C2000 Launchpad - Code - First look

I finally managed to have my C2000 Launchpad up&running with CCS V5_2.

The process was not really smooth for me as I initially had double entries in controlSuite and the C2000 Launchpad examples were not showing up in CCS (but they were there if I opened controlSuite externally).

I had to uninstall everything (for controlSuite a manual delete of the files since there is no uninstall, or at least I was not able to find it).

On windows 7 64 bit few things did not work (i.e. CCS was not able to update etc) until I realized I had to run the install and later the software as Administrator.
That did the trick, both for controlSuite install and for CCS install / update.

Phew...
If you follow the instructions on the video available on the TI website, you can open the example from the Resource Explorer, load the project etc...

At step 3 I was not really sure which connection to choose, the XDS100V1 USB worked for me

Also, I switched back the 3rd dip switch to "high" since in the TI video by Trey German (thanks Trey, cool stuff! looking forward for more of your videos!) there is a mention to the fact that enables /disables the jtag debug interface.

So, compiled and debugged, no issues there.

Following the code you immediately realize, if you played before with the "little brother" MSP430G2 Launchpad, that the "piccolo" is totally another animal.

Code appears immediately mode "high level", as I expected, in line with what I found dealing with the Cortex M3 I played with.

Code seems quite "elegant" (not that I don't like the "hardcore" style of the MSP430 code, I actually love it) and probably designed to better fit in bigger applications.

This is the loop that manages the sequential blinking of the blue leds in the pre-installed demo


  //Scan the LEDs until the pushbutton is pressed
    while(GPIO_getData(myGpio, GPIO_Number_12) != 1)
    {       
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_0);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_1);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_2);
        GPIO_setLow(myGpio, GPIO_Number_3);
        DELAY_US(50000);

        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_0);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_1);
        GPIO_setLow(myGpio, GPIO_Number_2);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_3);
        DELAY_US(50000);

        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_0);
        GPIO_setLow(myGpio, GPIO_Number_1);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_2);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_3);
        DELAY_US(50000);

        GPIO_setLow(myGpio, GPIO_Number_0);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_1);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_2);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_3);
        DELAY_US(500000);
    }

I would say it is definitely readable and you don't need to know the names of the registers to make sense of it.

It appears that they used a good naming convention where all the calls are prefixed with the name of the involved peripheral, which will be GPIO, ADC, CLK...

And check this :


    fid = fopen("scia","w");
    freopen("scia:", "w", stdout);
    setvbuf(stdout, NULL, _IONBF, 0);

Oh yeah, that's your serial port saying "hello" there.
How to configure the baud rate?


#if (CPU_FRQ_60MHZ)
    SCI_setBaudRate(mySci, SCI_BaudRate_115_2_kBaud);  

Want to send some bytes over the serial port?

void updateTemperature(void)
{
    // Restore cursor position
    putchar(0x1B);
    putchar('[');
    putchar('u');  
    printf("%d Celcius = Ref + %d ", currentTemp, (currentTemp - referenceTemp));   
}


Honestly I found really cool with the MSP430G2 USCI to be able to set the parameters for modulation etc... but, ok, this looks way easier.
All this is possible with the support of  various header files, there is one for each peripheral

Overall, first impression : thumbs up!