FreeMASTER 3.2.2 Update - Release Announcement

[#1]

Version 3.2.2 of the NXP FreeMASTER tool has just been published online. 

This version is backward compatible and fully replaces older 3.2.x releases (see previous announcements). It brings new features and bugfixes described below. The updated installer is available along with documentation and other resources at http://www.nxp.com/freemaster.  

Release description

FreeMASTER is a powerful data visualization tool developed and provided by NXP to help users monitor and control embedded applications running on NXP’s targets. It works with almost all NXP Arm ® Cortex®-M microcontrollers from both Edge Processing and Automotive business lines as well as with DSC and legacy Power Architecture, ColdFire and HCS12/Z platforms. Note that the license terms and conditions does not allow using FreeMASTER with non-authorized systems from other vendors.

Version 3.2.2 is a minor update of the 3.2.x mainline release line. It overwrites previous 3.2 version installed on the host computer. Older 2.x, 3.0 and 3.1 versions are not removed. 

This version backward compatible with all previous versions. It supports variable monitoring, oscilloscope real time graphs, fast transient recorder graphs, array-to-graph views and connectivity to 3rd party applications. There are CEF and Microsoft Edge WebView2 as two Chromium-based HTML rendering engines with full support of JSON-RPC, HTML5 and JavaScript to create custom dashboards and other user interfaces that run inside FreeMASTER. Older Internet Explorer rendering engine with ActiveX interface and protocol defined for versions 2.x is also still supported.

FreeMASTER Lite service which is part of the FreeMASTER installation package provides the communication core for Windows and Linux systems. It is accessible similarly as the FreeMASTER desktop application over the JSON-RPC interface. FreeMASTER Lite also embeds the popular Node-RED framework for graphical programming and provides many examples of use with the FreeMASTER tool. Find more information related to Node-RED in the dedicated training video. 

FreeMASTER Node.js Installable Modules enable convenient use of the FreeMASTER JSON-RPC components in a Node.js applications managed by the ‘npm’ package manager.

Version 3.2.2 contains FreeMASTER Lite and Node.JS modules internally referred as version 1.2. Installing FreeMASTER Lite will require you to enter an activation code generated for this version. Get your free code on the License Keys tab at the license information page.

New Features

Version 3.2.2 introduces the following new features extending data visualization and communication options:

Variable Watch views extended

Variable Watch views now able to display a new optional column to the grid, which displays address of each variable. Also, a source of the information is displayed (ELF, TSA or dynamic) along with the numeric address value. This may be extremely useful during troubleshooting the variable configuration. 

Application Calibration - save & load variable values

The variables displayed together in one of the Watch views can be selected and their immediate values exported to a JSON file. Later the file can be loaded and all values written back to physical variables. This feature is useful to bring application quickly to a recent state or to restore calibration values being tuned.

ActiveX/JSON-RPC interface extended

Functionality of ActiveX/JSON-RPC methods GetSymbolInfo and GetAddressInfo was extended so that also the C-language type name can be retrieved. Additionally, the ActiveX methods which accept 1D array on input (e.g. WriteDoubleArray)  have been made friendly to Matlab scripting. Vectors of N elements in Matlab scripts are actually 2D arrays (Nx1) which were not compatible with the FreeMASTER ActiveX interface. The Matlab format is now accepted too.

CMSIS-DAP v2.1 supported

The CMSIS-DAP v2.1 introduced by NXP MCU-Link interface is built on top of new WebUSB communication class. FreeMASTER 3.2.2 supports this new communication as well as it maintains backward compatibility with older versions.

Data capture in raw format

Data captured to file by Oscilloscope or Recorder views can now be stored in raw binary format for faster processing. This capture mode extends the default storing in double floating point format.

Bugfixes and other extensions:

FreeMASTER

• Fixed handling of unsupported DWARF version 5 (error message shown instead of crash).
• Fixed script method StartComm() to handle the "preset" configuration properly.
• Fixed creation of second "New Window" for recorder.
• Fixed storing/restoring of window layout to or from a standalone layout file.
• Fixed opening online projects using the "https:" URIs.
• Fixed DefineVariable script method with variables created with defined numeric transformation.
• Fixed text labels of the Recorder manual control button inside the recorder view.
• New versions of P&E Micro Multilink firmware added to fix Power Architecture Nexus2+ connection issue.
  

FreeMASTER Lite

• Fixed flow control and stop bits options parsing during RS232 communication setup.
• Fixed TriggerOnly ignored option during Recorder configuration.

Release target audience

Both FreeMASTER and FreeMASTER Lite are primarily targeted to our customers, engineers and developers of NXP embedded applications from Industrial, IoT and Automotive areas who want to monitor and control their applications at runtime. FreeMASTER is also a strong framework which can be used to create interactive demos and user interfaces helping to use the embedded applications by yet wider target audience.

Prerequisites

FreeMASTER tools run on the host computer and communicates with the target microcontroller application using Serial, CAN, Ethernet/WiFi network, JTAG, BDM or other physical interface. The microcontroller communication drivers are available as part of MCUXpresso SDK, S32 Design Studio or as a standalone installation package. Get familiar with the communication protocol and the microcontroller driver API before using the FreeMASTER tool.

License terms and conditions permit use of FreeMASTER solely with systems based on NXP microprocessor or microcontroller systems.

Packages

A single self-extracting installation package which contains both FreeMASTER desktop application and the new FreeMASTER Lite service is available for Windows platforms.

	JTAG/ BDM	Serial	CAN	TCP/IP	Segger RTT
FreeMASTER Desktop app. x86 for Windows	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

Separate packages are available for FreeMASTER Lite containing x64 binaries for Windows & Linux platforms with the following supported communication interfaces.

	Serial	CAN	TCP/IP
FreeMASTER Lite x64 for Windows	✓	✓	✓
FreeMASTER Lite x64 for Linux	✓	✗	✓

Access the installation and documentation at the FreeMASTER home page at https://www.nxp.com/freemaster.

[raov15]

TKS