MSPM0 project with VS Code, CMake and GCC - part 7a: middleware example stepper motor control

RE: MSPM0 project with VS Code, CMake and GCC - part 7a: middleware example stepper motor control

Jan Cumps — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:53:50 GMT

I got good progress on MSPM0 and steppers. First understanding that TI example above was key.

What I'm doing now, is to port a Pico design that I made, to the MSPM0.

What's the same: I'm using a very similar stepper IC driver class, that I wrote for the A4988 IC. Just switched from Pico SDK API to TI's.

What's different:

My Pico design ran the stepper logic on PIO state machines. The MSPM0 family doesn't have anything like that.

For the MSPM0 I use the PWM timer capability, and interrupts. Leaning strongly on TI's example.

I have a simple example working, that either can spin a motor at a given speed, or that can take a number of steps.

Here, the STEP pin when asking the firmware to take 10 steps:

RE: MSPM0 project with VS Code, CMake and GCC - part 7a: middleware example stepper motor control

DAB — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 18:57:09 GMT

Another nice update Jan.

It is too bad they do not have these tools for the older MSP430.

RE: MSPM0 project with VS Code, CMake and GCC - part 7a: middleware example stepper motor control

Qbit — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:32:36 GMT

Nice update on the series! Great write up on the cmake setup and VS Code project files.

RE: MSPM0 project with VS Code, CMake and GCC - part 7a: middleware example stepper motor control

Jan Cumps — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:05:58 GMT

I learned that the conversation between GUI and firmware is over debug protocol, not via UART. The GUI knows firmware variable addresses (by inspecting hte binary). And uses the debug instructions to directly set and read those variables.

So there is no UART to reuse as interface. I tested the VS Code generated firmware by doing the same as TI. Change variable values in a debug session.
That works, and I now know how to start from this code and build my own.