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  • Author Author: gordonmx
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Let the Blogging begin...

gordonmx

I received my kit last Friday and have been trying to gather all the documents and supporting documents.  Seems smaller than the pictures at ~53mm x ~82 mm, but so is the Arduinio.  I like the fact that the Freedom is laid out to uses the Arduino shield interface.  Indeed the board is black (for production units) instead of the white boards (pro-production) I've seen in most of the pre-release photos. 

 

As might be expected with the pre-release unit, the only item in the box was the board itself.  The container lists 2 URLs, freescale.com/Freedom and freescale.com/FRDM-KL25Z, both of which point to the Kinetis L series MCUS website (http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/taxonomy.jsp?code=KINETIS_L_SERIES) with only references to the pending release of the Freedom board.  A preliminary quick start guide at be found on the Element14 website under the preview RoadTest group.  Element14 also has a .zip package with example projects and ide patches, a couple useful videos, but no links to IDE themselves.  I was able to find one at Freescale's website, but was unable to download it.  The ide was a 30-day limit evaluation copy.

 

But back to the board itself.  The board is label as Rev A with boothcode (?) v2_1_1.  Aside from the Arduino interface connectors, some of the jumper pins are unpopulated, but hardwired on the back of the board (J3, J4 & J11.  They seem to a place on the back of the board for a CR-type battary connector.

 

Thanks to Don Bertke for his excellent summary/overview of the product brief.

 

Gordon Margulieux

  • in reply to gordonmx

    Hello Gordon

    I just tried to explain why the connectors were removed from the initial plan and why board delivered differed a little bit from the picture used for preorders.

    The most important is that customers who preordered should not be disappointed as a solution might have been found image ... it was just too early to ship you same bundle for Preview Roadtest.

     

    If you had the battery connector, you will can run the board in battery mode but there is no battery charger embedded on FRDM-KL25Z so you will not can load it, sorry.

     

    IAR is available in 16KB Kickstart version (time unlimited) and Keil will run during 30 days without code size limitations and then move to the 32KB code size limited version.


    May be we could discuss those details in the topic of Christian Defeo "Have a question about Freedom ?" to share those informations with the community ...

  • in reply to FreescaleTools_and_Software

    Dear Freescale Tools_and_Software,

     

    Thank you for your reply. I didn't intend to complain about the missing connectors, but just point them out.  Thanks for the vendor list for the missing connectors.

     

    Can I load a battery if I add the connector?

     

    In the Quick Start Guide, Freescale shows links to both the IAR and Keil IDEs, but the evaluation copies are only valid for 30 days.  This may not be long enough for my plans, so I would like to try the special edition CodeWarrior (free) IDE.  Will there be a SE for 10.3beta2?  Will there be a patch for 10.2 SE?  Can I get a copy of the 10.3beta2 before the 25th?

     

    Is this the right place to post these comments and questions?

  • Hello Gordon.


    First of all thank you for starting to share your experience concerning FRDM-KL25Z with the community.
    The two URLs printed on the package of the board were not activated on time for this preview experience, but the associated content will be available when boards will start to be delivered the day of the launch september 25th. In the meantime, as you mentioned it, there is a preliminary Quick Start Guide and a preliminary Software Package available to download on Element14/The Knode in order to start experimenting some demos runing on the board using IAR and KEIL IDE tools already available to download.


    Concerning the IDEs, there is in each chapter of the Quick Start Guide, the links to download IAR and KEIL evaluation versions, which are used with the different demos. The preliminary Quick Start Guide will be soon updated with additional demos featuring CodeWarrior 10.3, Processor Expert 10.x and additional IDE vendors.

    - IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM V6.40.3 30-day evaluation and 16KB code size limited version :

    http://www.iar.com/en/Products/IAR-Embedded-Workbench/ARM/

    - Keil MDK-ARM 4.54 30-day evaluation then 32KB code size limited version :

    http://www.keil.com/arm/mdk.asp

    - Codewarrior 10.3beta2 (offering Kinetis-L targets that are not available in the 10.2) should be available for download the day of the launch following this link :

    http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?nodeId=01521027260061

     

    As answered to billabott in the post Have a Question About the Freescale Freedom Development Platform? from Christian Defeo, even if it embeds many features innovative and comprehensive, FRDM-KL25Z must stay cheap to be accessible to a large number of customers. To achieve this goal, some connectors have been removed from the final BOM, especially those to connect the Arduino Shields. So if you expect to evaluate the board with an Arduino extension, you must order following connectors : 1x Samtec SSW-106-01-T-D, 2x Samtec SSW-108-01-T-D, 1x Samtec SSW-110-01-T-D, 2x Samtec TSW-102-07-T-S
    Those are generic connectors available from different connector suppliers (Samtec is just a suggestion) in Tin or Gold (much expensive) contacts versions.

    Customers who preordered the board on Element14 should not be disappointed as a solution might have been found to reduce the impact of this modification.