Getting Started With Embedded Wizard GUI Application Development With MPLAB® X IDE

Launch MPLAB X IDE.

Create a new project by clicking the New Project icon  or by selecting File > New Project.

In the New Project window, under Projects, choose Application Project(s). and click Next.

In the Select Device dialog pane, fill in or select the following information:

• Family: 32-bit MCUs and MPUs (PIC32C/SAM)
• Device : SAM9X60D1G
  

In the Select Compiler pane, for Compiler Toolchains select XC32, and click Next.

Enter Project Location, Project Folder and Project Name, then click Finish.

From main menu, click on Tools > Embedded > MPLAB Code Configurator or click the MCC button in the MPLAB X IDE tool bar. It will launch MCC Content Manger Wizard. Click Select MPLAB Harmony.

In addition to the required packages, download the optional packages gfx_apps_sam9x60, bsp, csp, core, gfx, dev_packs and then click Finish. Content download will take some time. Wait till all the contents are downloaded.

The project graph will be displayed. From Device Resources add Board Support Packages for SAM9X60 Curiosity BSP to Project Graph.

Now add the RTC and DBGU peripherals to the project graph. The RTC library will be used by Embedded Wizard to set and read time from RTC.

From Device Resources under Graphics > Templates, add Legato Graphics w/PDA TM5000 Display to Project Graph. You will be prompted to allow auto-connection and auto-activation of several components; for all except FreeRTOS, click Yes.

Choosing the Legato Graphics w/PDA TM5000 Display template automatically populates rest of the project components. This can be seen in the way the project graph is set up and connected.

To add FreeRTOS to the Project Graph, go to Third Party Libraries > RTOS > FreeRTOS. You will be prompted to allow auto-connection and auto-activation of PIT. Click on Yes. This will automatically create FreeRTOS Tasks which can be found in tasks.c.

Note that TCO is used as the system timer as shown in the project graph in the accompanying image.

Remove Legato from the Project Graph as Embedded Wizard is used as the GUI to create graphics in this example.
See the "Graphics Getting Started Application on SAM9X60 Curiosity Development Board" page to learn how to create a graphics application using Microchip Graphics Suite on the SAM9X60 Curiosity Development Board.

In the Project Graph, click on FLEXCOM6. In the Configuration Options window, select clock speed as 100,000 (100KHz).

In the Project Graph, click on LE LCDC Driver. In the Configuration Options window, select Output Color Mode as 18 BPP, enable only the Base Layer and enable the Canvas mode.

From the Project Graph tab, select Pin Configuration from the Plugins menu.

You can see that PA30 and PA31 are set to FLEXCOM6. Enable pullups for those pins. Ensure all the pins are configured as shown:

Save all and then click the Generate button. This will generate code for all the peripherals that have been added in the project graph.

With FreeRTOS, the CPU load can be measured by using run-time counter for the Idle task.

The corresponding FreeRTOS configuration needed to enable run time statistics using FreeRTOS is added in FreeRTOSConfig.h file. 

configGENERATE_RUN_TIME_STATS and INCLUDE_xTaskGetIdleTaskHandle must both be defined as 1 for this feature to be available.

Note that a high precision timer, TC0, is used in this example to measure the run time statics. The corresponding timer configurations are added in FreeRTOSConfig.h as shown:

The definition of RTOS_AppConfigureTimerForRuntimeStats() is available in app.c. TCO timer is used as system timer.

The CPU load can be increased or decreased by inserting a delay in lAPP_Tasks in task.c as shown:

By default, no delay is added in lApp_Tasks(), so the CPU is 100% loaded. You can add the delay to modify the CPU load of app_task.

Now clean and build the project. This completes configuring the peripherals and code changes required for developing the graphics application.

Download Embedded Wizard for the target platform, Microchip's SAM9X75 Curiosity LAN Kit.

Download the Embedded Wizard Build Environment for SAM9X75-Curiosity-WVGA.

Now launch Embedded Wizard and create a new project with the following settings:

Follow "Quick Tour - a Tutorial" to learn how to develop a Embedded Wizard-based GUI application.

See the SAM9X75 Graphics Accelerator GUI project developed using Embedded Wizard or other example applications for the WVGA display in GitHub®.

This application is a benchmark to compare the FPS and CPU load by testing the following basic operations: Rectangle Copy, Bitmap Copy, Rectangle Blend, Bitmap Blend and Alpha8 Blend.

The simulation output on the Embedded Wizard is as shown:

After completing the creation of the GUI application, generate code to the directory ../../../Application/GeneratedCode.

This completes the code generation for an GUI application from the Embedded Wizard GUI.

The next step is to add Embedded Wizard platform packages and generated code to the MPLAB X IDE. To do this, first download the Embedded Wizard Build Environment for SAM9X75-Curiosity-WVGA. 

Unzip it and find the platform packages in the following directory:

The customized Embedded Wizard build environment for the High-Performance WVGA LCD Display Module with maXTouch Technology and for SAM9X60 Curiosity development board is located in the Embedded_Wizard folder, which contains four sub-folders. 

Now, add Embedded_Wizard build environment to MPLAB X IDE. First, add the header files. To do this, go to Projects > Header Files > Add Existing Items from Folders. Select the Embedded_Wizard folder and choose Header Files (.h) files in the search pane.

Similarly, add the source files from this folder. To do this, go to Projects > Header Files > Add Existing Items from Folders. Select the Embedded_Wizard folder  and choose C Source Files (.c) files in the search pane.

Link the Embedded Wizard EWRTE (Embedded Wizard Run Time Engine - libewrte.a) and EWGFX (Embedded Wizard Graphics - libewgfx.a) libraries. Go to Projects > Libraries > Add Library/Object File and then choose libewrte.a and libewgfx.a from the PlatformPackage folder.

If you see a path-related error, for example:

• Unable to find Embedded Wizard related include paths

Then add the include directories as shown:

Write an application, app.c, in such a way that once the LCDC is initialized, the GUI gets fired up with a call to ew_init(), the graphics and interface keep updating regularly through the ew_process() function, and the app_display_callback from the Embedded Wizard project should update . Sample application files​  are available.

To synchronize the frame rate of a graphics output from Embedded Wizard with the refresh rate of the LCDC, Start of Frame (SOF) interrupt is used.

To enable SOF interrupt, an interrupt call back is defined in app.c, and  can be seen in the screen shot of the previous step (Step 5) and its handler is written in ew_bsp_display.c as shown:

A modification in an interrupt handler for LCDC driver is required to service Start Of Frame(SOF) interrupt via the LCDC interrupt call back. To do this, comment out the "Layer Lock Pending" conditional check in LCDC interrupt handler _IntHandlerLayerReadComplete() in drv_gfx_lcdc.c.c file as shown below:

The CPU load measurement used in the Embedded Wizard GUI application project, which will be displayed on the WVGA display, is available in ew_bsp_os.c as follows:

Note that the macro "FREERTOS" should be defined in the definition.h file to enable the CPU load calculation used in the Embedded Wizard GUI application.

​​​​

Now clean and build the project. This completes the integration of the Embedded Wizard GUI developed into MPLAB Harmony project.​​​​​

Configure project properties for debugging in MPLAB X IDE using MPLAB® PICkit™ 5 In-Circuit Debugger. To do this, in the Projects pane, right-click on the project and select Properties from the menu. 

In this example, we use the MPLAB PICkit™ 5 In-Circuit Debugger (ICD) with Debugger Adapter Board. 

For the MPLAB PICkit 5 ICD to operate correctly, SAM9X6_DFP version 1.8.210 or higher is required. 

Click on the Apply button. Observe under Categories > Conf: [default], that PICkit 5 and  Bootstrap are now listed. 

In the Categories pane, select PICkit 5. In the Option categories drop down box, select Communications. Change JTAG Speed to 4.000 MHz.  

In the Categories pane, select Bootstrap. Observe that Use bootstrap is selected and the pre-compiled version of the at91bootstrap.elf is selected. A precompiled at91bootstrap.elf   is available.

at91bootstrap is a second-stage bootloader for Microchip Technology Arm^®-based microprocessors (MPU). For more information see the “at91bootstrap: A Second Stage Bootloader for Microchip MPUs” page. 

To create BIN file from an ELF file in MPLAB X IDE, use the following command when MPLAB complete building an elf:

${MP_CC_DIR}/xc32-objcopy -O binary ${DISTDIR}/${PROJECTNAME}.${IMAGE_TYPE}.elf ${DISTDIR}/harmony.bin

Power the SAM9X60-Curiosity by connecting a USB Micro-B connector to the USB-A Connector (J1) and the host computer, or a suitable USB power source. For more information see the “Power Options” section of the “SAM9X60-Curiosity - Features” page.

Press the START and then the RESET push button (SW1)

Now clean and build the project. The resultant application binary files can be seen in <project_path>\dist\default\debug  as shown in the accompanying image:

Click on the Debug Project icon on the toolbar.

You can view the debugging messages on the serial console. For more information on establishing serial communications with the target console see the "SAM9X60 Curiosity Development Board - Console Serial Communications" page.

Press Run, it will display the graphics accelerator application on the display connected with SAM9X60 Curiosity development board.

Take a microSD card formatted with the FAT32 file system.

Copy the boot.bin and harmony.bin files to the microSD card using the PC.

Insert the SD card to J3 on the SAM9X60 Curiosity Development Board.

Press the START and then the Reset button. It will display the graphics accelerator application on the display connected with SAM9X60 Curiosity Development Board.