c2000 Piccolo F28027 LaunchPad – Tutorial 1

Hey! This tutorial will be about how to download and install the various software’s needed to start developing on the piccolo board. The c2000 Piccolo Launchpad comes pre-loaded with a demo application for measuring temperature. In the end of this tutorial we’ll run the internal demo application and display the temperature value on a serial monitor. In case you are unfamiliar with the Launchpad or the pins available on the board, you can see my previous tutorial here.

Downloading the Software’s

To start developing on the c2000 Launchpad, you will have to download Texas Instrument’s Development Environment: Code Composer Studio(CCS). You can do that from the following link:

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Download_CCS

CCS is a free Environment that makes writing code and uploading it to the Piccolo Board easy. Another software package, controlSUITE, from TI consists of examples of code, documentation and other hardware files that you might need to start developing on the Launchpad. It is the software support package for the Launchpad and many other TI processors. You can download controlSUITE from the following link:

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/ControlSUITE_for_C2000

To install any software from TI, you have to make a free TI account. TI will then ask you to fill up a form. They will then send you the installation file on your registered email id.

Installing the Software

To Install CCS, open the installation file for it. In the installation wizard, you may choose the default options, or you can do a custom installation where you can select to install the drivers for only the processors that you will be using. As we will be using only the c2000 F28027 Piccolo Launchpad, you can choose to install the drivers for just the C28x 32-bit Real-Time MCU’s. Once you are done selecting the drivers for the boards that you need, you can install the default options in the next steps.

When installing controlSUITE, it is recommended to do the custom install. The custom install allows you to download the packages for only those controllers that you are using. You can select your controller, from the “kits” section by selecting only the drivers for the c2000 Launchpad.

Configuring the Environment

To create a new project, click

Project->New CCS Project

Give a name to your project. Make sure that you set the output type as “Executable”, Family as “C2000” and variant as “2802x Piccolo, TMS320F28027”. When it comes to the type of connections, it differs from computer to computer. For me, the “XDS100v1 USB Emulator” works, but I have seen many others use the “XDS100v1 USB Emulator” too. In case one doesn’t work, you can always change the settings in the project settings later.

Next, in the project explorer, right click on your project name and choose “Properties”. In the “Include Options” under the Build->c2000 Compiler, add the following line in the “Add dir to #include search part” option by clicking on the ‘+’ button:

“C:\ti\controlSUITE\development_kits\C2000_LaunchPad” 

*with the quotation marks

Similarly, in the c2000 Linker->File Search Path add the following line in Include Library File or Command File by again clicking on the ‘+’ button:

“C:\ti\controlSUITE\development_kits\C2000_LaunchPad\f2802x_common\lib\driverlib.lib”

*with the quotation mark

Click Finish and you are ready to go!

Hardware Installation

Before running the default application, make sure that jumpers are placed on J1, J2 and J3. These provide power isolation and allows the Launchpad to draw power through the USB cable. To provide external power, you have to connect power supplies to these pins.

Secondly, make sure that switch S1 is in the UP, UP, DOWN position. This allows the Piccolo to boot to its flash memory and run the demo application.

And finally, make sure that switch S4 is in the UP position. This allows for Serial communication between the PC and the board.

After plugging in the Launchpad with the supplied USB cable, you can install the drivers to the board.

Now we are ready to start the demo application.

Running the demo application

The demo application on the board is a temperature sensing application. The application displays the difference between a reference temperature, when the board was first started and the current temperature as a hexadecimal value on the 4 bit LED display on the board.
To start the program, click the CPU reset button once and then press and hold the switch S3 for 1 second. This should start the demo application. To view the temperature on the serial monitor, you can use any serial monitor like Putty. The baud rate should be set to 115200 baud to properly display the temperature.
And we are done! In the next tutorials, we will learn how to code the c2000 and run an LED blinking program.
That’s all folks!