29 December 2010

New Devices!

If you haven't already seen from some of the other websites in the LaunchPad community, TI is gearing up to release more MSP430 devices that are compatible with the LaunchPad.  Some of these will be 20-pin chips, and will make use of the entire board.  You can see details of the new devices on TI's website.

In regards to the new devices, some will include more of the MSP430 peripherals, most notably a hardware UART for serial communication.  The UART uses the same two pins that TI chose to use on the LaunchPad for the timer-based UART used in the demo program that comes with the G2231 chip.  Unfortunately, it swaps the transmit and receive functions on these pins.  TI is working on potentially re-designing the LaunchPad, and has asked for the community's views on how to approach this issue.  If you haven't already, go to the post on the E2E Community site, review the proposals they've given, and vote for the solution you think is best!

4 comments:

Dimitar said...

Hello!

Thank you for making this blog.

About the accessibility on the blogs:

try using labels http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44498

Example labels for you: tutorials, design notes, commentary, etc.

You can also experiment with pages
http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=165955

So, I wish you success with your customizations. Most blogs have bad or non-existing content, but good structure; your is kind of the opposite :-)

Unknown said...

Thanks for the tips! I know the format of the blog is a little difficult; hope everyone will be patient with me. It can be difficult to do this and try to finish a Ph.D. at the same time.

Jeff said...

This is a great blog. May I suggest you or other commenters expounding on the new Capacitive Touch sensing in these new chips. I think that this feature is one of the most significant new additions.

I have some samples coming and I have seen the sample code, but it does not look to be as turnkey as I would like yet. My design has the critical aspects of low power/battery and touch through glass. I know the 430s can do this, but getting the low power settings correct along with waking up often enough to sense touch is going to be very tricky. I'd like to see a vibrant discussion so we can all get this right.

Unknown said...

It is a great feature; I think from the view point I'm trying to take here it will have to wait. (Capacitive touch is useful, but not essential from an instrumentation viewpoint.) Once I've managed to get through all of the major peripherals, I should be able to look into more ideas like that; I'm sure capacitive touch will have other uses than just making touch sensor switches.

On the other hand, it would be a great thing to bring up in the community in general! I'm sure it's a desired enough feature that many of us would appreciate some development and explanation of the system.