none of this matters » linux

Building Energy Micro EFM32 binaries from OS X

nemik — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 04:09:40 +0000

I’m currently evaluating the EFM32 Gecko MCU from Energy Micro for a project. I’m using the Developer’s Kit with the EFM32G290F128 MCU.

I mainly work in OS X and Linux and don’t much like having to boot up the Windows Virtual Machine to develop and debug firmwares. The tools mostly suck (I <3 the CLI) or are very expensive (often both). So I wanted a way to use open source tools like gcc, gdb and openocd.

First step was getting a binary to compile.

1. visit https://github.com/jsnyder/arm-eabi-toolchain and install as directed, make sure you run the make install-bin-extras after all the make-ing and make install-ing.

2. try a sample EFM32G firmware like the one included in the DVK_BSP_1.6.1.zip copy the ‘blink’ one to some directory of your choosing for this project.

3. Download the EFM CMSIS Library and copy it to the parent directory of the project directory you chose in step 2. Do the same with the ‘bsp’ and ‘efm32lib’ directories from the DVK_BSP.

4. Edit the Makefile from the ‘codesourcery’ part of the example. Mine looks like this:
#################################################################### # Makefile # ####################################################################


.SUFFIXES:				# ignore builtin rules

.PHONY: all debug release clean
####################################################################

# Definitions                                                      #

####################################################################
DEVICE = EFM32G290F128

PROJECTNAME = blinkG290
OBJ_DIR = build

EXE_DIR = exe

LST_DIR = lst
####################################################################

# Definitions of toolchain.                                        #

# You might need to do changes to match your system setup          #

####################################################################
# Change path to CodeSourcery tools according to your system configuration

WINDOWSCS = CodeSourcery/Sourcery G++ Lite

LINUXCS   = /Users/nemik/code/arm-cs-tools

GCCVERSION = $(shell $(CC) -dumpversion)
ifeq ($(ComSpec),)

  ifeq ($(COMSPEC),)

    # Assume we are making on a linux platform

    TOOLDIR = $(LINUXCS)

    RM = rm -rf

  else

    TOOLDIR = $(PROGRAMFILES)/$(WINDOWSCS)

    RM = "$(TOOLDIR)/bin/cs-rm" -rf

  endif

else

  TOOLDIR = $(ProgramFiles)/$(WINDOWSCS)

  RM = "$(TOOLDIR)/bin/cs-rm" -rf

endif
CC      = "$(TOOLDIR)/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc"

LD      = "$(TOOLDIR)/bin/arm-none-eabi-ld"

AR      = "$(TOOLDIR)/bin/arm-none-eabi-ar"

OBJCOPY = "$(TOOLDIR)/bin/arm-none-eabi-objcopy"

DUMP    = "$(TOOLDIR)/bin/arm-none-eabi-objdump" --disassemble
####################################################################

# Flags                                                            #

####################################################################
# -MMD : Don't generate dependencies on system header files.

# -MP  : Add phony targets, useful when a h-file is removed from a project.

# -MF  : Specify a file to write the dependencies to.

DEPFLAGS = -MMD -MP -MF $(@:.o=.d)

# Add -Wa,-ahlms=$(LST_DIR)/$(@F:.o=.lst) to CFLAGS to produce assembly list files

CFLAGS += -D$(DEVICE) -mcpu=cortex-m3 -mthumb -Wall  $(DEPFLAGS)

ASMFLAGS += -Ttext 0x0

LDFLAGS += -Xlinker -Map=$(LST_DIR)/$(PROJECTNAME).map -mcpu=cortex-m3 -mthumb -T../CMSIS/CM3/DeviceSupport/EnergyMicro/EFM32/startup/cs3/efm32g.ld -L"$(TOOLDIR)/arm-none-eabi/lib/thumb2" \

-L"$(TOOLDIR)/lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/$(GCCVERSION)/thumb2"

LIBS += -lc -lcs3 -lcs3unhosted
INCLUDEPATHS += \

-I.. \

-I../CMSIS/CM3/CoreSupport \

-I../CMSIS/CM3/DeviceSupport/EnergyMicro/EFM32 \

-I../efm32lib/inc \

-I../bsp \

-I../drivers
####################################################################

# Files                                                            #

####################################################################
C_SRC +=  \

../CMSIS/CM3/CoreSupport/core_cm3.c \

../CMSIS/CM3/DeviceSupport/EnergyMicro/EFM32/system_efm32.c \

../bsp/dvk.c \

../bsp/dvk_boardcontrol.c \

../bsp/dvk_ebi.c \

../bsp/dvk_spi.c \

../efm32lib/src/efm32_assert.c \

../efm32lib/src/efm32_cmu.c \

../efm32lib/src/efm32_gpio.c \

../efm32lib/src/efm32_emu.c \

../efm32lib/src/efm32_ebi.c \

../efm32lib/src/efm32_system.c \

../efm32lib/src/efm32_usart.c \

blink.c
S_SRC +=  \

../CMSIS/CM3/DeviceSupport/EnergyMicro/EFM32/startup/cs3/startup_efm32.s
####################################################################

# Rules                                                            #

####################################################################
C_FILES = $(notdir $(C_SRC) )

S_FILES = $(notdir $(S_SRC) )

#make list of source paths, sort also removes duplicates

C_PATHS = $(sort $(dir $(C_SRC) ) )

S_PATHS = $(sort $(dir $(S_SRC) ) )
C_OBJS = $(addprefix $(OBJ_DIR)/, $(C_FILES:.c=.o))

S_OBJS = $(addprefix $(OBJ_DIR)/, $(S_FILES:.s=.o))

C_DEPS = $(addprefix $(OBJ_DIR)/, $(C_FILES:.c=.d))
vpath %.c $(C_PATHS)

vpath %.s $(S_PATHS)
# Default build is debug build

all:      debug
debug:    CFLAGS += -DDEBUG -g3 -O0

debug:    $(OBJ_DIR) $(LST_DIR) $(EXE_DIR) $(EXE_DIR)/$(PROJECTNAME).bin
release:  CFLAGS += -DNDEBUG -O3

release:  $(OBJ_DIR) $(LST_DIR) $(EXE_DIR) $(EXE_DIR)/$(PROJECTNAME).bin
# Create directories

$(OBJ_DIR):

	mkdir $(OBJ_DIR)

	@echo "Created build directory."
$(EXE_DIR):

	mkdir $(EXE_DIR)

	@echo "Created executable directory."
$(LST_DIR):

	mkdir $(LST_DIR)

	@echo "Created list directory."
# Create objects from C SRC files

$(OBJ_DIR)/%.o: %.c

	@echo "Building file: $<"

	$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(INCLUDEPATHS) -c -o $@ $<
# Assemble .s files

$(OBJ_DIR)/%.o: %.s

	@echo "Assembling $<"

	$(CC) $(ASMFLAGS) $(INCLUDEPATHS) -c -o $@ $<
# Link

$(EXE_DIR)/$(PROJECTNAME).out: $(C_OBJS) $(S_OBJS)

	@echo "Linking target: $@"

	$(CC) $(LDFLAGS) $(C_OBJS) $(S_OBJS) $(LIBS) -o $(EXE_DIR)/$(PROJECTNAME).out
# Create binary file

$(EXE_DIR)/$(PROJECTNAME).bin: $(EXE_DIR)/$(PROJECTNAME).out

	@echo "Creating binary file"

	$(OBJCOPY) -O binary $(EXE_DIR)/$(PROJECTNAME).out $(EXE_DIR)/$(PROJECTNAME).bin

# Uncomment next line to produce assembly listing of entire program

#	$(DUMP) $(EXE_DIR)/$(PROJECTNAME).out>$(EXE_DIR)/$(PROJECTNAME).lst
clean:

	$(RM) $(OBJ_DIR) $(LST_DIR) $(EXE_DIR)

# include auto-generated dependency files (explicit rules) ifneq (clean,$(findstring clean, $(MAKECMDGOALS))) -include $(C_DEPS) endif

5. Run the `make` command

6. You should have a ‘blinkG290.bin’ in the ‘exe’ directory. Seems a bit nuts that my bin is 14kb though…seems quite high for a blinking program; could that be CodeSourcery’s libcs3 adding so much?

7. Now you can use the energyAware Commander Windows program to load the firmware onto the board :/. I was not able to get openOCD working with the on-board JLink module and SWD. I’m now in the process of trying to get my BusPirate board to act as a JTAG interface for using the 20-pin adapter of the EFM32 Development Kit and hoping it does JTAG…
If not, one could also write a Python script with some XMODEM-CRC library to try to upload code to the built-in bootloader on the EFM32 chips using some FTDI USB-serial cable with something like the DST pin being used to pulse RESET and some other un-used serial pin to hold down DBG_SWCLK. But even then some way to debug is needed…really hoping JTAG can somehow work.

Has anyone tried to do something similar on Linux or OS X without the official Segger JLink software? They don’t produce OS X binaries and it’s closed source. Or has anyone gotten an EFM32 DK with its built-in JLink debugger to work with openOCD? Any suggestions would be awesome.

Arduinoponics with OpenWRT

nemik — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:28:49 +0000

I updated my GitHub repo: http://github.com/nemik/arduinoponics with code I wrote for the OpenWRT firmware (version 8.09.1). It provides an AJAXy-updating page to OpenWRT’s Luci web-interface which displays the analog pin values from the Arduino which the Arduinoponics sketch runs on.

Here is a screenshot, notice the extra ‘Sensors’ link on the top right to access the info, the page does not require login

Fixing broken JFFS2 partition

nemik — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:17:14 +0000

Lesson #1 of embedded development: don’t write all your code to your device and not backup/check-in. I did just that when writing some code for the hydroponics monitoring setup on my Fon2100 router running OpenWRT. After trying to opkg install ntpclient and getting a segfault and NTP not working, I restarted the network on it which restarted the router. For whatever reason, the router choked and each restart went into failsafe mode. When I telnet’d into it, dmesg told me the jffs2 partition had trouble mounting with an error in jffs2_link_node_ref.

I had written a bunch of Lua code to read the serial communications coming from the ATMega168 microcontroller (it was sending its analog input values) and store it into files in /tmp which were then read by some more Lua code in the (awesome) LuCI framework to make those sensors all cool and AJAXy on the router’s web-admin menu. This worked great until the NTP attempt. So I wanted all this code back. So in case anyone is as foolish as I was to lose their code in the router, here are the steps I took to recover it. David Woodhouse (dwmw2) and dedekind at #mtd on irc.ipv6.oftc.net were extremely helpful with all this and pointed me in all the right directions.

backup the jffs2 image from the router using dd. mine was coming up in failsafe mode so i had to telnet into 192.168.1.1 and then run command `dd if=/dev/mtdblock2 | gzip -c | ssh nemik@pillbox ‘dd of=/tmp/mtd2.gz’ bs=2048` but make sure you do the right mtdblock2 device. do `cat /proc/mtd` and choose the one that is for “rootfs_data”. pillbox is a Linux box on my network I transferred this all to.
`gunzip /tmp/mtd2.gz` on the Linux box and i got my 5.5MB partition.
wget ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/mtd-utils/mtd-utils-1.2.0.tar.bz2. untar, make, make install
`sudo mknod /dev/mtd0 c 90 0`
`sudo modprobe mtdblock`
`sudo dd if=/tmp/mtd2 of=/dev/mtd0 bs=2048`
`sudo mount -t jffs2 mtd0 /tmp/1/` THIS DIDN’T WORK! (right away). The Fon router and openWRT are big-endian and I was trying to mount this on a little-endian x86 box. I needed to recompile the jffs2 kernel module to be big-endian. David Woodhouse (creator of JFFS2) writes how here: [http://www.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-mtd/2007-May/018227.html] I needed to get the kernel source and recompile the jffs2 module
get the kernel source `apt-get source linux-image-$(uname -r)`
go into the source and do `make prepare_modules`
copy /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.27-14-generic/Module.symvers to the source. this will be different for you, but the Module.symvers is important otherwise the module won’t load properly
Change the native_endian #define in fs/jffs2/nodelist.h to be little_endian as David writes in the infraread link on step 7.
do `make CONFIG_MODVERSIONS=y M=fs/jffs2`
if it compiled correctly, you then have a jffs2.ko module. load it via `sudo insmod /home/nemik/code/jffs2/linux-2.6.27/fs/jffs2/jffs2.ko`
now try `sudo mount -t jffs2 /dev/mtdblock0 /tmp/1/` and it worked for me!

I was now able to see all my lost files in /tmp/1/ !!! the whole filesystem was there and worked great. I extracted all the code I wrote and learned my lesson never to do development on a router and always backup and check in. Hopefully this helps someone out.