Platform Integration: Getting started with i.MX RT1050

i.MX RT1050 Evaluation Kit (MIMXRT1050-EVK).

The following article explains all necessary steps to create an Embedded Wizard UI application suitable for the i.MX RT1050 Evaluation Kit (MIMXRT1050-EVK). Please follow these instructions carefully and step by step in order to ensure that you will get everything up and running on your target. Moreover, this article assumes, that you are familiar with the basic concepts of Embedded Wizard.

Prerequisites

First of all, you need the following hardware components:

MIMXRT1050-EVK development board from NXP

USB cable to connect the board with your PC

Make sure that you have got the following software packages:

Embedded Wizard Studio (Evaluation Edition, Starter Edition or Professional Edition)

Embedded Wizard iMX_RT Platform Package

Embedded Wizard Build Environment for MIMXRT1050-EVK

TIP

If you want to use the free Evaluation Edition of Embedded Wizard Studio and the iMX_RT Platform Package, please register on our website and select the target MIMXRT1050-EVK. Then you can download the above software packages.

All customers who licensed Embedded Wizard can visit our download center to get the above software packages (Starter or Professional Edition).

Installing Tools and Software

Step 1: Install the latest version of Embedded Wizard Studio.

Step 2: Install the Embedded Wizard iMX_RT Platform Package.

Step 3: Visit the NXP website and download the Software Development Kit (SDK) 2.3.0 for MIMXRT1050-EVK. Install the SDK to the default folder C:\nxp\SDK_2.3.0_EVK-MIMXRT1050_EAR2.

Step 4: Install IAR embedded workbench V8.11 or later.

Step 5: Download and install the IAR patch for the MIMXRT1050-EVK (ewarm811-nxp-imxrt105x-patch.zip).

Step 6: Connect your development board with your PC via USB port J28.

Step 7: Unpack the provided Embedded Wizard Build Environment for MIMXRT1050-EVK to a subdirectory of your choice in your local file system.

IMPORTANT

The Build Environment for MIMXRT1050-EVK is a pre-release including the following restrictions:

Only IAR toolchain is supported

Only RGB565 color format is supported

Usage of FreeRTOS is not verified

Exploring the Build Environment

The provided Embedded Wizard build environment for MIMXRT1050-EVK contains everything you need to create, compile, link and flash an Embedded Wizard UI application for the MIMXRT1050-EVK target. After unpacking, you will find the following subdirectories and files:

\Examples - This folder contains a set of demo applications. Each example is stored in a separate folder containing the entire Embedded Wizard UI project. Every project contains the necessary profile settings for the MIMXRT1050-EVK target. The following samples are provided:

\HelloWorld - A very simple project that is useful as starting point and to verify that the entire toolchain, your installation and your board is properly working.

\ScreenOrientation - This demo shows, that the orientation of the UI application is independent from the physical orientation of the display.

\DeviceIntegration - This example shows the integration of devices into a UI application and addresses typical questions: How to start a certain action on the target? How to get data from a device?

\GraphicsOperations - This application demonstrates the graphics performance of the target by using sets of basic drawing operations that are executed permanently and continuously.

\BrickGame - The sample application BrickGame implements a classic "paddle and ball" game. In the game, a couple of brick rows are arranged in the upper part of the screen. A ball travels across the screen, bouncing off the top and side walls of the screen. When a brick is hit, the ball bounces away and the brick is destroyed. The player has a movable paddle to bounce the ball upward, keeping it in play.

\ClimateCabinet - The ClimateCabinet demo shows the implementation of a control panel for a climatic exposure test cabinet. The user can define a heating time, a nominal temperature and humidity, a dwell time and the final cooling time.

\PaperCutter - This demo shows the implementation of a paper cutting machine, where the user can define the pagination and format of the paper as well as the cutting speed and the amount of papers. The application contains many rect effects and fade-in/fade-out effects to change dynamically the layout of the screen.

\WashingMachine - This demo shows the implementation of a washing machine with a couple of fancy scrollable list widgets to choose the washing program and parameters. The speciality of this sample application is the magnification effect of the centered list items and the soft fade-in/fade-out effects.

\WaveformGenerator - This WaveformGenerator demo application combines waveforms with different amplitudes and frequencies. The implementation shows the usage of the class Charts::Graph to paint a list of coordinates.

\Misc - This folder contains some helper modules for printing debug messages and the memory manager used for the Embedded Wizard UI applications.

\PlatformPackage - This folder contains the necessary source codes and/or libraries of the iMX_RT Platform Package: Several Graphics Engines for the different color formats (RGBA8888, RGB565, Index8 and LumA44) and the Runtime Environment (in the subdirectory \RTE).

\TargetSpecific - This folder contains all configuration files and platform specific source codes. The different ew_bsp_xxx files implement the bridge between the Embedded Wizard UI application and the underlying board support package (NXP hardware drivers) in order to access the display, the serial interface and the clock.

\Template - This folder contains a ready-to-use project to compile and link an Embedded Wizard generated UI application. It is used for all provided examples and it can be used to build your own UI applications.

\GeneratedCode - This folder is used to receive the generated code from an Embedded Wizard UI project. The template project is building the UI application out of this folder. You can create your own UI project and generate the code into the subdirectory \GeneratedCode without the need to adapt the project.

\Project\EWARM - This folder contains the prepared project for IAR.

\Source - This folder contains the main.c file, a configuration file for FreeRTOS and the device driver C/H files used for the DeviceIntegration example.

Creating the UI Examples

For the first bring up of your system, we recommend to use the example 'HelloWorld':

Example 'HelloWorld' within Embedded Wizard Studio.

The following steps are necessary to generate the source code of this sample application:

Navigate to the directory \Example\HelloWorld.

Open the project file HelloWorld.ewp with your previously installed Embedded Wizard Studio. The entire project is well documented inline. You can run the UI application within the Prototyper by pressing Ctrl+F5.

To start the code generator, select the menu items BuildBuild this profile - or simply press F8. Embedded Wizard Studio generates now the sources files of the example project into the directory \Template\GeneratedCode.

Compiling, Linking and Flashing

The following steps are necessary to build and flash the Embedded Wizard UI sample application using the IAR embedded workbench:

Navigate to the directory \Template\Project\EWARM and open the IAR workspace EmbeddedWizard.eww.

The generated code of Embedded Wizard is imported and updated automatically using IAR's project connection feature.

Rebuild the entire project.

The resulting binary can be found in the directory \Template\Project\EWARM\iMXRT1050-EVK.

Connect the MIMXRT1050-EVK board to your PC via the USB port J28.

A new mass storage device (EVK-MIMXRT) will be recognised on your host.

Set the mini dip switch SW7 to Off, On, Off, Off and press the reset button (SW3).

Copy the bin files to the root folder of that new mass storage. The binary gets now flashed. Be a little bit patient - the upload will take approximately 60 seconds.

Set the mini dip switch SW7 to Off, On, On, Off and press the reset button again (SW3).

Remark: The drag'n drop flashing method does not erase the whole hyper flash range.

If everything works as expected, the application is now executed on your MIMXRT1050-EVK target.

Example 'HelloWorld' running on MIMXRT1050-EVK development board.

All other examples can be created in the same way: Just open the desired example with Embedded Wizard Studio, generate code and rebuild the whole application by repeating the above steps.

Creating your own UI Applications

In order to create your own UI project suitable for the MIMXRT1050-EVK target, you can create a new project and select the MIMXRT1050-EVK project template:

As a result you get a new Embedded Wizard project, that contains the necessary Profile attributes suitable for the MIMXRT1050-EVK development board:

The following profile settings are important for your target:

The attribute PlatformPackage should refer to an installed iMX_RT Platform Package.

The attribute ScreenSize should correspond to the display size of the MIMXRT1050-EVK development board.

The attributes FormatOfBitmapResources and FormatOfStringConstants can be set to DirectAccess in case that the resources should be taken directly from flash memory. By default these attributes are set to Compressed.

The attribute OutputDirectory should refer to the \Template\GeneratedCode directory within your Build Environment. By using this template, it will be very easy to build the UI project for your target.

The attribute CleanOutputDirectories should be set to true to ensure that unused source code within the output directory \Template\GeneratedCode will be deleted.

Now you can use the template project in the same manner as it was used for the provided examples to compile, link and flash the binary.

Console output

In order to receive error messages or to display simple debug or trace messages from your Embedded Wizard UI application, a serial terminal like 'Putty' or 'TeraTerm' should be used.

As soon as you connect your MIMXRT1050-EVK target with the PC via USB, a new virtual Com Port appears within your system device list. Open the device manager to get the port number of this COM port.

Now you can open your terminal application and connect it via COMx with the following settings: 115200-8-N-1

This terminal connection can be used for all trace statements from your Embedded Wizard UI applications or for all debug messages from your C code.