Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Digikey - 180 days of education

  Hello there!

  This post I'd like to comment a little bit about the digikey continuing education program. It's 180 days of education in electronics, firmware, concepts, good practices in R&D, tests, etc. For those who missed the others class, we can listen to all archived classes. There plenty of differents topics like

  • Introduction to electronics
  • Linux kernel debugging
  • Basics of software-based test systems
  • Testing wireless devices & systems
  For archived classes click here!
  In these days they are discussing about ARM Cortex-M0 and in the next few days it will be about Embedded Computer Vision. 


  Everything is free!

  Bye

  Marcelo
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Saturday, August 18, 2012

STM32F0 discovery + GCC + Eclipse + OpenOCD + Ubuntu - Part I

Hello there!

In this post I'll show how to set up your IDE to debug the STM32F0 discovery board using open source tools.
The STM32F0 is a kit (very cheap) from ST micro to introduces the ARM Cortex - M0. This little boards has integrated a STM32F051R8T6 microcontroller with a button, leds and I/Os and also a st-linkV2 which is used to program and debug. That's why this little board is so amazing! We can use the st-linkV2 embedded to program and debug others microcontrollers, you need only to change two jumpers and we're ready!

I must say that everything I did here was based in what Mike Szczys did here. So THANK YOU Mike!!!
Ok, let's start! First of all, create a folder stm32 in your home. We'll use this folder to save all files.

mkdir /home/stm32

1) Installing basic tools
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install git
sudo apt-get install libtool
sudo apt-get install libftdi1
sudo apt-get install texinfo

2) Installing toolchain
a) You can download toolchain from code sourcery (or if you prefer, you can use crosstool-ng and generate your own toolchain)
https://sourcery.mentor.com/sgpp/lite/arm/portal/subscription?@template=lite

b) Install toolchain
sh ./arm-2012.03-56-arm-none-eabi.bin

if you have the error "ERROR: DASH shell not supported as system shell", type
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow dash

c) Chose: Minimal installation, default folder, check "Modify path for user", check "Don't create links"

3) Installing OpenOCD
Get here the latest version of OpenOCD (I got openocd-0.6.0-rc1) and save

tar jxvf openocd-0.6.0-rc1.tar.bz2
cd openocd-0.6.0-rc1
./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-maintainer-mode --enable-stlink
make
sudo make install

4) Install udev rules
git clone git://github.com/texane/stlink.git
cd /home/stm32/stlink
sudo install -m 644 49-stlinkv2.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/49-stlinkv2.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

5) Install Eclipse
a)Get the latest version Eclipse C/C++ here. My version is Indigo.
b) Install plugins. Go to Help/Install New Software...
c) Work with: http://gnuarmeclipse.sourceforge.net/updates and chose GNU ARM C/C++ Developement Support. Install it.
d) Work with: http://download.eclipse.org/tools/cdt/releases/indigo and chose GDB hardware debugging. Install it.

6) Get templates and setting up file directory
a) Create a workspace, a Template and a src folder inside at /home/stm32 (or somewhere)
mkdir /home/stm32/workspace
mkdir /home/stm32/workspace/Template
mkdir /home/stm32/workspace/Template/src

b) Download the following templates:
STM32F0discovery_fw.zip
git clone https://github.com/szczys/stm32f0-discovery-basic-template.git

b) Unzip STM32F0discovery_fw.zip and copy the Libraries folder into /home/stm32/workspace/Template
c) Copy STM32F0-Discovery_FW_V1.0.0/Project/Demonstration/stm32f0xx_conf.h into src folder.
d) Copy and paste the files in stm32f0-discovery-basic-template/Device/ldscripts/ into src folder.
e) Edit stm32f0.ld in src folder. Change paths in both include:
INCLUDE "/home/stm32/workspace/Template/src/stm32f0discovery_def.ld"INCLUDE "/home/stm32/workspace/Template/src/sections_flash.ld"f) Copy stm32f0-discovery-basic-template/Device/startup_stm32f0xx.s into src folder. RENAME IT TO .S. It's an eclipse issue.
g) Copy folder stm32f0-discovery-basic-template/Extra to /home/stm32/workspace/Template/


This post is already too long. In next post I'll show how to start a new project and set up debugger and OpenOCD in Eclipse. I promise that it will be soon!

Bye

Marcelo
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