Postcards not from the Edge

I'd like to thank Cypress SemiConductor for sending me out two new CY8CKIT-049 PSoC4200 Prototyping kits. They arrived in quite novel packaging.

I was privileged enough to receive an engineering prototype earlier and was going to use it for this challenge but was provided the released versions to showcase them.

The engineering prototype contained just a PSoC 4200 on a 600mil DIP breakout board so I performed programming and debugging with a MiniProg 3.

The released kit include a detachable USB-Serial adapter to remove the need for a MiniProg 3 or equivalent. Unlike a MiniProg 3, this adapter does not provide any interactive debugging capabilities and requires the connected PSoC4 to have bootloader firmware loaded.

The adapter communicates to the PSoC4 using its P4.0 and P4.1 configured as a serial port.

There are many hazards getting the USB-Serial adapter working and I must have stumbled on most of them. I was not alone because a search on the Internet found many others with the same or similar difficulties. I persevered sorted out each issue to produce a reliable repeatable procedure.

Here are some of my stumbles and I won't bore you with the error messages encountered.

Stumble 1. - The rapid blinking LED when the bootloader is enabled is not that much faster than the default test program. This can give you the false impression that you are not in bootloader mode.

Stumble 2. - After connection of the second CY8CKIT-049 kit (which probably would be assigned as COM32:), all my USB-Serial adapters were no longer being enumerated by Windows. I had to use Device Manager and clear out all Virtual Serial Port Enumerations to get it working again.

Stumble 3. - The communication to the PSoC4 is 115000 baud. The documentation if not read carefully may give you the impression to set it to 9600 baud.

Stumble 4. - When using the bootloader programing function from PSoC Creator 3 SP1 the path to the .cycad file does not automatically point to the correct path for your project.

So with a bit of tuning to the Prototyping Kit Guide text most of the stumbles could have been avoided.

Here is a helpful hint for creating blank PSoC 4 bootloadable projects for use with the CY8CKIT-049 4200.  Use it in conjunction with Section 5.3 of the CY8CKIT-049 4xxx Prototyping Kit Guide.

After creating a new PSoC Creator project copy the Dependencies folder from the CY8CKIT-049 4200 example to your new project folder. (for .HEX and .ELF files). This keeps all of your source files together easier management.

Although working and working well I really do prefer using the MiniProg3. I think the added expense is well worth the cost and makes debugging considerably simpler and development faster.

If you don't do as much PSoC development work as myself then you could use a PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit to get the equivalent functionality.

The Prototype Kit's USB-Serial adapter is a great way to get a PSoC 4 communicating with a PC without any serial ports.

Now why would I have a PSoC 4 for this challenge?

Can anyone guess? Could it be for a RPiSoC alternative? Maybe something else?