Where and what to start with.

Hi Alexander,

The Stellaris Launchpad is a nice powerful MCU.

I would suggest that you use the ENERGIA freeware development software and purchase the Launchpad Education board so that you have some I/O devices to learn on.

The IDE is very simple and they have a lot of features that let you learn about the launchpad and its software.

Energia also supports the MSP430 launchpads in addition to the Stellaris.

You can get Energia at http://energia.nu/

You can also find a lot of helpful people on the TI engineering websites. 

There are a number of tutorials that explain how the Stellaris functions under software control.

I hope this helps.

Feel free to ask the Element 14 community for help.  There are a lot of talented people who can assist your learning experience.

DAB

Hi Alexander,

The Stellaris Launchpad is a nice powerful MCU.

I would suggest that you use the ENERGIA freeware development software and purchase the Launchpad Education board so that you have some I/O devices to learn on.

The IDE is very simple and they have a lot of features that let you learn about the launchpad and its software.

Energia also supports the MSP430 launchpads in addition to the Stellaris.

You can get Energia at http://energia.nu/

You can also find a lot of helpful people on the TI engineering websites. 

There are a number of tutorials that explain how the Stellaris functions under software control.

I hope this helps.

Feel free to ask the Element 14 community for help.  There are a lot of talented people who can assist your learning experience.

DAB

Much as I hate to disagree with DAB I must urge caution re. the use of the Energia software. The common langauge of ARM Cortex is C, the Energia software makes everything look like an Arduino and uses Wiring and sketches - these are OK for simple stuff but crippling for serious use of the power of the ARM processors.

Since you bought the ARM chip with 32 bits and floating point rather than an Arduino I'm guessing you want to do more than twinkle LEDs - there's  a slightly bigger initial hump to get over to do stuff in C but it's worth it.

(small print: I know you can do harder stuff (than twinkle LEDs) with Arduinos and Wiring but its usually dependent on the serious stuff being written in C or assembler under the hood).

MK

Ok. Now I am using the IAR Embedded Workbench. This have support for many MCUs.

Is this overkill to use this? It has a nice debugger and thing like that.

Nothing wrong with IAR EW as far as I know. I use the Keil tools for ARM myself but I know others who are very happy with the IAR.

If you move on to projects too big for the free versions of IAR and Keil you will need to decide between the cheaper (for the tools) GCC route and the expense of the commerical compilers.

MK

Hi Mike,

I agree with your view for long term use.

I just thought that Energia would be a good place for a newbie to get started.

If you have experience with IAR, by all means continue to develop your skills on the ARM family.

From my perspective, as long as you spend the time to learn how to fully use a development tool, you usually cannot go wrong with which ever one you choose.

Each person needs to assess if the tool meets their needs.

DAB