Free Launchpad boards from TI (Offer ended)

[Stonent]

Sorry for the repost of someone elses topic, but I didn't want anyone to miss it. You can pick up a couple of TI microcontroller launchpad boards for free with the $25 credit. The offer is good till Sept 30, see below.

If you're into Arudino, the MSP430 and Stellaris launchpads can be programmed with Energia which is a port of the Arduino IDE to TI boards.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/texas-instruments-25$-coupon-code!/

[Crazy Ape]

Missed it the first time around.

Thanks.

Now, if only I had more room to put all these boxes from TI. 

[elcomtel]

Sorry for the repost of someone elses topic, but I didn't want anyone to miss it. You can pick up a couple of TI microcontroller launchpad boards for free with the $25 credit. The offer is good till Sept 30, see below.

Man ... You Rock !!!

I just scored myself a $24.00 MSP430 USB Stick Development Tool for free.   
See: http://www.ti.com/tool/ez430-f2013

I can recommend anyone else to give it a go. Free for the taking.

[TheDirty]

It works with quite a few things.  I used it for the new LDC1000 EVM.

[crispytato]

Thank you sir! just landed myself a new MSP430 launchpad (the dip one was the only one in stock sadly) and also a Tiva C TM4C123G based one. I'm very keen to give the MSP430 a go as I've been considering getting a launchpad for a while now. Energia looks like it's a pretty sweet deal for someone who learned to code on Arduino SDK. And best of all, it cost a resounding $0.00. I really do love TI as far as big companies go.

It's seldom that I get to participate in these freebies because I live in NZ. TI are just too sweet, they happily send me sample products and now this deal, all for free, even the shipping is covered

I've really gotta hand it to them. This level of professionalism and generosity is unmatched, and it's made me consider TI parts over other manu's when there are multiple alternatives for what I need. A lot of businesses really could take a leaf out of their book, making a good impression on the people who are studying to be tomorrow's engineers has to be a good investment in building goodwill/brand loyalty.

Just curious anyone else who ordered something: did they ship your orders via express mail or just regular post?

peace
chris

[Crazy Ape]

Just curious anyone else who ordered something: did they ship your orders via express mail or just regular post?

peace
chris

They tend to use FedEx, or at least that's my experience in Australia.

[dannyf]

Their hardware is top notch, so is their commitment to their products.

I wish they could bring the stellaris / tiva ware to the 21st century, however. Drop that rom-based firmware (a gimmick in my view) and provide a more consistent interface with the hardware.

A dream team would consist of the TI hardware team + management and ST software team.

[Stonent]

Just curious anyone else who ordered something: did they ship your orders via express mail or just regular post?

peace
chris

They tend to use FedEx, or at least that's my experience in Australia.

They used FedEx to my apartment even though I'm only 45 minutes away from the origin.  The FedEx guy even gave me a jump-start on my car since the battery was dead and I was trying to go get it replaced.

[rdl]

Couple of years ago TI was selling their TTL Logic Data Book for 10 cents (you know, the one with over a thousand pages) with "free shipping", so I bought a copy. They sent it FedEx.

[fluxcapacitor]

 The code doesn`t work anymore 

[Stonent]

Yeah that was mentioned in the original thread. It looks like maybe too many people used that code in a short period of time.

[Crazy Ape]

Yeah that was mentioned in the original thread. It looks like maybe too many people used that code in a short period of time.

A quick search of the net shows that sites all around the world had it posted. It's seems that once hack-a-day posted it, everyone else reposted it.

Hack a day:
http://hackaday.com/2013/09/18/25-coupon-code-for-texas-instruments-store/

elektronika.ba:
http://www.elektronika.ba/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14611&p=138783

[BravoV]

A quick search of the net shows that sites all around the world had it posted. It's seems that once hack-a-day posted it, everyone else reposted it.

Hack a day:
http://hackaday.com/2013/09/18/25-coupon-code-for-texas-instruments-store/

Hey ... that screen shot looks so familiar. 

[dannyf]

Stellaris launchpads can be programmed with Energia

I looked up Energia:

The foundation of Energia and Arduino is the Wiring framework that is developed by Hernando Barragan.

I would say "no". If that Wiring framework has any resemblence with the Arduino wiring, it will be slow and bloated.

For the LM3S chips, I use CoIDE and for the newer TI Stellaris chips, I use Tivaware within CCS.

[Stonent]

CCS has limitations unless you pay for it.

[BravoV]

CCS has limitations unless you pay for it.

Nope, as long you use the TI genuine LaunchPads either older Stellaris or newer Tiva C as target platform, all features at CCS + TI Arm "full featured" compiler are unlocked and no limitation what so ever, and totally free.

Did you actually ever test or use the CCS with your various variants of TI launchpads ? I thought you have many of them ? -> as you mentioned here 

Edit : The secret sauce actually resides at the ICDI mcu. 

[dannyf]

Those TI chips are nothing short of spectacular in terms of resources offered. The software is definitely a downer.

As to the license, looking into some older linux versions of CCS.

[Stonent]

I remember when installing it it said there was a limitation on the program size. So I just used energia instead.

[BravoV]

No need to find for the linux version if you want windows version, its unlocked as I said when using TI launchpad, just make sure you follow the installation EGGGxactly each steps as the user guide says, dont skip or ignore any error. Done many ccs installations without any probelm at all, heck, that were even in virtual machines, how about that sounds ?

Here, read it yourself, straight from TI CCS wiki page -> http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/CCS_for_LaunchPad

Quoting from that site :

Code Composer Studio is a complete, Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE) that supports the LaunchPad ecosystem, as well as the rest of Texas Instruments' Embedded Processors portfolio. This tool enables developers to program, debug and compile code directly into your LaunchPad evaluation kits.

When using CCS with a LaunchPad evaluation kit, CCS is free and fully-featured.

or this, from TI official support forum, just read the 3rd reply by TI's official support staff, this should be crystal clear -> http://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/tiva_arm/f/908/t/270496.aspx

[BravoV]

Those TI chips are nothing short of spectacular in terms of resources offered. The software is definitely a downer.

As to the license, looking into some older linux versions of CCS.

Downer ? How ?

Assuming we're still talking "ONLY" using TI Arm cortex launchpads, take a look here -> http://www.ti.com/tool/sw-ek-tm4c123gxl , and look at the price column. 

IAR Embedded Workbench
Keil RVMDK
Mentor Sourcery CodeBench
CCS

All for free when used with TivaWare for C Series launchpad, although I don't know whether they're crippled or not for the 1st three in the list above since I don't use them.

I use CCS only from the beginning when I started with TI's arm cortex mcus.

[dannyf]

How ?

That's almost too easy.

1) Take a look at TimerConfig(). The mistake there is fairly easy to spot, even for a junior programmer;
2) If that doesn't work for you, try to configure Timer A for a time base; do something / anything; and then try to configure Timer B for a time base; Now what happened to your Timer A? That is just a boneheaded mistake, and very elementary too.
3) Or try the ROM vs. FLASH version of TimerConfig().

When you are done with that, take a look at TimerEnable() as well.

Enjoy.

[BravoV]

Ok, I thought you were talking about the tool chain.

[dannyf]

Tool chain? That's not difficult either:

1) try to use Saleae logic analyzer on the same hub with the launchpad;
2) try to include device specific header files with those hw_xxx header files; No? why cannot you?
3) why cannot they provide a generic header file that links to device specific header files automatically?
4) why do you have to specify the class /  part definitions for your target? wouldn't it be easier if the ide can trace that out by itself?
5) download is fairly slow and without an led indicator;
6) CMSIS?

to name a few.

Again, terrific hardware. Just a little bit investment on the software would have made it that much easier to use.

[BravoV]

LOL .. chill out, I'm not even in the same league to argue with you. 

[Harvs]

Those TI chips are nothing short of spectacular in terms of resources offered. The software is definitely a downer.

Ok.  Well I haven't used anything in this market segment which one couldn't pull the software to shreds (I've used STM32, AVR32 and PIC32 so far.)

So what would you suggest has got well written and well documented library support then in this 32bit uC market?

I'm not having a go either, I would genuinely like to know if there's a competitor that you don't have to go through the endless process of chasing anomalies and quirks in the vendor libraries with piss poor documentation.

[dannyf]

On balance, I would think the ST library is good. Well documented, and good naming convention and easy to use as well. They don't have as many examples to get people started, however. ST's hardware also has a lot of resources but aren't as rich as TI's - rather than having identical well-featured peripherals, they have multiple timers each with slightly different twist.

NXP, like TI, also has good hardware and a long history. Their chips, however, are not as feature rich as TI's.

The luminary library was actually good for its time but it is becoming a baggage for TI now, in my view.

[Stonent]

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/free-st-discovery-board/

[Harvs]

On balance, I would think the ST library is good. Well documented, and good naming convention and easy to use as well.

I guess we can agree to disagree on that one.  Yes, they're a lot better than say the AVR32 software framework (or at least use to be.)  But there's still too many things missing that aren't documented.  E.g. grab any one of their example projects, build it with hard abi, declare a float and you'll be straight into the hard fault handler.  They could have at least put a commented code section in there to enable the FPU.

[dannyf]

Well, if you tell the code to use a hardware peripheral and you don't enable that peripheral, bad things are bound to happen.

It is probably not reasonable to expect the people who wrote the library to be responsible for that.

[Harvs]

No that's not the point.  The solution to the problem is to open the provided startup file and put the following code segment at the start of the systeminit function.

Code: [Select]

/* FPU settings ------------------------------------------------------------*/
  #if (__FPU_PRESENT == 1) && (__FPU_USED == 1)
    SCB->CPACR |= ((3UL << 10*2)|(3UL << 11*2));  /* set CP10 and CP11 Full Access */
  #endif

Then you can just forget about it.  That would have saved multiple dozens of posts on the ST forum of people trying to track down a seemingly unrelated hard fault.

Anyway, there's many other examples. Not the least of which is their libraries to "allow easy portability across the device range," so they thought it would be a good idea to randomly change some of the naming conventions between the M0 and M4 libraries, awesome idea.

End story is it seems none have taken the library issue that seriously.  It's a shame, since all they'd have to do is have the developers monitor their own forum and make changes through the revisions to reduce the common problems people are having, like the FPU.

[elcomtel]

I just scored myself a $24.00 MSP430 USB Stick Development Tool for free.   
See: http://www.ti.com/tool/ez430-f2013

I can recommend anyone else to give it a go. Free for the taking.

Five days later a FedEx shipment arrives from Texas Instruments.
Very fine outcome indeed.

[Crazy Ape]

Indeed, my boards arrived today also (Melbourne / Aus).