Welcome to the LPC4350 Hitex Board Getting Started Guide!
This page will walk new owners of the LPC4350 development platform from Hitex through bringing the board up with the example projects.
Connecting the Hardware
Here is a photo of a typical hardware setup. The board is connected to a PC through a JTAG debugging interface and a USB-serial cable. +5V center-positive power is also applied to X14. If a 5V regulated power supply is not available, the board may be powered by USB connected to one of the USB connectors using the included cable. To date we have tested this board with a Keil ULink 2, ULink Pro, and the Segger JLink but any JTAG-capable tool should be able to debug with the LPC4350. The example projects should run without modification on Keil MDK.
To see the debugging output from the example code on the serial-to-usb cable, first the driver must be installed. Many cables use chips from FDTI and the drivers can be downloaded from here: FDTI VCP Drivers. To view the serial output, any standard terminal program such as Tera Term can be used.
LPC4300 Hitex Board with Connections
LPC4350 PDL Examples and Flash Drivers
The example code for this board can be downloaded from here: LPC4350 PDL There are 53 code examples. Once the code has been downloaded, it should be unzipped. The unzipped peripheral driver library includes an Examples directory containing examples that work with each peripheral on the LPC4350 dual-core microcontroller. Also included are flash drivers located in the Tools\Flash\Keil_Binaries directory. If using ARM/Keil MDK V4.22 and earlier, these should be copied to the C:\Keil\ARM\Flash directory. Later tool versions should include these drivers.
LPC4350 PDL Examples and Flash Drivers
If you are using the Hitex LPC4350 board using the ARM/Keil MDK, the driver library projects have several configurations built-in. They can build for Internal SRAM, build for SPIFI (external 1 MB QSPI flash on the Hitex board), or build for Hitex Flash (external parallel flash on the Hitex board).The best performance will be achieved with building for Internal SRAM, but if you would like the board to boot on its own without a debugger, then the code will have to be built either for SPIFI or for Hitex Flash.
LPC4350 PDL Keil Project Configurations
LPC4350 PDL Boot Jumpers
Once you have successfully programmed the flash on the Hitex board, there is one step left before the LPC4350 can boot from external flash. That final step is to configure the boot mode using the boot mode jumpers.
LPC4350 PDL Boot Jumpers
Here is a diagram that shows how to configure the boot jumpers on the LPC4350 Hitex board. The boards are shipped with the center two positions shorted with jumpers. This configures the LPC4350 to boot from the "EMC" (External Memory Controller) which is connected to the parallel flash on the Hitex board. When using the sample projects with the Keil tool, after building a project, the LOAD button can be used to program it into Flash memory for stand-alone booting. To debug a project that has been programed in to Flash, you may need to click the LOAD button to configure the memory controller on the LPC4350 (if it has been reset) before entering debug mode.
LPC4350 PDL Boot Jumper Diagram
We can ship boards with two example projects flashed in them- one loads when the board is configured to boot from Parallel Flash, and a second loads when the board is configured to boot from QSPI flash. Recent boards are shipped with a Mass Storage Class ROM USB demo in parallel Flash and an LED/button demo in QSPI Flash.
Using the SD/MMC Card Slot
The SD/MMC Card Slot, on the right edge of the board in the photo above, can accept an SD card to read and write data. Before this slot will work properly, several jumpers must be configured on the Hitex board. The jumpers needed are:
| Jumper Block | Jumper Settings |
|---|---|
| SV3 | positions 7-8 and 13-4 must be open |
| SV6 | positions 1-2, 3-4, 7-8, 15-16, 17-18 must be open |
| SV12 | all positions must be shorted |
| JP9 | position 1-2 must be shorted |
Next- load the Usb_MassStorage example from the USBDEV_ROM directory. This Mass Storage Class example has been extended with sdio drivers. Insert an SD card (we have tested 2GB) into the SD connector on the right side of the board. Connect X2 (USB1, high-speed) to a PC. You should see a disk drive on the PC and be able to read and write the SD card.
Operation at 204 MHz
The LPC4350 is qualified to operate at up to 204 MHz, but normally starts up at a slower speed to make design easier. In particular, even if memories and power subsystems are not designed to support 204 MHz, booting is still possible. To run the LPC4350 at 204 MHz, take a look at the BOOTFAST example project. This project supports the same configurations (SRAM, Parallel Flash, and QSPI Flash) as the other examples, but after startup, it relocates some code to internal SRAM, and then it reconfigures the parallel flash and SPIFI peripheral to a high speed mode and increases the clock speed to 204 MHz.
This is a good way to see how a standard system would boot. Typically, the most critical code would also be located within internal SRAM which runs at 204 MHz with zero wait states while other less performance-intensive code could be located in external Flash, SRAM, or QSPI flash which are set up to run at 102 MHz in this example.
Multi-Core Operation
The LPC4350 contains two cores, a Cortex-M4 and a Cortex-M0 which both operate at 204 MHz. An example that demonstrates how you can use the cores together is located in Examples\DUALCORE\Mbx_Demo. This example sets up a mailbox mechanism to facilitate communication between the two cores. The M0 core is assigned the task of outputting serial communications via UART 1. This example includes a multi-project workspace. Once the workspace is opened, the M0 project must be built first before the M4 project can be built. For more details, see the abstract in the M4 project.
State Configurable Timer (SCT)
The LPC4350 contains a special timer called the State Configurable Timer (SCT). The SCT is a timer with a state machine integrated into it. It is great for doing complex signal generation such as PWM waveforms. An SCT example is provided in the LPC4350 code repository which emulates the behavior of a simple traffic light. The example is called SCT_TrafficLight and is in the SCT subdirectory of the Examples directory in the code bundle. To use this example, you must assemble a PCB with four LEDs and two pushbuttons. Here is a photo of an example board:
SCT Traffic Light
SCT Traffic Light Schematic
The traffic light should be connected as follows:
| Signal | Port | Connector | Signal | Wire Color |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CTOUT_0 | P4_2 | X11, pin 7 | Red LED | red |
| CTOUT_1 | P4_1 | JP20, pin 2 | Yellow LED | yellow |
| CTOUT_2 | P4_4 | JP22, pin 2 | Green LED | green |
| CTOUT_3 | P4_3 | X11, pin 6 | White LED | red |
| CTIN_2 | P4_10 | X11, pin 13 | WALK Button | blue |
| CTIN_3 | P7_3 | SV18, pin 16 | RESET button | yellow |
| GND | ADC | ADC, GND | Common | black |
Traffic Light Connections
If you would like to edit the state machine used in the traffic light example, you will need to use the LPCXpresso or Red Suite tool, which has "Red State," a state-machine editor, built-in. Here is an image of the state machine used in the traffic light example:
Traffic Light Diagram
Once you have edited the state machine, click "Generate Code." You can test the state machine within LPCXpresso if you have a Red Probe or an LPC-Link probe, or you can copy the following source code files from the LPCXpresso project over to the Keil SCT project: sct_fsm.c, sct_fsm.h, and sct_user.h and make use of a JLink or uLink.
Serial GPIO (SGPIO)
The LPC4350 contains a peripheral called Serial GPIO which is similar to a bank of shift registers with some extra logic for bonding and counters for timing. The SGPIO is great for implementing standard or custom digital data interfaces. To demo this peripheral, we have configured it to implement four I2S ports to add 7.1 8-speaker audio capability to the LPC4300 family. The example for this will soon be provided in the LPC4350 code repository. The example will be called SGPIO_71 and will be in the SGPIO subdirectory of the Examples directory in the code bundle. To use this example, you need a demonstration PCB with four stereo audio codecs on board. Here is a photo of an example board:
LPC4350 Codec Board
The codec board should be connected as follows:
| Signal | Connector | Wire Color |
|---|---|---|
| MCLK | SV16, pin 6 | blue |
| LRCLK | SV3, pin 11 | green |
| SCLK | SV5, pin 6 | yellow |
| GND | GND post near U23 | black |
| V33 | JP5, pin 2 | red |
| - | - | - |
| SDIN0 | SV13, pin 4 | blue |
| SDIN1 | SV5, pin 4 | green |
| SDIN2 | SV16, pin 4 | yellow |
| SDIN3 | SV3, pin 3 | blue |
LPC4300 Hitex Codec Connections
Once you have connected the codec board, you should be able to connect the Hitex board to your PC using a USB cable to connector X2. After running the example project, a stereo USB speaker device should appear on your PC which can accept audio and mirror it onto two of the stereo audio channels.
