EK-LM4F120XL Stellaris LM4F120 LaunchPad

[VISN]

The RTOS is another separate download. I see that it is a +500MB download and contains stellarisware plus a lot of gunk to what I will be using. Wish they bundled a DVD with all this though, even one that might have been out of date at shipping times.

Oh well, I will schedule a midnight download for it.

 

[DirtyLude]

I bought this J-Link clone about a week ago from an e-bay seller and it's working great in SWD mode. Faster and the thing is relatively tiny.
http://www.powermcu.com/product-20.html

I'm using it with this 20pin to 10pin SWD connector adapter, because I'm using the standard SWD connector, but if you just use a straight 6 pin connector you can make the adapter yourself.
http://www.olimex.com/Products/ARM/JTAG/ARM-JTAG-20-10/

I'm using it with Crossworks which has j-link support, but OpenOCD has j-link support and reading in the Wiki, Code Composer Studio has j-link support for the Stellaris and Hercules chips.

I just tested it with a small 6.1k test program I was running and this is the load and verify times with the data transfer speeds.

**broken link removed**

 

[DirtyLude]

My two Stellaris Launchpads arrived today. I decided to use Code Composer Studio for development rather than my usual Crossworks. I installed and it was relatively painless as there's a quickstart guide. Went through some of the sample programs and they all compiled and ran fine.

I've decided to do some work on CAN BUS with it so I'm making up a quick "shield" with a CAN hardware layer. I'm not a real fan of the Libraries that manufacturers supply lately since generally it just slows everything down, but I've decided to give the StellarisWare driverlib a try.

The one thing I find concerning is that TI looks like they've dropped all of their old Cortex-M3 parts for this 'reboot' and now they really have nothing cheap to work on. Stellaris was previously Luminary Micro, one of the original Cortex-M3 chips on the market before it was bought out by TI. Unless you know where to look you can't even find the M3 parts on the TI website anymore. If you plan on getting into TI Cortex chips, the M4F is your only choice and it's a big chip and will probably be around the $6 mark just for the chip itself. I'm assuming they will 'reboot' the CM3 line sometime hopefully.

 

[DirtyLude]

I made up an add on board with a CAN transceiver to test out the CAN interface. I didn't want to make big board with just the transceiver so I added one of the cheap LCD's and serial breakout which I have plugged in a bluetooth module now.

I'll try it out sometime next week.

**broken link removed**

EDIT: Oh yeah, the etching is pretty bad. I ran out of alcohol to clean the bare board and I got a lot of lift from the toner. It's electrically sound, if not pretty.

 

[nickelflippr]

Off Topic: DirtyLude my 32bit stuff is gathering dust on the shelf, but what about that BT module you are using there? Are they pretty easy to work with? Will the master slave re-pair up easily when moved out of range, then back into range?

I've tried the Nordic 2.4Ghz modules, and it was a major pain to just get two of them talking together.

 

[DirtyLude]

Unfortunately I can't help you there. I don't use them the way you are describing. I've been using them for pairing to PC and Android hosts. I've been playing with some Android development and it's relatively easy to 'talk' over bluetooth to a project. In that regard, it pairs easily and works well.

These are the cheap HC-06 units that do not have host mode, so I don't believe they will work the way you want. You need the HC-05 or to upgrade the firmware in these to allow that.

I got these from DX.com

 

[nickelflippr]

Very interesting. The price on those bluetooth modules have come down a lot, same goes for these newer usb wifi adapters.

I did not know that DX had gotten into microelectronics in such a big way. Thanks!