Writing code for the FRDM-Kxxx boards

Question

Forgive my st00pidity...

I just bought 2 FRDM-KE02Z boards to play with, and maybe learn something.

I read about open SDA (which I assume is also used for bit-banging the boards)...

But what can I use to write code for them? Codewarrior? What? Codewarrior seems to be a 30 day trial, and then pay $$..

I am so used to PIC and AVR - free tools...

mcb1 · Accepted Answer

Unfortunately, the KE02Z is not supported in the online mbed compiler yet 
 Opps, sorry. That's what you get for answering at 5am while on night shift. Not sure if Erich's posting help. He had a reference to one of the IDE's (that I found a long time ago) and it may be under this posting. http://mcuoneclipse.com/2013/07/20/dyi-free-toolchain-for-kinetis-part-1-gnu-arm-build-tools/ Apologies for the wrong info. Mark

mcb1 · Answer

mbed.org is free, but it's an online system. You can save all your files, but the compiler is not downloadable. I have a feeling there is another with a memory limitation ...search the site under KL25z Mark

vsluiter · Answer

Hi Tom,

I'm using mbed quite much, and it's very easy to use. I've used in a class where I taught some C programming on KL25Z. Unfortunately, the KE02Z is not supported in the online mbed compiler yet according to this document: https://mbed.org/users/Kojto/notebook/freescale-freedom-boards-in-mbed/ .

When you use a board that's supported in the online compiler, you can simply write code, press compile, and save the binary that you're downloading to your device (which enumerates as a 'MBED' usb-drive, mostly you'll need to flash the bootloader the first time you use it).

The online environment is not code size limited, but of course you can't use debugging-on-target from the compiler. From the online compiler you can export to offline toolchains. Keil uVision project format is supported, but the free version of that is code size limited (32kB?? Please take a look if it suits your needs). Of course you can also immediately start writing code in uVision, but you'll have to set up the libraries. The good part for you is that the KE02Z is supported in the mbed libraries for offline use. If you want to go all the way in code size you might take a look at this project https://github.com/adamgreen/gcc4mbed#quick-start that should be a quick install of GCC in combination with the mbed libraries. I have no personal experience with this, so can't tell you how good it works. Of course if you've got GCC going and put some more effort in you'll be able to debug too.

Good luck,

Victor