Lightweight Coldfire MCU to run alongside MCF52259

[FridgeFreezer]

I'm currently developing on the MCF52259 and, as a side project, need a small and cheap MCU to take RS232 data in and display it on an LCD. Ideally I'd like something that is in the same family so I can re-use as much code as possible, as well as the CodeWarrior IDE itself.

The job is currently done by 3rd party hardware running a 68HC908, which is overkill for the job at hand. I'm ideally looking for something small, cheap, with low pin count but a reasonable amount of flash & RAM to make life easier during development.

[Kopone · Accepted solution]

I suggest taking a look at the 9S08QE8.

My preferred allrounders are the QE for 3.3V and the AC for 5V. They are both available from little to plenty of ram and flash and the 9S08 derivatives all start around $1 so it simply doesnt matter if it's overkill or not. Due to the trimmable internal oscillators they can all be used with very little external parts (a cap on the powerrails will suffice to get you started - which is actually one of my favourite features).

Note however that Codewarrior for anything below a V2 MCU is a different product, so you cant reuse a license (doubt you'd need one for your mentioned project though, that should be possible with the SE license) and it's also operated differently in a few ways (just had to learn this when going the other way V1->V2). Also reuse of code between a V2 and a V1/S08 core depends more or less on how portable your code actually is. Some operations are similar, but all the registers follow different naming conventions etc. and don't expect to reuse code like for setting up the UART (look for the SCI instead and/or use PE).

Regards,

 Sven

[JWW]

If you are looking to drive segment LCD you can also consider LL16 family.  This part has the segment LCD drivers integrated in the MCU.    You can get the superset chip in a Tower board format with LCD glass.

Look at TWR-S08LL64   We also have the LL16 in a demo board format...Part# is DEMO9S08LL16

If you want graphic LCD... You can combine the newly launched TWR-LCD module.

This module has a ColdFire V1 on the back and is a standalone LCD board.  Some nice example apps.  But if you want to use the board in conjunction with a MCF5225x based product, then you can plug it into a TWR-MCF5225x-KIT.  And you can use the V1JM as a LCD control micro or you can bypass it and drive it directly from the V2 master micro in your system.

Just thought this might help you quickly get up and running.

Also, as pointed out in another post, today CodeWarrior is delivered in two variations.  But our new Codewarrior 10.0 is a unified tool and builds for ColdFire  (all cores) and S08 in one tool.

There is a free beta until June.  Then the production tool launches in June.

Checkout the codewarrior page: http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=CW-MCU10&tid=CWHms

Hope this helps

JWW

[FridgeFreezer]

Thanks guys.

[scifi]

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FridgeFreezer wrote:

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I'm ideally looking for something small, cheap, with low pin count but a reasonable amount of flash & RAM to make life easier during development.

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That sounds a lot like a small Cortex-M3 based MCU. I know, it's not Coldfire, but many of them look very nice...