SLAU533D September 2013 – April 2017
To simplify development and keep the user's costs low, TI's LaunchPad development kit development tools integrate an emulator for programming and debugging. The F5529 LaunchPad development kit has the new eZ-FET lite emulator (see Figure 10).
The dotted line along the bottom of the image divides the emulator area from the target area. (On the board, the power and hub area that is shown in Figure 8 is grouped with the emulator.)
The eZ-FET lite is simple and low cost. Like the emulator on the G2 LaunchPad development kit (MSP-EXP430G2), it provides a "backchannel" UART-over-USB connection with the host, which can be very useful during debugging. But unlike the G2 emulator, it:
The hardware and firmware designs are both available for you to customize. Further details and source can be found on http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ-FET_lite.
The eZ-FET lite needs a host-side interface. TI provides the "MSP430 DLL", through which PC applications can access the eZ-FET lite. Such applications include IAR or CCS software environments, MSP430Flasher, Elprotronic's FET-Pro430, mspgcc, and Energia. These solutions generally bundle the DLL.
On Windows, the MSP430 DLL is a DLL file, while on Linux it is a *.so file. Like the rest of the eZ-FET lite solution, the DLL is open source.
Mac OS X has a limitation that prevents it from enumerating composite USB devices that include a CDC interface. For this reason, the eZ-FET lite currently does not work with the default OS X.
The eZ-FET lite works with almost all MSP430 target devices. If you want to work with a different target than the F5529 device on the F5529 LaunchPad development kit, you can disconnect the F5529 using the isolation jumper block and wire your hardware to the emulator through this block.
Features of the eZ-FET lite:
Hardware and software requirements
The eZ-FET lite LEDs provide feedback to the user about the emulator status (see Table 2). This behavior is similar to that of the MSP-FET430UIF emulator.
Green LED (Power) | Red LED (Mode) | Description |
---|---|---|
OFF | OFF | eZ-FET lite is not connected to the PC. eZ-FET lite is not ready (for example, after an update). Disconnect the LaunchPad development kit from the PC and reconnect it. |
ON | OFF | eZ-FET lite is connected and ready, but the. eZ-FET lite interface has not been opened by IDE. |
ON | ON | eZ-FET lite interface is used by IDE, but no data transfer is taking place. |
ON | Blinking | eZ-FET lite is in action: data transfer between eZ-FET lite and IDE is taking place. |
OFF | ON | A severe ERROR has occurred; disconnect and reconnect the eZ-FET lite. If this does not resolve the error, send for repair. |
Alternating green and red blinking | A critical update is running on the eZ-FET lite. Do not interfere with it during this time. Wait until it is finished. |