SparkFun Forums

[ashishagarwal]

Hi all,
I am starting to work on my capstone engineering project and I chose to work with the LPC 2148 board. I bought the board from this site - (http://microcontrollershop.com/product_ ... 31b18sm1k4).

I am good at C programming and I have started learning SPI and I2C. I also got a book ARM System's Developer's Guide from a library. Its been a bit of a learning curve. But the problem is that this is the first time I am working with a development board and so I am a little confused right now.

I guess my first question is what IDE should I use for development on the board? I saw that Crossworks is good but getting two licenses for it is gonna be a little expensive. Is it possible to use eclipse and then transfer the code to the board somehow ? Also is there some "hello world" equivalent tutorial for embedded microcontrollers I can have a look at ?

Thanks a lot.
Ashish

[motopic]

Search for yagarto or winarm, or eclipse + arm ( or eclipse codesourcery) for free GCC and Eclipse.
Your board supposedly came with a sw loader.
'Free' is the most time intensive way to go, as you have to work out tons of options. This is the route I have gone as I am a poor sw developer who simply likes to tinker with micros. Hacking startup code is a steep learning curve.

Poke around here for some helpful intros:
Martin Thomas is a master,
http://gandalf.arubi.uni-kl.de/avr_proj ... index.html

There is also several yahoo groups, LPC2000 comes to mind.

Crossworks would be much, much less headaches I am sure.
Why do you need 2 crossworks licenses???

Good luck.

[leon_heller]

A license is required for each machine it runs on.

[gm]

I believe that the licensing is per user. For instance, I can have it on my computer at work, the one at home, and a laptop that I use when I travel.

[leon_heller]

You still need a different license for each machine. You can't run it on an unlicensed PC.

[stevech]

If you are beginning with ARM apps that are 32KB or less, IAR and Keil have free limited versions. I use and really like the IAR IDE and JTAG debugger.

[motopic]

You still need a different license for each machine. You can't run it on an unlicensed PC.

Hi,

The Rowley License page indicates that the the Pro license is per developer and they give a specific example of one developer using multiple machines. (do they use a dongle? passphrasekey?)

The Educational License is per machine as you indicated.

At least my free setup has none of these issues, I can use it anywhere I want to, and I don't have to fear getting sued by a tool company.

[leon_heller]

I just checked it on my machine and it says that it has to be activated by Rowley for each machine that it is used on.

[gm]

Leon is correct...it is locked to a particular machine. For each machine that you need to install Crossworks, a unique activation key needs to generated on the machine and sent to Rowley who then returns the unlock code for that particular machine.

gm

[motopic]

Ok. Looks like the companies information placed there to inform potential purchasers is wrong.
Why does that not surprise me.?

[gm]

Maybe I didn't explain it clearly enough. When you purchase the license from Rowley, that allows you to put it on multiple machines which means that you have to request an activation code from Rowley that is specific to each machine. You do not need to buy separate licenses for each machine, you just need to activate them.

gm

[paul_l_curtis]

Ok. Looks like the companies information placed there to inform potential purchasers is wrong.
Why does that not surprise me.?

The information placed here is absolutely correct:

http://www.rowley.co.uk/crossworks/Licensing.htm

We license per user, not per computer, and not per operating system. If you purchase a single Personal license, you are entitled to activate any computer that you use it on, even on a combination of operating systems.

Hearsay on a forum talking about "licenses" and not "activations" is unhelpful.

A customer is licensed to use CrossWorks. He many use his license on as many activated machines as he needs to. People get confused between the license grant and the activation process.

[stevech]

small code size (learning mode)... IAR and Keil's excellent IDE/compiler can be used in freeware mode.
Rowley is a nice IDE used with public domain GCC.
GCC with free IDEs exist - such as Eclipse - but you have to invest quite a bit of time learning and configuring the IDE tool.

mbed is an LPC ARM platform with a free but on-line-only C compiler.

Atmel's Studio 6 (new) is free and supports (only) their ARM products (and Atmel's AVR 8 bit products).