Atollic TrueSTUDIO Lite: Is this a misprint?

[stm239955_st]

Posted on October 09, 2011 at 18:32

Hello everybody,

Potential new user of ST chips here, feeling somewhat silly for asking this. However: Is the information provided by Atollic in their feature comparison document, v2.2, accurate? I am in particular referring to the number of code breakpoints supported, stated as being One (yes, 0x01). Surely this must be a mistake? My reason for asking is that some time ago I started development on an educational/hobbyist application, which - if successful - will eventually be released to the world as open source code. Originally I had started on the PIC32MX platform, yet some kind soul suggested I changed that decision in time, lest I get locked into the products from a single manufacturer. Additionally I was informed that the other manufacturers were also keen on getting hobbyists to use their evaluation boards, once they saw the success of projects like Arduino (made possible in part due to AVR Studio). However right now I am worried someone has been pulling my leg, and that I may just be making embarrassing noises/wasting your collective time. As far as I can tell, nobody makes a freely available tool chain for any of their Cortex M3 or M4 MCUs, which allow full development of code. All the toolchains have more or less ridiculous restrictions applied, never mind the advanced code management features of the professional packages. I mean, *one* breakpoint?! Somebody please tell me I am wrong. Kind regards from Denmark. Frank. #cheapskate #crippleware

[stm239955_st]

Posted on October 10, 2011 at 17:55

Andrew,

Your analogies appear flawed. Woodworking tools, like a lathe, can be used on wood from all sources, and you only ever have to buy it once. You do in particular not need to buy a lathe to support working on wood from each supplier, using specialist types of wood from each one. Wood, which may or may no longer be available some years down the road, causing you to buy a new lathe. As for the cheap part, could you perhaps inform us of how many different tool chains you feel a hobbyist should be prepared to buy each year? Say each one cost an average of $500, and that he may need to buy a number of them to work on different projects as his interest changes, or as he starts cooperating with different people, each having chosen a different platform to start with. Another thing to ponder, is that it hasn't been economically viable to build DIY ham gear for many years by now, simply due to economies of scale. For instance an Elecraft K3 ( www.elecraft.com ) in its most basic configuration, cost $1550, and that radio is an amazingly good performer. Replicating something similar (assuming you have the MCU and DSP code available from some source…), would be very much more expensive, even if you only had to pay for the components in small quantities. Plus shipping and handling on each parcel. You believe we should throw how many USD on top of a DIY project for tool chains? And yes, by Atmel I am referring to Atmel AVR in particular. I couldn't find any info on support on their free tool chain for ARM or anything except their own, proprietary MCUs. That is why I said earlier I am watching Atmel closely, specifically to see whether they add support for their SAM3 chips to AVR Studio. You see, as far as I can figure out, there is identically *zero* difference in their offerings and the amount of vendor lock-in you risk by using their free tool chain, and that of, say, NXP for LPCXpresso. People have been poking the LPCXpresso boards, and apparently the USB traffic is encrypted. Additionally the GDB Server is hardcoded to only work with NXP MCUs, a subset of them in fact. So I cannot see what NXP are risking by giving away a free, basic toolchain with unlimited functionality. NXP's MCUs are in and of themselves hardware dongles, which prevents using the tool chain to work on ARM chips from different vendors. Generating the binary code for a chip isn't a big deal. Eclipse, CDT and gcc is out there. Note that ARM support in gcc was implemented by a small Norwegian company, at least that is what I have been led to believe. The tricky part is the flash programming and debugging part, which is where the custom gdb server plugin for Eclipse from each vendor comes into play. On top of that there are the header files, linker scripts and startup code, which are also vendor specific, and also largely useless for use with a different brand of ARM MCUs. So what you pay for if you buy the full suite, is exceptionally vendor specific, regardless of brand. (Yes, I am aware exceptions exist for this, but not for the examples we are talking about here.) Or, if you will, how would I use Red Suite to program ST's STM32 MCUs, assuming it was freely available? As far as I can tell, this is impossible due to mutual hardware lockout. Conversely, can I use TrueSTUDIO Lite or the full edition to program an LPCXpresso/an LPC somethingorother? Nope. So it seems to me the only reason ST or NXP are not providing free tool chains, like Atmel do for their AVR chips, is because they have chosen not to do so. Competition from other ARM vendors has already been considered and dealt with. The mbed is useless for my purpose. The board design cuts off some of the important I/O ports, like the ones for the quadrature encoder. Neither are there any off-line tools available for that board, nor any debugger support. I will save your last question for later, as it is an important one.

[rmteo]

Posted on October 10, 2011 at 18:22

How big do you think the hobby market is?  In terms of dollars, my guess is that it is probably less than 0.001% of the total market for MCUs.

[hernandez_nava_itt]

Posted on January 03, 2012 at 02:07

please

software

is limited

 

atollic 

truestudio lite?

library

can

use

flash

to store

data in

a

microcontroller.

?

data

can be transmitted

by the

USART

port

?

[xacc]

Posted on January 10, 2012 at 11:48

No, you are correct partially :)  The IDE only allows 1 breakpoint at a time. You do however have access to the GDB console, so you can add as many breakpoints as you like.

Example:b main.c:42This will add a breakpoint on line 42 of main.c.