PSoC Rock's :) Starting a tutorial blog

Hi Guys, I will also post the Blogs on E14 Community for you guys to get the content easily . I probability may need some help from the Experts .

Regards,

GurI

What is the PSoC Family?

Tim

PSoC is Programmable System on Chip family of IC's from Cypress Semiconductors. Currently I am working with the PSoC 4xxx family of MCU's.

timswift wrote:

What is the PSoC Family?

Tim

PSoC is a wonderful Cypress technology that combines a microcontroller with programmable analog and digital peripherals.  Some chips have a decent amount of programmable logic.

Here's an element14 link: http://www.element14.com/community/community/designcenter/psoc4_pioneer_kit

Here's a Cypress link: http://www.cypress.com/psoc/

How do you program it?

Tim

Hi Tim,

Cypress Semiconductor has an excellent tool set to program the basic processor and to configure the programmable hardware components.

I think you might be up to playing with the PSOC 4 kit.  It will help prepare you for working with hardware and software controlled hardware.

DAB

What language does it use?  

timswift wrote:

 

What language does it use?

You usually program a PSoC's ARM processor in C or C++.  You can use assembler if you really, really want.  You usually "program" the rest of the SoC by drawing schematic diagrams using Cypress' PSoC Creator tool.  PSoC Creator takes these diagrams, allocates resources for the analog and digital blocks you used in the diagrams, and figures out how to interconnect them.  Then it compresses the information needed to program PSoC internal configuration registers and links this with your C program.  Most users are unaware of this internal process and just draw diagrams for the hardware and write C for the software and let PSoC Creator do all the work.

PSoC Creator only runs on Windows, and requires a fairly recent version.  Cypress documents most of the internal registers needed to create of non-Windows tools.  However, they do not document the routing registers which means you're stuck with PSoC Creator and Windows.  IMO this has prevented PSoC from having the overwhelming success such an obviously great technology should have had by now.  But as the Bi-Colored Python Rock Snake said in The Elephant's Child, "Some people do not know what is good for them."

For PSoC 4 there are some amazingly cheap US$4 development boards, so check these out if you have a limited budget: http://www.cypress.com/?rID=92146.

If you need more hardware resources and processing power, take a look at PSoC 5LP.  SchmartBoard has a nice 5LP board for US$35, on sale this month for $30: http://schmartboard.com/index.asp?page=products_dev&id=652

Wow that's interesting!

I know !! and the Best part is that they have the cheapest feature rich Development board i.e. only 4$

CY8CKIT-049 42xx Prototyping board. http://www.cypress.com/?rID=92146

Included in the $4 Board is a FREE USB to UART/I2C/SPI Module which you can break out and a PSoC42xx MCU with

Arm Cortex M0+

and 4 Logical Universal Digital Blocks

and 2 Programmable Analog Comparators/Opamps

1 LED and 1 Push button

All in a breadboard friendly design

JUST for 4$

Regards,

GurI