Getting Started with MPLAB® Harmony v3 Drivers on SAM D21 MCUs Using FreeRTOS™: Step 6

Last modified by Microchip on 2023/11/09 09:08

Build, Program, and Observe the Outputs

Verify that the temperature sensor (I/O1 Xplained Pro Extension Kit) is connected to the Extension Header 1 (EXT1) on the SAM D21 Xplained Pro Evaluation Kit.

Temperature sensor I/O1 Xplained Pro Extension Kit

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The SAM D21 Xplained Pro Evaluation Kit allows the Embedded Debugger (EDBG) to be used for debugging. Connect the Type-A male to Micro-B USB cable to the Micro-B DEBUG USB port to power and debug the SAM D21 Xplained Pro Evaluation Kit.

Connecting the Type-A male to Micro-B USB cable to the Micro-B DEBUG USB port to power and debug the SAM D21 Xplained Pro Evaluation Kit

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Go to File > Project Properties and make sure that the EDBG is selected as the debugger under the Hardware Tools and XC32 (v2.50) is selected as the Compiler Toolchain for XC32.

Make sure that the EDBG is selected as the debugger under the Hardware Tools and XC32 (v2.50) is selected as the Compiler Toolchain for XC32

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Clean and build the application by clicking on the Clean and Build button as shown in the following image.

Clean and Build button

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Program the application to the device by clicking on the Make and Program button as shown:

Make and Program button

The lab should build and program successfully.

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Now, open the Tera Term terminal application on the PC (from the Windows® Start menu by pressing the Start button). Select the Serial Port as shown:

Tera Term terminal application

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Change the baud rate to 115200.

Baud rate set to 115200

Baud rate set to 115200

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It can be observed that the temperature values (in °F) are being displayed on the terminal every second as shown:

Temperature values (in °F)

Also, notice the LED3 blinking at a one-second rate.

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Press any character on the terminal to display the last five values written to the EEPROM.

Temperature values (in °F)

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The temperature can be varied by placing your finger on the temperature sensor (for a few seconds).

Placing your finger on the temperature sensor

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Results

This application displayed the current room temperature values on the serial terminal every second. Also, the application retrieved and printed (on the serial terminal) the last five stored temperature values from EEPROM every time a character is entered on the serial terminal. It was also observed that a user LED was toggled every time the current temperature was displayed on the serial terminal.

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Analysis

The first application using MPLAB® Harmony v3 on a SAM D21 microcontroller has been successfully created. The application used all the fundamental elements that go into building a real-time application and successfully read temperature sensor values and displayed them periodically over a serial terminal on a PC. While the temperature values were getting printed on the serial terminal, the application stored the temperature values into EEPROM. The application retrieved the last five values stored in EEPROM and displayed them on the serial terminal when a user requested them (by entering a character on the serial terminal).

In this application, the MPLAB Harmony Configurator (MHC) was used to configure the SAM D21 and to use the MPLAB Harmony v3 Framework. The clock configurator was used to set up the CPU clock and verify the peripheral clocks. SERCOM2, and SERCOM3 were configured as I²C, and Universal Synchronous Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (USART) respectively. Pin Configurator was used to set up the pins for the LED and peripheral (USART, I²C) pins. The entire application was built using FreeRTOS and configurations for FreeRTOS threads, stack, and heap size for the application threads were done in this application.

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Conclusions

This tutorial provides the training for configuring and using all the fundamental components needed to build a real-time application using FreeRTOS on a SAM D21 microcontroller with the MPLAB Harmony v3 Framework. As a next step, developers may customize this application and reconfigure some of the components used in this tutorial and can also add new components (Drivers, etc.), and additional threads to enhance this application to realize the end application.

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