Exporting and maintaining the Processor Expert Update Files (*.PEupd) one by one is a lot of effort. GitHub makes things a lot easier, but again: you need to be familiar with it. And not everyone is ‘gitting’ yet. To help the rest of the world (the non-Gitter), I have now published Processor Expert update files for all the components in the repository, so it is easier to install them.
IMPORTANT NOTE: After October 17th 2014, the releases of the McuOnEclipse Processor Expert has been moved to SourceForge, see McuOnEclipse Releases on SourceForge
Usually I do *not* use floating point numbers in my projects. For this, I select ‘None’ during the project creation in CodeWarrior for MCU:
No Floating Point Selected
But what if I need to change my mind later? How to change such a ‘no-floating-point-needed’ project to one with floating point format support?
MCU on Eclipse 