FreeRTOS Development Board for LPC18xx ARM Cortex-M3

[ismbn]

Hello.
We Develop Embedded Solutions, Normally in PIC controllers, I have Worked on 8bit & 16Bit Controllers.
But Now we want to use ARM Controllers. I don't know much about ARM. But Peripheral wise we have selected a controller (LPC18xx ARM Cortex-M3) I think Peripheral wise its a rich Controller.
I want to know something.

1) What if I want to use FreeRTOS or any other RTOS (Which is free), what I have to do, And which Development board I need to buy?

2) After learning if we want to use our own design on which we can install that RTOS Selected above and use it for free.

3) What are he Development environment needed.

4) if there is some other Controllers more powerful then this one please Suggest the Controller and Development board.
peripheral needed
USART, I2C, CAN, SPI,Ethernet, USB, GPIO, Motor Encoder, TFT Display, LCD display, RTC, MICROSD, Timers,Counters, PWM, ADC,

Also I want to do some IoT Project using this.

this all not in one controller but family should support this things, and also RTOS.

I was thinking before investing and Blindly jumped on any controller, I have to take some Expert Advise.
Please Help.
ThankYou

 

[Aussie Susan]

FreeRTOS is free and comes as source code. I have used it (on other processors admittedly) with my own circuit and no 'development board' is required. As long as you have a way to write your code, compile it and program the chip then you can simply add in the FreeRTOS code files into the overall project.
However, if you are learning the ARM devices (as I am but from different suppliers) then I would suggest that you start without using FreeRTOS until you get the hang of the chip. I'm using ARM devices from ST and their IDE lets you add in FreeRTOS as part of the middleware library they provide - however I'm still coming to grips with the basics such as how to get the basics done in the ARM world.
In my opinion, if you want a development board then select one based on the other considerations you have listed (peripherals etc.) and get a good development environment and go from there.
Susan

 

[ismbn]

Thanks for the precious time to replay.

FreeRTOS is free and comes as source code. I have used it (on other processors admittedly) with my own circuit and no 'development board' is required. As long as you have a way to write your code, compile it and program the chip then you can simply add in the FreeRTOS code files into the overall project.
However, if you are learning the ARM devices (as I am but from different suppliers) then I would suggest that you start without using FreeRTOS until you get the hang of the chip. I'm using ARM devices from ST and their IDE lets you add in FreeRTOS as part of the middleware library they provide - however I'm still coming to grips with the basics such as how to get the basics done in the ARM world.
In my opinion, if you want a development board then select one based on the other considerations you have listed (peripherals etc.) and get a good development environment and go from there.
Susan

i searched for ST microelecronics development board, there are many, & i am confuse which one one buy.
can you please tell me witch will be better considering the peripherals noted above and easy to getting start with.
please tell me what will be the development environment required which software i need to download
and is the any simulation software like Proteus.
ThankYou

 

[chandu.kurapati]

Hi ismbn,

i searched for ST microelecronics development board, there are many,
& i am confuse which one one buy.
can you please tell me witch will be better considering the peripherals noted above
and easy to getting start with.

Better to start with STM32F407, it has all listed peripheral support & you can find
this development board with 144 & 100 pins.

ST has good code support (CUBEMx software), with this software can download
selected peripheral's code with RTOS middle ware.

please tell me what will be the development environment required which software
i need to download and is the any simulation software like Proteus

Too many ID's support for code development & debugging support tool chain, better to
check with Keil & IAR.

 

[Aussie Susan]

I tend to stay clear of simulators as they can be just another layer of bugs. There are a lot of threads in this and many other forums where the cause of the problem turns out to be the simulator.
The questions are often "it works in the simulator but not on my board" and it turns out the simulator is not correctly simulating the actual operation of the processor by allowing something that the silicon does not.
If you have a development board then just use that.
As for which board is suitable, three important factors are:
1) how much do you want to spend - the cheaper boards will have most of the peripherals available but adding "the last one" might push the cost up considerably, which leads to
2) do you really need all of the peripherals you list or could you learn the 90% of what you want with a subset - for example an LCD display can be driven by SPI or I2C so this can be added later when you actually need it
3) which boards are available from a local/reputable supplier
Susan

 

[Hellmut1956]

At the site of FreeRTOS you can find a book that deals with FreeRTOS and the LPC1769. A chip and efficient way to go is to buy a LPCXpresso1769 board from Embedded Artists, here the link. This board, while beeing very inexpensive y get it for less then 30 Euros, including shipping. You can get the IDE from NXP completely free, but limited to 256kByte of flash, more then the size of any code I have written so far. The LPCXpresso1769 comes with a Link that allows to use the debug features using a JTAG I/F by connecting it to the USB port of your workstation. So you would normally execute your code for debugging, not using a simulator, but executing your code on the target board! There is a huge ecosystem available.