Experimenting with New Devices - Part 1

If you were to summarise the developments in microcontrollers over the last few years, you might suggest the movement to 32-bit, mainly through ARM devices, and the rise in open source hardware and software.

Another less well known development is the incorporation of Ferroelectric RAM or FRAM as an alternative to flash memory in the Texas Instruments (TI) range of MSP430 microcontrollers.

Using FRAM instead of Flash memory opens up some interesting possibilities:

FRAM is non-volatile - it retains it's content after power down
It is low power - it can be programmed at low voltages
It has a fast write speed - up to 8Mbytes per second - about 100 times faster than flash
It can be used repeatedly like RAM - it does not wear out after some 10,000 cycles like Flash

Whilst I did gain some experience of the MSP430 some 12 years ago, the introduction of FRAM and modernised peripherals makes them an attractive proposition.

So I decided to invest a little time and money in exploring the new architecture and the new opportunities presented by FRAM technology.

This post and subsequent posts will look at these topics and make a comparison between the more familiar AVR and ARM based devices.

MSP430 Family.

The MSP430 is a 16-bit RISC type microcontroller, with a Von Neuman architecture. This is unusual for microcontrollers (most are Harvard architecture), as it combines both the instruction store and the data store into one unified memory area.

It arose from an early 1990's devices, which was an 8 bit processor, the TSS400-S2, for interfacing to sensors. This early datasheet gives some insight into the heritage from 25 years ago.

The memory architecture is further simplified, as the FRAM and SRAM blocks can essentially be treated as the same codespace for program execution, although execution from RAM is at up to 24MHz, whereas executing from FRAM is limited to 8MHz.

Energia - "Arduino" for the MSP430

The MSP430 range has been supported with low cost "Launch Pad" development boards since 2010, providing an alternative to the AVR or ARM based Arduino or mbed boards. This support extends to the open source Energia IDE project - which is essentially an Arduino compatible IDE (and lookalike) aimed at the various TI microcontroller families. With Energia you can take an existing Arduino sketch and run it directly on MSP430 hardware, with no or few changes. Arduino is certainly becoming a lingua-franca of these small dev-boards.


A look at the MSP430  FRAM devices

The two devices I wanted  to explore are the MSP430FR57xx series and the MSP430FR59xx series.   The MSP430FR5739 is available as as an Experimenter board - below.

The FR57xx series is the smaller of the two with 16Kbytes of FRAM and 1Kbytes of RAM and a maximum clock of 24MHz. It costs about £1.50 in 1off from Farnell and has the potential as being an alternative to Arduino (Nano beater)  - with very few other system components required.  It has 30 GPIO lines which makes it a very good fit for the WiNode 5 format pcb with the extended Arduino headers. Available in a 38pin TSSOP package, which makes it a little easier for home construction.

The FR5969 has 64kB of FRAM, 2K of RAM and a 16MHz clock.

It offers 40 GPIO pins, plus the ability to use both high frequency (16MHz) and low frequency (32768Hz) crystals.

It comes in 40 pin QFN and 48pin QFN packages. A slightly smaller device- with marginally less I/O, the '5959 is available in a 38 pin TSSOP, making it compatible with the '57xx parts but with the beneffit of 64K FRAM and 2K RAM

The MSP430FR5969 is available as the MSP-EXP430FR5969  as a Launch Pad board - for about £12 from Mouser.  This is exceptionally good value, and it has a number of accessory shields available.

Basic Features.

16 bit Von Neuman RISC architecture with 16Kbytes / 64Kbytes  FRAM
16MHz (24MHz *) clock frequency
1.8V to 3.6V operation
100uA/MHz low power operation.
0.25uA RTC
Multiple low power modes of operation
32 bit hardware multiplier
Choice of 10 bit or 12 multichannel ADC
2 UARTS,  SPI, I2C
5 Timers
Low power oscillator
Optional external 32kHz crystal
Optional HF Crystal
16 bit CRC
128 bit/256 bit AES Encryption/decryption processor
31, 33 or 40 GPIO lines depending on package.
Available in 38 pin TSSOP, 40QFN, 48QFN packages.

* Whilst the data sheet says 16MHz, it is perfectly possible to get the digitally controlled oscillator DCO to run at 24MHz. This might be good for a "Turbo-Boost" mode - when power is available.

Datasheet is here.

Tools & Equipment

The Launch Pad and Experimenter boards come with an on-board programmer section, which allows a hex file to be programmed into memory and allows debugging.

The TI Code Composer compiler and tool chain is distributed free of charge for working with these small boards.

If you want to try an open source compiler there is MSPGCC, and if you are seriously into command line hardcore development , you could try  Michael Kohn's  naken_asm which is a cross assembler for a wide variety of microcontrollers.

There are several free tools for loading the hex file into the MSP430. One that I tried is Elprotronics FET Pro-430  Lite  which worked well with the on-board eZ-FET programmer on the launch pad board.

With the above tools I managed to flash a LED using assembly language and also drive a port line at about 2.5MHz square wave.

In Summary & Conclusion

The MSP430 are a fascinating family of microcontrollers. They have utilised every trick to achieve flexibility and very low power operation.  The clocking and low power modes are a study in their own right - but TI through their Launch Pad series of dev boards have made a feature of low power operation - and encourage users to measure the operational current under various modes of working.

Not only is it a 16 bit machine, but it has a universal storage space  - both code and data in one memory - which is all the more interesting for being non-volatile, high speed FRAM.

Although a RISC machine, the ISA is surprisingly versatile with a rich set of instructions and addressing modes.

Just exploring a new instruction set is fun in itself.

The 16 bit architecture is an ideal platform for developing Forth like languages - as these are often based on a 16 bit virtual machine.  Jean-Michel Thooren's "Fast Forth" written in assembly language for the MSP430FR5969 may be of interest to Forth Fans.

Here is a very interesting device - it has a 16 bit architecture, 12 bit A to D and a Von Neuman architecture.  It reminds me a bit of the PDP-8.  More exploration needed.

In Part 2 I'll be looking at porting some existing code to the MSP430 and leveraging some Arduino sketches using Energia.