EK-LM4F120XL Stellaris LM4F120 LaunchPad

[DirtyLude]

Somebody might be interested in this. TI has created a Launchpad for a Stellaris chip. Same concept as the MSP430 Launchpad with the chips and programmer on board. It's only $5 at the moment, but the shipping delay is going to be 6 to 8 weeks at least since they were just released.

EK-LM4F120XL Stellaris LM4F120 LaunchPad
https://estore.ti.com/Stellaris-LaunchPad.aspx

 

[DirtyLude]

My ship date is shown as 12/11, so don't expect these quickly.

 

[DirtyLude]

Workshops for people beginning with the Stellaris Launchpad.

https://processors.wiki.ti.com/inde...DCMP=Stellaris&HQS=stellarislaunchpadworkshop

 

[Mike - K8LH]

Thanks Mark.

I saw this somewhere else and ordered one a couple days ago. Looks like the ship date for mine is sometime in December too.

Cheerful regards, Mike

 

[Vizier87]

Thanks for the info Mark. This one has the JTAG pins extended as well, thank God. I suppose it can only be used for Stellaris series?

I kinda hoped their $17 C2000 Launchpad can extend their JTAG pins. What a disappointment. I tried out XDS100v2 by SEED but it costs $100. Looking forward for TI to come at par with Microchip.

 

[DirtyLude]

I'm not certain if it can be used for non-Stellaris chips, but I'm going to give it a try. Crossworks supports the Stellaris ICDI JTAG porgrammer. I'll check to see if it works on one of my other devices. Something tells me it won't support a non-Stellaris hardare ID. The st-link v2 does not seem to work with my LPC devices.

 

[Vizier87]

I'm not certain if it can be used for non-Stellaris chips, but I'm going to give it a try. Crossworks supports the Stellaris ICDI JTAG porgrammer. I'll check to see if it works on one of my other devices. Something tells me it won't support a non-Stellaris hardare ID. The st-link v2 does not seem to work with my LPC devices.

Do you have C2000 dsps with you? I've made a main board a while back here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXEc8kgnX3I
But it went bonkers after a while and became dysfunctional after that. The JTAG interface is a pain.

Please update after you've tried with others.
Thanks.

 

[DirtyLude]

I don't have any interest in the C2000's so I don't have an evaluation board. I used to use Stellaris when they were Luminary Micro, but that was a long time ago when CM3 was brand new. This board will use either JTAG or SWD. SWD is a reduced pin count interface that's supported by CM0, CM3, and CM4 devices. 6 pins if you include power ground and reset.

 

[Vizier87]

I don't have any interest in the C2000's so I don't have an evaluation board. I used to use Stellaris when they were Luminary Micro, but that was a long time ago when CM3 was brand new. This board will use either JTAG or SWD. SWD is a reduced pin count interface that's supported by CM0, CM3, and CM4 devices. 6 pins if you include power ground and reset.

I see. So the SWD is perhaps the closest thing to an ICSP, I suppose if we exclude SBW. I wonder what's all this deal about having so much pins for debugging for JTAG.

 

[DirtyLude]

Because JTAG is not meant to be just a programmer/debugger, it's also meant for quality control and has a lot of features for hardware validation and boundary scan. It doesn't help that it was designed a long time ago, either.

 

[Vizier87]

with all the tech we have today, I suppose they could've just muxed the pins for the same tests, no? But they chose to stay with all that. They have a lot of better features than Microchip, bit that part impedes a lot of hobbyists to go into TI, I think.

 

[DirtyLude]

It's 8 pins including GND and PWR it's not that bad. They just use those large 20 and 14 pin connectors to have better electrical characteristics and isolation, but it's not needed. Microchip In Circuit debugger is 5 pins including GND and PWR. Zilog Z8 Encore! is 3 pins including GND and PWR, so if you want to complain, why can't Microchip have a single pin in circuit programmer/debugger, but instead it needs 3.

Again, all of these Cortex chips support SWD, which is 6 pins, including PWR and GND so JTAG isn't needed. Some of these chips, like the LPC11xx and LPC13xx don't even support JTAG, just Serial Wire Debug. I tend to use the standard SWD 10pin 1.27mm header, but it's not needed either and you can just put on a straight 6 pin 0.1" header on it.

This is the 10pin 1.27mm header I tend to use.
**broken link removed**

 

[Vizier87]

That's neat. You made them fit to the breadboard like that.

I may sound like complaining but pardon me, I had quite a handful getting started into C2000's JTAG. I suppose it'll be much better after a few more board designs.

 

[Mr RB]

Good info on the SWD programming using 6 pins DirtyLude, thanks for that.

Out of curiosity, how long is the programming/verify time using the 6pin setup?

 

[DirtyLude]

I'm using an Olimex ARM-USB-OCD Tiny with a SWD adapter so it's about the slowest it can be, but it's still plenty fast. It takes a couple seconds to load and verify a 16k flash program with SWD using this programmer. The STM32 Discovery with ST/Link V2 was really fast with the demo programs. I'm expecting the Stellaris ICDI to be pretty fast as well. After hitting Debug in Crossworks, I don't see any significant difference in the time it takes to get the program loaded and running than with an equivalent sized program in say MPLABX wth a PICKIT 3.

 

[Mr RB]

Thank you.

 

[VISN]

Put my order in on 01/09 and received it 02/11. It is going onto the shelf for now until I find an alternative to the 1.3GB Code Composer studio download. What does that install as? I don't know if the installation needs to be validated over the internet. I don't have direct internet access on my PC, I run internet on a XP virtual machine.

Still kit looks pretty sweet for the price.

 

[Vizier87]

Put my order in on 01/09 and received it 02/11. It is going onto the shelf for now until I find an alternative to the 1.3GB Code Composer studio download. What does that install as? I don't know if the installation needs to be validated over the internet. I don't have direct internet access on my PC, I run internet on a XP virtual machine.

Still kit looks pretty sweet for the price.

From my previous experience, you need the microcontroller edition, it's only around 300mb I think. That 1.3GB edition is the full DVD edition, and it's a bit messy to be installed. Have you installed it?

 

[DirtyLude]

From my previous experience, you need the microcontroller edition, it's only around 300mb I think. That 1.3GB edition is the full DVD edition, and it's a bit messy to be installed. Have you installed it?

Last version I installed was a 'microcontroller' version, but it looks like there is only one version available now. I just tried downloading and there's no other versions you can download. I haven't installed it yet, but the install page shows you can select the supported mcu's when installing. Selecting just Stellaris and/or MSP430 should limit the install size a lot, similar to the old microcontroller version. I'll install it tomorrow and see.

Edit: I just tried the install.
Stellaris Cortex MCU support only = 598MB install
Stellaris + MSP430 support = 798MB

If you remove some of the JTAG support that you aren't using, like the BlackHawk JTAG, you can reduce it further.
Installer definitely accessed the internet while installing. Not certain for what reason, though.

Edit again: Stellarisware is a separate install. 90MB total for Stellarisware.

 

[Vizier87]

Installer definitely accessed the internet while installing. Not certain for what reason, though.

That's the messy part. I can't remember now, but there's a version where I didn't need to be online to install it. I'll get back to this later after confirming.