Getting Started With TI MSP430

[Joel Cardinal]

At about $4.30 the TI MSP430 is a cheap alternative to the Arduino.

Since the LaunchPad Development board accepts numerous processor chips and includes two, I'll give you a quick run down about the MSP430G2452 so you get an idea for comparing to the Arduino.

MSP430G2452 features:

Frequency           16MHz
Flash                  8KB
SRAM                 256B
GPIO                  16
16-bit Timers       1
USI (I2C)             1   
ADC                   10-bit SAR
ADC Channels    8

The MSP430G2553 is even better with 16KB Flash, 512B SRAM, 2 16-bit timers, and 24 GPIO.  Although the kit comes with additional connectors, I'm not sure how one would gain access to all 24 I/O's.  Both chips have additional functionality than stated above, but I'll let you explore that.

What comes in the $4.30 LaunchPad Development Kit (MSP-EXP430G2 v1.5):

    LaunchPad Development board
    Mini USB cable
    MSP430G2452IN20 flash device
    MSP430G2553IN20 flash device (preloaded with sample program)
    10-pin PCB Connectors (2 male & 2 female)
    32kHz crystal (MS3V-T1R 32.768kHz CL: 12.5pF +/-20ppm, www.microcrystal.com)
    Quick Start Guide
    2 LaunchPad stickers (woot!)

The LaunchPad Development board (MSP-EXP430G2) accepts any MSP430 Value Line processor chips with 14- or 20-pin DIP (N) packages.

The purpose of this post is to give a run down of my first impressions and to help others coming from Arduino quickly get started with the MSP430.

Before we get started, I want to vent a gripe about Texas Instruments.  Their website is horrible.  Really, there's just no other word to use.  It is riddled with broken links, and frequently it won't load the requested page the first time around and you have to click the refresh button.  Then I could go on about how bad their site organization is, but I digress.  To help you get started I'm going to provide links below (which will hopefully stay current) and description so you won't have to do all the hunting I did.

One more thing and then I promise we'll get to the good stuff.  If you want to develop on a Mac with the MSP430...good luck.  TI does not offer a software solution for Mac, only Windows.  I'm not sure what their stance is on Linux, on one page they say they don't officially support it, but there seems to be a Linux version of their IDE available.  Regarding Mac, I did find some IDE/Debugger stacks written by third parties but have not tried to use them as of this post.

Okay, here we go...

First we need an IDE to start developing.  Although TI suggests a few choices, I chose to go with their own Code Composer Studio (v5.1.1).

There are a few things to note about CCS:
- It is a whopping 1.1GB download (Holy crap!)
- It includes Grace as a plugin
- It's based on Eclipse (yuck)

Grace is a tool that helps make code generation more intuitive using a visual interface. I mention Grace because TI flaunts it on a lot of their splash pages and gives you a separate link to it, but it is included as a plugin with CCS v5.1, so don't think you need to download it separately; unless you are not going to use CCS, in which case it is also a standalone application.

Moving on...

When you unzip and run the setup application I suggest selecting "Custom" installation, otherwise it will load over 5GB of...whatever...for just about every chip TI currently makes.  After clicking "Custom" just select the MSP430 family of chips (1GB install with additional 362MB download, good grief).  Note, make sure you select "install Eclipse plugins"; as CSS is based on Eclipse you'll want those included.  I skipped that, not sure when it's going to bite me in the ass nor how to correct for this error.

CCS gives you the option to use it for free.  When you first launch CCS it will come up with a nag screen with choices such as buying a full license without restrictions, and toward the bottom of the list, you can select to enable the free version.  You will be restricted to 16KB scripts with the free version; which given the memory size of the chips it shouldn't be a problem anyway.

Now you have an IDE.  That wasn't too hard...if you have a Windows machine and a speedy Internet connection.

More to come soon...



REFERENCE LINKS

Launchpad...launchpad
http://e2e.ti.com/group/msp430launchpad/w/default.aspx

What's in the box
http://e2e.ti.com/group/msp430launchpad/w/contents/1129.aspx

MSP430G2452
http://www.ti.com/product/msp430g2452#feature

MSP430G2553
http://www.ti.com/product/msp430g2553#feature

Development board
http://www.ti.com/tool/msp-exp430g2

Code Composer Studio (IDE)
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Download_CCS

CCS Plugin Info
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Extending_CCS

IDE list
http://e2e.ti.com/group/msp430launchpad/w/contents/1128.aspx

Grace
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Grace_Quick_Start_Guide?DCMP=Grace&HQS=Other+OT+grace#Welcome

MSP430 User's Guide
http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/slau318b/slau318b.pdf

MSP430 Workshop
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Getting_Started_with_the_MSP430_LaunchPad_Workshop

Code examples by chip, for the ones that ship with Launchpad kit see MSP430G2xx2 and MSP430G2xx3
http://www.ti.com/mcu/docs/mcusplash.tsp?contentId=128826#CE

Linux and Mac links
http://e2e.ti.com/group/msp430launchpad/w/contents/1128.aspx

Free software stack for Mac
http://code.google.com/p/osx-launchpad/

Expensive software stack for Mac
http://www.rowley.co.uk/msp430/index.htm

[Annika Skywalker]

I'm going to transfer this to the website and create user accounts at http://www.laroboticsclub.org/forums