One aspect of the baseline family of parts in the LPC55 series is having options that deliver a good balance of simplicity and flexibility.     The simplicity/flexibility balance is important in many industrial applications.    Combining standard industrial communication peripherals such as RS-485 capable UARTs and CAN-FD  with a solid CPU foundation means that designers can implement a wide range of products in the industrial space.

Some customer cases need hardware partition and the GPIO need to be allocated by bank.

It causes resource tensive. And some time, one GPIO bank assigned to the M4 side 32 bits of one bank are more than enough. And some customer cases need to use 1 or 2 bit to as board identification for the A core side. Because of the hardware partition, A core could not directly access the M4 partition resource.

The example is to change the i.MX8QXP MEK debug uart(lpuart0) to the base board(lpuart2).

The lpuart2 is J37 on base board.

uart2-linux-uart2_L5.4.70_2.3.0.diff, uart2-u-boot-method1_L5.4.70_2.3.0.diff and uart2-u-boot-method2_L5.4.70_2.3.0.diff are the patches. 

The NPU capability lies in the “sweet spot” for performance to enable real time response for common AI/ML problems. Combined with the video and vision co-processing capabilities, the i.MX 8M Plus will be the standard bearer for Edge ML/AI implementations

Switch i.MX8MM debug port is not simple like i.MX6. Just change the bootargs.The changes include atf(Key changes), u-boot, Linux and systemd.

Please find attached a document detailing various features related to using the IMXRT1170-EVK(B) evaluation board with MCUXpresso IDE v11.x.x and SDK v2.x.x, including details of multicore debugging and how to enable SWO trace on this MCU.

New updates to the MCUXpresso suite of software and tools are now available. These updates include support for NXP’s general purpose, crossover and Bluetooth^®-enabled Arm^® Cortex^®-M-based MCUs.

Communication between these subsystems is critical to ensure the reliability and safety demanded in the automotive market.  The Controller Area Network (CAN bus) is a message-based communication network standard that allows ECUs to communicate within a vehicle without the use of dedicated analog signal wires. 

We are pleased to announce that Config Tools for i.MX Application Processors v9 are now available.

MCUXpresso Config Tools v9 release announcement.

We are pleased to announce that MCUXpresso Secure Provisioning Tool v2.1 is now available.

MCUXpresso Secure Provisioning Tool is a graphical user interface (GUI) tool covering the secure boot
process, aimed primarily at microcontroller customers. It provides unified GUI front-end over existing
command-line tools - FlashLoader, elftosb, blhost, cst.

I proclaim that the digital “on-demand” manufacturing revolution is here! It was 1999 when I first experienced quick turn, “online” PCB fabrication. Since then, PCB fabrication services have become plentiful, inexpensive, and accessible to engineers of all levels. Online automation of full turnkey assembly is the next logical step, and I see it the future of PCB assemblies. I often say it is a great time to be alive if you are in the business of embedded systems. It has never been easier to tap into global manufacturing resources to accelerate product development.

I recently ran into a scenario where we needed to quickly adapt one of our products to a new customer application. It was a situation where we needed to be agile in our response. In this scenario, I needed to plumb a particular commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) temperature sensor into our existing cellular gateway (which only had specific digital-only ports for another application). The prototype would end up being put in a “smart” cable assembly that would adapt a new sensor into our existing system to demonstrate the concept. A small “translator” PCB with some “brains” would have to be designed to link up the sensor to our existing hardware/software platform.

I was quite impressed with how quickly I could get LVGL up and running on the Mini-Monkey.     If you are looking at implementing embedded graphics on the LPC55S69 or another NXP part, LVGL should be on your short list for evaluation.    

Ázure RTOS ThreadX and other middleware components have now been released for i.MX RT1050/1060/1064 families. This highly optimized, safety-certified software can now be use for free in your projects.

MCUXpresso Config Tools v8.1 release announcement.

Dive into different aspects to optimize your software design with the NXP MBDT: a comprehensive collection of tools that plug into the MATLAB® and Simulink® model-based design environment to support fast prototyping, verification, and validation on NXP microcontroller

There is often confusion that "Edge Processing" and "Cloud" solutions are distinct offerings.   In my opinion, they should be combined to enable truly remarkable offerings.

We are pleased to announce that MCUXpresso Secure Provisioning Tool v2 is now available.

MCUXpresso Secure Provisioning Tool is a graphical user interface (GUI) tool covering the secure boot
process, aimed primarily at microcontroller customers. It provides unified GUI front-end over existing
command-line tools - FlashLoader, elftosb, blhost, cst.

Interested in a basic overview of the MCUXpresso Secure Provisioning Tool and seeing a live demonstration of the tool?

A new training module for the MCUXpresso Secure Provisioning Tool is posted at the https://nxp.com/training site.

In some of my past articles on the PowerQuad,  we examined some common signal processing operations (IIR BiQuad and the Fast Fourier Transform) and then showed  how to use the PowerQuad  DSP engine to accelerate the computations.        The matrix engine in the PowerQuad can be used to perform common matrix and vector operations to free the M33 CPU(s) to perform other tasks in parallel.     In general, the matrix engine is limited to a maximum size of 16x16 size (or 256 operations).

The i.MX RT series bridges the simplicity of MCUs with the complexity of applications processors into a hybrid portfolio offering ease-of-use designed to address the growing consumer demand for enhanced user experiences. Offering high-performance – up to 1Ghz – modernized HMI capabilities, expanded memory options, and advanced security, the i.MX RT series can help you push the boundaries of what is possible in the IoT – even on price-conscious designs.  The possibilities are endless: Imagine using the i.MX RT in clothing technology to help manage airflow; and maybe that device interacts with others such as smartwatches to actively cool the body. Similarly, imagine adding IoT capabilities to gaming devices for an enhanced gaming experience.

There is a wiki page describing the way hot create the SCR entry for the SDK component here.

It is referenced from the MCUX SDK wiki space.

Feel free to put your comments and questions directly on the wiki page. 

I wanted to take a quick break from some of the PowerQuad articles to show off a neat library that works well with the LPC55S69.      One of the design features of the Mini-Monkey experiment was a 240x240 Pixel IPS display.     I feel that the LPC55S69 is a good fit for small, low active power embedded graphics applications.  It has quite a bit of internal SRAM to store a framebuffer and has lots of processing power to composite a scene on a small display.  In some of my previous articles,  we use this display to show static images as well as displaying time series data from a built in MEMs microphone.   I ran across a twitter user “The Performance Whisper” who had recently released a lightweight and efficient  animated GIF decoder.

NXP has released the newest versions of MCUXpresso SDK, IDE, Configuration Tools, and Secure Provisioning Tool. In addition to new product support, you will find these updates and enhanced features in the new releases.

Today, NXP announced an update to the eIQ™ Machine Learning Software Development Environment, becoming the first semiconductor vendor to implement the Glow neural network compiler for vision-, sensor- and voice-based ML applications. This new neural network compiler technology delivers unprecedented inferencing performance for NXP’s i.MX RT series of crossover MCUs.

I had some design updates for “Rev B” of my Mini-Monkey design that I wanted to get in the "queue" for testing.  For the next revision, I wanted to try PCB:NG for the board fabrication and assembly.  PCB:NG is an “on-demand” PCB assembly service focused on turnkey prototypes via simple a web interface.    The pricing looked attractive and it appeared that the Mini-Monkey fit within their standard design rules.    The Mini-Monkey design uses an NXP LPC55S69 microcontroller that is in a 0.5mm pitch VFBGA98 package.   NXP offers guidance on how to use this device with low-cost design rules and I thought this would be a great test for PCB:NG.   I had success with Rev A at Macrofab and thought I would give PCB:NG a shot.

We are pleased to announce that Config Tools for i.MX Application Processors v8 are now available.

The Config Tools for i.MX is a set of configuration tools that provide an efficient method
for evaluation and configuration of pins routing and DDR memory settings when designing
with NXP's application processors based on Arm® Cortex®-A cores, including i.MX MPUs.

We are pleased to announce that MCUXpresso Config Tools v8 are now available.

MCUXpresso Configuration Tools is a product with set of tools that help users of all levels with a Cortex-M-based MCU solution.