Whatever happened to CooCox?

[richardman]

Whatever happened to the CooCox products? Their product pages/forums are full of spam, and it looks like there are/were a lot of complaints re: their web-connected 2.0 IDE. Anyone knows?

[Pack34]

I had odd issues compiling old projects on v2 so I rolled back.

I never had much luck on their forums.

[free_electron]

It laid its egg in someone else's nest...

[richardman]

It laid its egg in someone else's nest...

I admit that I am not clear on the meaning of this phrase :-)

[Joerg]

It laid its egg in someone else's nest...

I admit that I am not clear on the meaning of this phrase :-)

You know that bird that does not sit on its own eggs in its own nest but rather places them into the nests of other birds as it is even able to control the color of its eggs ? In English the name of that bird is cuckoo which sounds a little like CooCox ... so that was a joke probably meaning that this nasty bird now got in the retaliation for its bad ways ... me thinks ;-) ...

[miguelvp]

Or maybe it's a play on word regarding the book and film: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

[richardman]

Somewhat more seriously, as they said on the website: they do not have a business model, other than they hope companies will fund them. My guess is that the funding dries up.

[westfw]

Meh.  A rather poorly maintained forum, but it looks like they have ONE thread that I'd describe as "full of spam."

[farsi]

i am using some 1.x version - mainly to compile and build stuff. adding libs is a bit frustrating at times.
would prefer to have command line tools as in unix, but since i am on Windows and there is no budget for a real IDE, I am somewhat stuck with CooCox

[AndyC_772]

Someone mentioned the other day that the free version of TrueSTUDIO just became less nobbled. Might be worth a look?

If you're doing non-commercial work, the hobby licence for CrossWorks is very cheap too.

[farsi]

thanks for the links!
truestudio indeed looked nice from the screenshots, but now after install, there is no clear path how to use e.g. the STM32 boards.

I'll check crossworks next.

[newbrain]

If you are on Windows, and with a limited budget, have a look to VisualGDB: the embedded only license is not expensive.
Lots of basic tutorials on the site, also for STM32.
You must like Visual Studio, though (I happen to do), but the Community Edition is free and almost complete.

In any case I intend to have a look to Truestudio, especially what debugging is included with the free version.

[miguelvp]

If you are on Windows, and with a limited budget, have a look to VisualGDB: the embedded only license is not expensive.
Lots of basic tutorials on the site, also for STM32.
You must like Visual Studio, though (I happen to do), but the Community Edition is free and almost complete.

In any case I intend to have a look to Truestudio, especially what debugging is included with the free version.

Funny, because look what it has been announced today:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2015/11/18/announcing-the-vs-gdb-debugger-extension.aspx

And it works with the free Visual Studio 2015 Community or higher and you need to have the tools for Android installed

To use this extension, you need to have Visual Studio 2015 Community or higher with the Visual C++ tools for Android installed. Those tools use the open source MIEngine that provides the support for the Visual Studio debugger to use Machine Interface that GDB and LLDB use.  The GDB Debugger extension introduces a new project type that surfaces additional project properties that allow you to connect the Visual Studio debugger to GDB either locally or remotely, including on remote Linux targets.

And the associated image:

[newbrain]

Funny, because look what it has been announced today:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2015/11/18/announcing-the-vs-gdb-debugger-extension.aspx

And it works with the free Visual Studio 2015 Community or higher and you need to have the tools for Android installed

Thanks for the heads up!
This is quite interesting, and another step in the integration of GNU tools in VC.
Of course, much more is needed to provide an "integrated" experience when writing code for an MCU, (openocd or similar, cross compiler, etc.), but still a good thing to hear.

As for a Windows IDE, if one is in the Eclipse camp, let's not forget about https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/gnu-arm-eclipse-full-cortex-m7-support-added/.

[richardman]

and remember that you can purchase a complete hardware/software/compiler license (non-commercial) of JumpStart C/C ebook for $99 :-) and we have a 10% off special until end of Nov. JumpStart debugger (NC) is an additional $50. Great for Windows users.
http://c4everyone.com
to apply the discount, enter the code SUNNYNOV on the shopping cart page once you add the item(s).

[free_electron]

You know that bird that does not sit on its own eggs in its own nest but rather places them into the nests of other birds as it is even able to control the color of its eggs ?

CORRECT. The cuckoo lays it's egg in a different birds nest. They call this a parasitic breeder. The cucko does not hatch its own eggs or care for its young.
once hatched the cuckoo young grows much faster then the other birds . it will even push other birds and eggs out of the nest.

Coocox tries the same. they raffle a bunch of free stuff, wrap it up and try to make money of the hard work of others.
Other usage:. Someone who is 'cuckoo' is insane, nuts, bonkers. . By using this scavenged stuff they hope other companies will give em money ...

so yea, coocox fits them perfectly

[miguelvp]

and remember that you can purchase a complete hardware/software/compiler license (non-commercial) of JumpStart C/C ebook for $99 :-) and we have a 10% off special until end of Nov. JumpStart debugger (NC) is an additional $50. Great for Windows users.
http://c4everyone.com
to apply the discount, enter the code SUNNYNOV on the shopping cart page once you add the item(s).

And remember, moderators don't like those types of posts by vendors.

[richardman]

And remember, moderators don't like those types of posts by vendors.

Mea Culpa, noted.

[farsi]

ideally, I would get the GNU GCC toolchain work on Windows.
I like VIM and the command line from Unix. And it seems to be possible in Windows too.

Debugger/Programmers/etc are an issue though. It's bad to see how vendors lock you in with an IDE or a programmer.

So, that sounds interesting on the Jumpstart approach, learning about toolchain concepts without investing $$$ in vendor lock in.

[AndyC_772]

I'm not as concerned about vendor lock-in with tool chains as I used to be.

Portability between manufacturers is a laudable goal, of course, but the very nature of embedded development is it's hardware-centric. There's a lot of my code which, though written in a language that should compile for any target, nevertheless contains such a high percentage of device driver code that porting it to a different manufacturer's MCU would be very hard work.

In short, I'm simply not going to do it without a really compelling reason, and even if there were, swapping to a different compiler and IDE would be the least of my problems.

It's a shame there's no suite of manufacturer-independent drivers available. A set of functions to do generic things like read from an ADC, or make a timer interrupt go off after X amount of time, or write a sequence of bytes via SPI, would be great. To actually be useful, though, it would need to be well abstracted from the underlying hardware, and of course, no manufacturer is likely to put in the effort.

[tan98010]

Why not give ATOLLIC TRUESTUDIO a try, its now FREE.....!!!!! NO CODE SIZE LIMITS.....
http://timor.atollic.com/truestudio/

[senso]

Is it still retarded and not show data from arm-size?

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

Coocox is dead

[dannyf]

Yeah. That's indeed sad. I liked their 1.x but the 2.x sucks. They are pioneers in terms of setting up the projects - rte took that to the next level.

I continued to use them by using a generic cmsis plus device specific header on chips that coocox doesn't support.

I will miss them for sure.

[poorchava]

I have switched from CooCox to EM::Blocks. It's faster and had much larger device support list.

Sent from my HTC One M8s using Tapatalk.

[Sal Ammoniac]

It's very easy to take generic tools like Eclipse, GCC, etc., and put together your own development environment that isn't dependent on any chip vendors, plus you can keep it up to date whenever you wish rather than rely on vendor whims.

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

And this....

[PeterL]

Well it looks like they pulled the plug. coocox.org does not respond atm. And according to a tweet I found this is the case now for at least a week.

[dannyf]

that's too bad. I will miss them - was their biggest fan. The way CoIDE (1.x) sets up a project is innovative and something every IDE can learn from.

[Sal Ammoniac]

If you're doing non-commercial work, the hobby licence for CrossWorks is very cheap too.

Segger Embedded Studio is free for non-commercial use and it is CrossWorks with support for all debuggers other than the Segger J-Link stripped out. Since the Segger J-Link EDU is only USD$60, that's not a bad deal. Or, alternately, you can use other debuggers that have J-Link firmware available (such as the NXP LPC-Link2 and the ST-Link/v2).

Segger Embedded Studio doesn't have any code size limitations nor does it prohibit usage of higher optimization levels.

https://www.segger.com/embedded-studio.html

[jnz]

If you're doing non-commercial work, the hobby licence for CrossWorks is very cheap too.

Segger Embedded Studio is free for non-commercial use and it is CrossWorks with support for all debuggers other than the Segger J-Link stripped out. Since the Segger J-Link EDU is only USD$60, that's not a bad deal. Or, alternately, you can use other debuggers that have J-Link firmware available (such as the NXP LPC-Link2 and the ST-Link/v2).

Segger Embedded Studio doesn't have any code size limitations nor does it prohibit usage of higher optimization levels.

https://www.segger.com/embedded-studio.html

This.

And my limited time with Rowley Crossworks was pleasant.