Run Arduino code on MSP430

Hi Nico,

I just recently downloaded the software myself.  I hope to try it out in the next couple of weeks.

I just recieved by Launchpad Educational Boosterpack and I am ancious to see what it can do.

So far, it looks like the community is making a good effort to support the 430 line at the hobby level.

I will see if I can get a blog together in the next couple of weeks.

Till then, have fun.

DAB

Hi DAB,

I saw your post about the educational boosterpack in a launchpad roadtest review and did a search - is that the one with the buttons and buzzer on it?

I just finished setting up Energia just now, and it only took maybe 10 minutes (this note is taking me longer to type ), following these instructions: https://github.com/energia/Energia/wiki/Getting-Started

For my Macbook it was just a case of drag and drop the app into my Applications folder, and double click on the installer for a driver (and a reboot).

Then I opened the app, plugged in my Launchpad board, selected the com port and board, and tried the Blink sample. Super easy, super smoothly, works like a charm!

I love the added touch of them having defined "RED_LED" and "GREEN_LED" to address the board's built-in LEDs.

This definitely means I'll be working with my Launchpad boards more now

Cheers,

-Nico

Nico

Thanks for the link.

I like how people are making us 'non-software' persons able to easily use the awesome hardware that is available.

If anyone has any means to make a day longer than 24hours, perhaps they could post the method so that some of us can put all our thoughts into practice.

Mark

Nico

Thanks for the link.

I like how people are making us 'non-software' persons able to easily use the awesome hardware that is available.

If anyone has any means to make a day longer than 24hours, perhaps they could post the method so that some of us can put all our thoughts into practice.

Mark

Hi Mark,

I'm a software person, and I've spent many years programming in C, but some of that hardware dev stuff is just plain nasty! Even if they cleaned it up a bit so it doesn't all look like assembly language, that would be a lot better.

When the hobby stuff is harder work than my dayjob, I lose interest quickly!

I agree, a 25 hour day would be perfect, though to be honest I'd probably use the extra hour to sleep in every day

Cheers,

-Nico

hi Nico, et al.

Me I like my CSS (Eclipse) & C. by using native C you  have access to the years of code that is available to you.

Yes TI's Libs SUCK and their Doc's are Worse! The Video stuff used in the Stellaris is just bad news.. The 'user guide please don't make me laugh.. is the functions puked up into a book.. with no rime or reason. I wish their was something better.

My advice to all the non-programmers... hey get the basic ANSI C book and get on with it.. yes the interrupts are though to learn.. but there are some great libs out there...

Yes You Can Do It....

Cris H.

I'm not sure what you mean with "by using native C you have access to the years of code that is available to you."?

Energia is native C/C++. The underlying compiler is mspgcc - a 430 version of the industry standard gcc compiler. Energia is not a new programming language, it is a C/C++ library framework to simplify development. Although the framework provides high-level abstraction of the hardware, you can still do the low-level stuff should you so desire, and indeed some of my libraries that I have written do quite a bit of low-level stuff that is basically the same as typical CCS code.

As you say, TI's lib's suck - Energia is a non-sucky library/framework.  Admittedly it isn't for everyone. As I said in my previous post, it comes with quite a bit of overhead, and does have it's limitations. But it is still quite powerful, and allows you to do in just a few lines of clear, readable code, what would normally require several lines of rather obscure code.  Debugging is a bit harder than with CCS, but because the framework makes coding much plainer, I've found debugging is less necessary.

For someone who has just got their Launchpad, and is now scratching their head wondering where to get started, Energia is a great place to begin whereby they can quickly start developing their own working code without having to try to make sense of all the registers etc.  I know when I first started working with the 430, I saw the first few examples and got as far as WDTCTL=WDTPW|WDTHOLD and went "WHAT THE HECK????". It makes sense to me now, but at first it was gobbledygook. I've had about 25 years in C development, as well as a bit of assembly on Z80 based embedded systems (admittedly a very long time ago), yet this was very foreign to me.  This is where Energia is good - you can start getting functional code running without having to worry about all the obscure registers and bitfields.