RE: Let the Blogging begin...

FreescaleTools_and_Software — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:23:40 GMT

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.