This book assumes no previous knowledge of either microcontrollers or C. We will use a particular microcontroller, the Freescale MC9S12DG256, on a popular, low-cost development board, the DRAGON12-Plus™ from Wytec, Inc. This microcontroller is one of the more powerful in the popular HCS12 family with lots of I/O capabilities. The DRAGON12-Plus offers many built-in I/O devices including LEDs, switches, four 7-segment displays, a hex keypad, and an LCD display. There is also an on-board speaker, a D/A converter chip, a built-in H-bridge for driving motors and many other features including convenient headers for connecting servos and an accelerometer board available from Wytec, and female headers for connecting to your circuits on the built-in protoboard. You will quickly be able to do lots of fun stuff with this board.
This extensive list of features makes the programming of these microcontrollers, particularly using assembly language, a daunting task. A quick look at the many textbooks (or the many datasheets) that describe these microcontrollers will confirm this. If you just want to learn how to do things without getting bogged down in the minutia of the microcontrollers I/O and internal operation, then this book is for you.
In this book you will learn to write programs in C and compile them using CodeWarrior™, an industry-strength integrated development environment for microcontrollers. CodeWarrior itself can be daunting, but we will make it easy for you to learn what you need to quickly get your microcontroller to work. We do this by providing you with an LBE_DRAGON12_Plus Stationery project from which you can easily build your own particular application. This project will contain an assembly language file that we have written to do all the low-level interaction with the I/O registers.
Preface
Table of Contents
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Learning by Example Using C - Programming the miniDRAGON-Plus2 Using CodeWarrior Richard E. Haskell and Darrin M. Hanna (149 pages)
This book assumes no previous knowledge of either microcontrollers or C. We will use a particular microcontroller, the Freescale MC9S12DG256, on a popular, low-cost development board, the miniDRAGON-Plus2™ from Wytec, Inc. This microcontroller is one of the more powerful in the popular HCS12 family with lots of I/O capabilities. The miniDRAGON-Plus2 is low cost, has a small footprint that makes it suitable for embedded projects, offers convenient female headers for connecting to your circuits on the built-in protoboard, and has built-in connectors for an LCD display and keypad. There is also an on-board speaker, a built-in H-bridge for driving motors, convenient headers for connecting servos and an accelerometer board available from Wytec. You will quickly be able to do lots of fun stuff with this board.
This extensive list of features makes the programming of these microcontrollers, particularly using assembly language, a daunting task. Other books and datasheets spend a great deal of time explaining how to program the many I/O registers to perform the wide variety of different I/O tasks. However, it is usually something fairly simple that you are trying to do; e.g. turn on a light, read a switch, turn on a motor at some speed, read the value of an A/D converter, or measure some time interval. If you just want to learn how to do these simple things without getting bogged down in the minutia of the microcontrollers I/O and internal operation, then this book is for you.
In this book you will learn to write programs in C and compile them using CodeWarrior™, an industry-strength integrated development environment for microcontrollers. CodeWarrior itself can be daunting, but we will make it easy for you to learn what you need to quickly get your microcontroller to work. We do this by providing you with an LBE_miniDRAGON_Plus2 Stationery project from which you can easily build your own particular application. This project will contain an assembly language file that we have written to do all the low-level interaction with the I/O registers.
This book assumes no previous knowledge of digital design. You start at the beginning learning about basic gates, logic equations, Boolean algebra, and Karnaugh maps. In over 60 examples we show you how to design digital circuits using Verilog, simulate them using the Aldec Active-HDL™ simulator, and synthesize the designs to a Xilinx Spartan3E™ FPGA on the BASYS™ system board that can be purchased from Digilent, Inc. for $59. A free student edition of the Aldec Active-HDL simulator is available from Aldec, Inc. To synthesize your designs to a Spartan3E FPGA you will need to download the free ISE WebPACK from Xilinx, Inc. The Xilinx synthesis tools are called from within the Aldec Active-HDL integrated GUI. We will use the ExPort utility to download your synthesized design to the Spartan3E FPGA on the BASYS board. ExPort is part of the Adept software suite that you can download free from Digilent, Inc.
All of the examples contained in this book will work on the Digilent Nexys-2 Board. These examples are in Verilog and can be implemented on any prototyping board containing the appropriate peripherals.
Example from Text
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Special Introductory offer $39.95
This book assumes no previous knowledge of digital design. You start at the beginning learning about basic gates, logic equations, Boolean algebra, and Karnaugh maps. In over 60 examples we show you how to design digital circuits using VHDL, simulate them using the Aldec Active-HDL™ simulator, and synthesize the designs to a Xilinx Spartan3E™ FPGA on the BASYS™ system board that can be purchased from Digilent, Inc. for $59. A free student edition of the Aldec Active-HDL simulator is available from Aldec, Inc. To synthesize your designs to a Spartan3E FPGA you will need to download the free ISE WebPACK from Xilinx, Inc. The Xilinx synthesis tools are called from within the Aldec Active-HDL integrated GUI. We will use the ExPort utility to download your synthesized design to the Spartan3E FPGA on the BASYS board. ExPort is part of the Adept software suite that you can download free from Digilent, Inc.
All of the examples contained in this book will work on the Digilent Nexys-2 Board. These examples are in VHDL and can be implemented on any prototyping board containing the appropriate peripherals.
This book assumes knowledge of digital design using VHDL that you can acquire from the book Learning By Example Using VHDL – Basic Digital Design With a BASYS FPGA board described above. We show you how to design advanced digital circuits using VHDL and implement them on a Xilinx Spartan3E FPGA on the NEXYS2™ board that can be purchased from Digilent, Inc. for $99. More than 50 examples are included in the book that display graphics and photos on a VGA screen using sprites stored in block RAM within the FPGA and video data stored in external RAM on the NEXYS2 board. Other examples design a UART to send and receive data through the serial port, design a keyboard and mouse driver using the PS/2 port, store video data in the external RAM and flash memory, and implement the Bresenham algorithm for plotting a line and plotting a circle. Finally, we design a microprocessor core (Forth engine) that executes Forth instructions in a single clock cycle.
A free student edition of the Aldec Active-HDL simulator is available from Aldec, Inc. To synthesize your designs to a Spartan3E FPGA you will need to download the free ISE WebPACK from Xilinx, Inc. The Xilinx synthesis tools are called from within the Aldec Active-HDL integrated GUI. We will use the ExPort utility to download your synthesized design to the Spartan3E FPGA on the BASYS board. ExPort is part of the Adept software suite that you can download free from Digilent, Inc.
These examples are in VHDL and can be implemented on any prototyping board containing the appropriate peripherals. Over 40 examples in this book will work on the BASYS board.
By ordering any of our books, you will receive reminders and discounts on book packets containing updated tutorials for new releases of software, prototyping boards, and other tools.
