Tiva-C LaunchPad

The Tiva-C LaunchPad, is an inexpensive self-contained, single-board microcontroller, AbOUT the size of a credit card featuring an ARM Cortex-M4 32-bit microcontroller at 80 MHz, manufactured by Texas Instruments. The Tiva-C Series EK-TM4C123GXL Launchpad, is an upgrade from the Ti-Stellaris Launchpad, the Tiva-C LaunchPad just adds support options for Motion Control PWMs and USB Host functionality.

There are 40 I/O pins that have multi-personality, this means that they can be easily configured as digital inputs or outputs, analog inputs and outputs or other functions, allowing a great variety of applications, are just the multiple serial ports have the ability to interface with more items such as test cards or other communication modules, etc. Among those pins there are included the GND and POWER (3.3 V) pins.

The clock is 80 MHz, this makes it 4 times faster than Arduino UNO. As with any Cortex M4 the processor has some DSP (Digital signal Processor) instructions, with some limitations, one can do signal processing for example sampling human voice with a good quality, able to be processed in Matlab.

It has an additional USB port which can act as USB host, allowing the connection of multiple devices. It has a temperature sensor and on-board LED and RGB LED with this you can generate various colors by combining the three basic colours (Red, Blue and Green) of the additive colour syntesis.

The Tiva LaunchPad comes preloaded with software to demonstrate many of the capabilities of the ARM microcontroller and with a RGB quickstart application

Tiva LaunchPad

CPU & Speed

The LaunchPad's TM4C123GXL CPU (ARM Cortex M4 32-bit CPU) is capable of speeds up to 80 MHz. The CPU can be run at lower speeds to reduce energy consumption.

Features

  • Tiva TM4C123GXLV ARM Cortex M4 32-bit microcontroller
  • 32 Kbyte of RAM memory for code storage
  • 2 Kbytes of EEPROM for non-volatile data storage
  • 256-Kbytes of flash memory
  • One RGB user LED
  • Two user switches (application/wake)
  • Available I/O brought out to headers on a 0.1-in (2.54-mm) grid
  • On-board ICDI
  • Reset switch
  • Possibility to use booster packs
  • Two sets of connectors: 40 I/O ports, ISP, USI, JTAG
  • Two CAN modules
  • SPI/UART/I2C (Cable and connector provided by end user)
  • Motion control PWM
  • USB Micro-AB connector:

:* Device mode default configuration

:* Host/OTG modes supportable

  • 5 V battery connector
  • Switch-selectable power sources:

:* ICDI

:* USB device

Booster packs

LCD

A demonstration of LCD driving can be achieved with LaunchPad by fitting a Nokia LCD, graphic display (not included in the kit). However, the LCD interface consumes many of the I/O pins.

Software

The LaunchPad comes preloaded with a RGB quickstart application Supported by TivaWare for C Series software including the USB library and the peripheral driver library Tiva C Series TM4C123G LaunchPad BoosterPack XL Interface, which features stackable headers to expand the capabilities of the Tiva C Series LaunchPad development platform

Reprogramming

Software may be written for the LaunchPad using the assembly language or GCC (GNU Cprogramming language) with Energia, a free variant of the Arduino integrated development environment (IDE). A pre-installed bootloader program allows the board to be re-programmed with a standard USB 2.0 port (requiring no special hardware). The board also has ISP and JTAG ports for in-circuit programming and debugging.

Popularity

The LaunchPad it's becoming popular among the hobbyists for its low price of about $15 USD, its flexibility, the availability of free development software and the ability to reprogram it without using special hardware.

LaunchPad projects

Many fully usable projects have been built using the LaunchPad as a base platform, often with few or no additional parts. There's an award-winning Pluviometer based around the LaunchPad called the Ibanyez-Jardi Pluviometer. There are free plans to convert the LaunchPad into a portable ARM-ISP device for programming a whole family of ARM devices. Several plans available on the web to convert a LaunchPad into an MP3 player. There are also available lessons and popular books for learning how to program ARMs using C language, after which the LaunchPad was designed.

There are as well, related Youtube videos and a wiki about Tiva-C LaunchPad.

See also

  • Arduino
  • Arduinome
  • OMAP
  • Texas Instruments DaVinci

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