Public:MCUXpresso

About

MCUXpresso is an IDE from NXP who makes the family of chips we use on ISC (or at least they bought the company that did). We use MCUXpresso to build, flash, and debug all of the code on the solar car. You are welcome to use any IDE for writing code, however you must use MCUXpresso to compile, flash, and debug all code.

Setting Up MCUXpresso

Note: This set-up guide currently covers windows only. ISC has officially only ever supported windows. We are working to make our software more cross platform but instructions for non-Windows may still be lacking. Please add them!

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1. Download the MCUXpresso IDE from the NXP Website.
   1. Register for an NXP account
   2. Download MCUXpresso 10.1.x. ***10.2+ have some compatibility issues with our systems.***
      1. Find it on the "Previous" tab

File:87 ## Agree to the MCUXpresso terms*.

1. 1. Download the version for your OS.
2. Install MCUXpresso including Debug Drivers
   1. Also Install all device drivers when prompted (depending on your device settings you may not receive these, may only receive one for them all, or will receive a bunch)
3. At this point you will need to have ((Github|github software repos set-up)) on your computer to move forward with the set-up process.

{REMARKSBOX(type="errors" title="Note")}The below set-up will work, however new instructions are coming soon for recommended workspace organization{REMARKSBOX}

1. Now import the files into your workspace:
   1. Go to File > Import
   2. Select General > Existing Projects into Workspace
   3. Click "Browse" next to "Select root directory"
   4. Select the base folder for the git repository you are setting up the workspace for.
   5. Select the checkboxes for the projects you want to import to this workspace (see below on managing workspaces)
      1. The absolute minimum for every workspace is -+mbed+-, -+common+-, and the skeleton for the chip your board uses (likely -+mbed1549_skeleton+- on ARGO-FW)
2. At this point you are ready to work on and edit existing projects. Continue below for notes, common issues, and how to create a new project. Also see: ((Building and Debugging Code))

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~42~You may want to note the patent waiver clause in case you decide to use it for personal projects. For solar car related software this should not be a concern.

Rare Problems

If you have a Lenovo non-ThinkPad device, or maybe something else weird running Windows 10, you might run into the debuggers not working even if you've set up everything correctly. The error text when trying to debug was a popup saying Socket exception: connection reset or something similar, and the details were a whole list of things including Java code locations. This problem is probably not with the drivers. The easiest fix was to install MCUXpresso 10.1.0 instead of 10.1.1. It may work with other earlier versions as well but hasn't been tested yet. Also make sure to restart your computer after attempting any changes to MCUXpresso versions and driver installs.

Configurations

If you follow the set-up instructions above you will have everything configured as needed. This section is about why/how those configurations came to be

Note: this is written based on my understanding and may not be completely correct. If anyone has more interest in diving deeper into the configuration of our tool chain please do and update this!

The Appendix and notes section has been moved to the ((Building and Debugging Code)) page since it most had to do with issues related to debugging. -((User:Jonathan|Jonathan)) (Sep 2019)

Credit:

This set-up guide is adapted from Devan Lai's (of CalSol) LPCXpresso set up guide which can be found here: [1]. Our set-up is based on CalSol's the development of Zephyr

~tc~ (alias(MCUXpresso Setup)) ~/tc~