MikroElektronika Forum

New EasyMx PRO v7 board coming January 2012.

January 2012 will bring us lots of new product releases, and one of them will be EasyMx PRO v7 board.



If you like our latest ARM compilers, we have just the right hardware for development of your
ARM® Cortex™-M3 applications. EasyMx PRO v7 board is our first development board for
Stellaris® ARM® microcontrollers, that will be able to handle both Cortex™-M3 and
Cortex™-M4 microcontrollers.

Board is absolutely fantastic. We used 4-layer PCB routing to achieve excellent signal quality,
which is important for SPI and other communication lines running at high speeds. We included
multimedia peripherals, such as TFT touch screen, Stereo mp3 codec with Headphone and
Microphone jacks, microSD slot and Navigation switch.

There are plenty of communication modules on board too. USB HOST and Device connectors,
two USB-UARTs, Ethernet and CAN module. Two mikroBUS sockets enable you to easily add Click boards.

Board features nine Input/Output PORT groups with IDC10 headers, buttons and LEDs.

But probably the best thing is that board contains mikroProg™ for Stellaris® - fast USB 2.0 on-board programmer
and hardware debugger.

We invite you to visit the board webpage to get more information, and get to see it
before the official release.

Yours sincerely,
mikroElektronika

Hi mikroElektronika Team,

Nice to hear about the new easyMx Board. In this regard wanted to know few things:

1. Can we connect 3rd party debugger using JTAG to easyMx Board?

2. In future what are the other MCU support other than Cortex-M3?

3. Regarding price is there any discount?

please let me know.

Thanks
Dom

As much as I can tell by inspecting the board images, there is no dedicated SWD connector on PCB. Not only does mikroE prohibits usage of other debuggers with their compilers, now they plan to do the similar thing with their development boards. Board/debugger is useless without mikroE compiler and compiler is useless without their debugger/dev. board - so who wants to go mikroE way is forced to buy both things. So what can we expect as next step? I can bet it will be something like this, MikroProg for STM32, MikroProg for STM32F4, MikorProg for LPC13xx, MikroProg for LPC17xx, MikroProg for LPC43xx... I've had high hopes regarding this topic, but this is just bad, plain and simple.

Hello,

There is on board integrated programmer/debugger fully compatible with Stellaris ICDI interface.
So any compiler compatible with that interface can program and debug this board.
Compilers like CCS, Keil, IAR already support this debugger.

Regarding connector for external debugger, we will take it into consideration.

We are waiting for samples of LM4F chips from TI.
Since they are trying to make LM4F as much as possible compatible with LM3S chips I believe that we will be able to support LM4F as well.

Best Regards
Marko Medic

That is good news, but what about that "for Stellaris" in MikroProg's name? Does that mean that EasyMX PRO v7 won't be able to debug Cortex-Mx MCUs from other manufacturers like STM32 and LCP1xxx series? I would gladly buy standalone debugger that supports wide array of Cortex-M0/3/4 MCU vendors and developement environments and separate board without an on-board debugger (like EasyARM v6), becouse it would be very bad If I have to buy new dev. board just to switch to new Cortex MCU vendor. And what about 3rd party debuggers vs MikroE ARM compilers? Will ST-Link and J-Link be supported in MikroE ARM compilers? I already have STM32 and STM32F4 discovery boards, it would be shame If they can't be utilized with MikroE ARM compilers.

What kind of trace support will this mikroprog have? ITM?

rmteo wrote:What kind of trace support will this mikroprog have? ITM?

This is really, really good question! Trace support on mikroProg and small code size generation on compilers side (I hope that ARM compilers won't be like AVR MikroC vs AVR GCC when it comes to code size comparison), and we have the winner.

Eagerly awaiting to her answer.

Also, the IDE/debugger should be able to display things like how much time is spent in each function, interrupt etc. as in the example display below.

mLaki wrote: This is really, really good question! Trace support on mikroProg and small code size generation on compilers side (I hope that ARM compilers won't be like AVR MikroC vs AVR GCC when it comes to code size comparison), and we have the winner.

Eagerly awaiting to her answer.

The silence is not very encouraging for the future of this compiler.

Hi,

I apologize for the delayed reply.

The code generated by the ARM compiler should be optimally small according to our tests.
Please understand that this is only the first release so there may be improvements in the code size.

The mikroProg currently doesn't support Trace feature, but since this is very useful, we will take it in consideration and possible implement in second half of the year.

Regards,
Filip.

That would be great, but I need few issues clarified first. If I buy EasyMx PRO v7 when it comes out, will I be able to upgrade mikroProg on-board if mE implements trace support and will it support other ARM cortex vendors like ST or NXP (what worries me is that "for Stellaris" afte mikroProg)? Last thing I want is to buy same thing twice because of some tiny issue. Same set of questions for standalone debugger, since it is also on my buy list for this year (along with MikroC Pro for ARM). To sum it up, everything comes down to mikroProg for ARM and its DFU capabilities.

Why not make mikroProg an (optional) external device and put a standard 20-pin JTAG connector in its place on the EasyMx PRO v7 board? Then have the IDE/compiler/debugger support mikroProg as well as third-party hardware such TI's ICDI, Segger J-Link, ST-Link, Red Probe+ and others?

rmteo wrote:Why not make mikroProg an external device and put a standard 20-pin JTAG connector in its place on the EasyMx PRO v7 board? Then have the IDE/compiler/debugger support mikroProg as well as third-party hardware such TI's ICDI, Segger J-Link, Red Probe+ and others?

That same idea came to my mind some time ago. I have EasyAVR5, BigAVR2 and AVRProg2. I paid for three programmers, when only one external would have been sufficient, plus board with ISP header on it. EasyARM v6 was something like that, no programmer, only 20 pin JTAG header on MCU module.

When I started working on my master degree project, EasyAVR5 that I have was pretty much useless just because of its on-board programmer. I couldn't use nor connect my AVR Dragon for dW debugging without modifying the board.

In my books it is better to pay $99 for external debugger + $99 for dev. board than $150 for board with debugger on it. That is a lot more flexible solution.

hi,
ME make is primary business with all MCU from microchip. That is easy because no other manufacturer make chip base on Pic architecture. The problem start when they made the compiler for 8051. The compiler support only one 8051 manufacturer event if you have many manufacturer with MCU base on the 8051 architecture. So is near a false pub... , isnt a 8051 compiler but a Atmel 8051 compiler.They dont receive lot of complaint about it because the 8051 is near to be dead . Thing are different with ARM. ARM are often use in commercial and industrial product, competitor are already well establish with mature product, user have higher expectation for the product because they already work with other compiler and most of the competitor support mostly all manufacturer having ARM base MCU... I hope they have learn from previous mistake and they will make a real ARM compiler aka compiler working with all ARM base MCU regardless the manufacturer. If they keep support only TI chip, they will lost their name in professional market and will be confine to the hobbyist market... And worst of thing.... if they start with MCU (m3 and m4 core) , ppl wil start to ask to have something to work with ARM7 and ARM9... That look like a Pandora's box or a very nice challenge
that's my 2 cents

Many manufacturer's of ARM Cortex-M based products offer low-cost (typically <$100) development tools (including both hardware and software) to enable one to evaluate their products. For example, cheapest at <$12, the ST-VLDiscovery is a hardware programmer/debugger and development board that includes a 64-pin 128K FLASH, 16K RAM device - a free IDE/compiler/debugger is included. Same thing with the <$30 LPCXPresso 1769, 512K FLASH, 64K RAM and LPC-Link debugger. TI has their $99 eval kits with their ICDI hardware. Energy Micro has a $69 kit with a built-in J-Link debugger.

Any of these starter kits will do pretty much what is currently offered by mE. Granted their full-blown development tools can run into many thousands of dollars - but they also do much, much more but you do NOT need them to evaluate the capabilities of their products.