This week I have mostly been experimenting with the low end MSP430 series of microcontrollers using the standard entry level LaunchPad.
So far, I have looked at serial communications, ADC interfacing and running small applications, written either on Code Composer Studio or using the Energia IDE.
In this post I look at the SPI interface with a view to accessing SPI memory - including SRAM and non-volatile ferroelectric RAM (FRAM).
The low cost MSP430 parts are often very limited in their RAM capacity. For most of this week I have been experimenting with the 2553 and 2013 parts which have 512 and 128 bytes respectively. Whilst this has been for sufficient for the smallest of applications to test the various on-chip peripherals, it's not enough for serious tasks.
I've used serial SRAM in the past, so decided that it would be a good exercise to interface it to the MSP430. I came across Rick Kimball's github gist a couple of days ago - where he had successfully interfaced a 32Kx8 23K256 device to the MSP430F2013 - using it's universal serial interface USI peripheral.
With this proven and working correctly on a breadboard, I chose to use Rick's code as a guide and make the necessary modifications so that the USCI on the MSP430G2553 could be used too. The '2553 part has two USCIs - one I am already using as a uart for PC communications, leaving USCIB free to work in SPI mode to talk to the SRAM and other devices.
Whilst I had good success with the '2013 part in my loadcell application, the lack of a proper uart peripheral made it too restrictive for any serious application that needs bi-directional serial communications with the PC, so I have parked '2013 developments for the moment, until I have time to look into implementing some form of software uart or some advanced trickery with the USI.
Here's the pinout of the MSP430G2553 - this is the most common part used in the entry level Launch Pad
+------U------+
3V3 |VCC GND | OV
LED |P1.0 XIN | 32768Hz
RXD |P1.1 XOUT| 32768Hz
TXD |P1.2 TEST|
ADC |P1.3 /RST|
/CE |P1.4 P1.7| MOSI
SCK |P1.5 P1.6| MISO (LED)
D0 |P2.0 P2.5| D5
D1 |P2.1 P2.4| D4
D2 |P2.2 P2.3| D3
+-------------+
+------U------+
/CE | 23K256 | 3V3
MISO | | HOLD
NC | | SCK
0V | | MOSI
+-------------+
The 23K256 is very simple to interface - requiring just 4 wires to the SPI port. The Hold pin shoould be tied to 3V3 as it is not being used in this application.
The MSP430G2553 benefits from the 20 pin DIL package providing 6 additional port lines from Port 2. I have labelled these D0 - D5 - purely for familiarity with the Arduino way of naming pins, but they may also be used as additional inputs to the 10 bit ADC.
The firmware to exercise the SPI bus and access the SRAM has been based on Rick Kimballs code - but with changes made so that the USCI can be used. The code was written within Energia - but can easily be adapted for CCS or IAR Kickstart etc.
I have included the memory test sketch on this Github Gist.
In the next part of this MSP430 series I will attempt to make use of the SRAM within SIMPL, and make further use of the SPI bus for driving other hardware.
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