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SAMA7D65 Early Access Curiosity Board - Getting Started Guide for MPLAB® Harmony V3

Last modified by Microchip on 2025/03/11 11:45

Introduction

Thank you for taking the time to evaluate the SAMA7D65 Curiosity Development Board. This instruction will guide you through running the demonstration application that comes with the board. For a deeper dive into the features and capability of the board, refer to the links provided in the "References" section of this guide.

Confirm the following components are present in the box:

  • SAMA7D65 Curiosity Board (P/N: EA89C15A)
  • SD card
  • USB-A to USB-C cable (power)

Required components not included in the box:

  • Serial to USB dongle
  • Ethernet cable
  • This guide demonstrates how to perform an iPerf networking test between your Windows® PC (acting as iPerf TCP Client) and the SAMA7D65 Curiosity Board (acting as iPerf TCP Server). The board and PC must be connected to your local network infrastructure with a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server automatically assigning an IP address to each. Direct peer-to-peer connection is not possible in the configuration of this demo.
Information

Note: The instructions in this manual are intended for the iPerf2 version of the networking test executable running on Windows. The version is downloadable as provided in the instructions. 

MPLAB® Harmony Demo Setup

Download the iperf.zip from the repository, GitHub-EA89C15A.

Unzip the downloaded iperf.zip file into any directory of your choice. Note the location where the files are unzipped. You will execute the iperf.exe from this location using a terminal to run the TCP Client.

Download the harmony.bin and boot.bin from the repository, GitHub-EA89C15A.

Copy the downloaded harmony.bin and boot.bin to the SD card. 

Information

SD cards need to be formatted to a file system compatible with Microchip MPU devices, such as FAT32. For SD cards larger than 32 GB, a specific procedure must be followed. Please refer to "How to Format and Partition an SD Card Larger Than 32GB Using DiskPart in Windows® for MPU" for detailed instructions on preparing your SD card for use with the MPU device.

Connect the components as shown in the accompanying image:

Ethernet cable to J14 connector.

SD card inserted on the SD Boot J10 slot (bottom side of the board).

Serial-USB dongle to UART DEBUG J35 header.

USB-A to USB-C cable to J3 USB-C port for power.

board connection editor

Information

Note:

  • SAMA7D65 Curiosity Board serial terminal set up in Step 6 will be referred to as "TCP Server" terminal.
  • The host computer command line started in Step 8 will be referred to as "TCP Client" prompt. 

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Set Up and Start the SAMA7D65 Curiosity Board Serial Terminal

Set up the SAMA7D65 Curiosity Board serial terminal on the host computer.

On the host computer, open a serial terminal with the following settings:

  • Baud Rate: 115200
  • Data: 8-bit
  • Parity: None
  • Stop: 1-bit
  • Flow Control: None

Open PuTTY.
putty icon

Open Windows Device Manager to find out which COM port to use (COM10 will be used in this example).

Open Putty > Category > Connection > Serial and configure the parameters as shown in the accompanying image (adapt the COM port to your local setup).

Putty configuration

Press Open.

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Press the RESET (SW4) button on the SAMA7D65 Curiosity Board to force a reset.

When the system is ready, the serial terminal that was set up in Step 6 should show a prompt. This is the TCP Server terminal on the PC.

Verify that the iPerf MPLAB Harmony application is running and displaying on the TCP Server terminal.
TCP Server terminal

Press the Enter key to show the prompt.
TCP Server terminal

Note the IP Address assigned to the board. The screen shot shows 10.14.63.72. 

Your board will show a different IP address. Use your board's IP address instead of the one given in the screenshot when you run the iPerf test.

 

Start the TCP Server on the SAMA7D65 Curiosity Board by running the following command:

iperf -s -i 1

The TCP Server terminal should show the iPerf application started executing and listening to the port: 

TCP Server terminal

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Start PC Command Line

On the host computer, run a command line application to execute the iPerf Client application.
Open Command Prompt.

Command prompt

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In the folder where iPerf was downloaded in Step 1, start the TCP Client on the PC by running the following command:

.\iperf.exe -c 10.14.63.72 -p 5001 -i 1 -t 5
Information

Note that the IP address used should match the IP address recorded in Step 7.3.

This will test the performance of the network transfers between the PC and the SAMA7D65 Curiosity Board.

The TCP Client terminal should show the results of the test: 

TCP Server terminal

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Go to the TCP Server terminal and confirm the test executed.

The TCP Server terminal should show the results of the test: 

TCP Server terminal

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References

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Troubleshooting

Common

Serial Terminal is not showing anything

There are multiple possible reasons why the terminal does not show anything:

  • Double-check that the RX-TX signals of the serial cable are properly connected to the RX-TX signals of the board.
  • Double-check that the ground signal is properly connected.
  • Verify if the SD card contains the right files.

Running iperf command in the host terminal results in a "Connection refused" error.

[  1] tcp connect to 10.14.63.70 port 5001 failed (Connection refused) on 2024-05-31 11:43:21 (US Mountain Standard Time)

Verify the IP address used when sending the iperf command matches the target IP address.
Terminal shows RomBOOT message.
  • Verify that the SD card contains the right files.
  • Verify that the SD card is inserted properly.

MPLAB Harmony Demo

Running iperf command in the host terminal results Connection refused error.

Verify the IP address used when sending the iperf command matches the target IP address.

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