Getting started with the Infineon XMC4800 IoT Connectivity Kit - FreeRTOS
OverviewSet up your development environmentEstablish a serial connectionMonitoring MQTT messages on the cloudBuild and run the FreeRTOS demo projectTroubleshooting
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Getting started with the Infineon XMC4800 IoT Connectivity Kit

Important

This reference integration is hosted on the Amazon-FreeRTOS repository which is deprecated. We recommend that you start here when you create a new project. If you already have an existing FreeRTOS project based on the now deprecated Amazon-FreeRTOS repository, see the Amazon-FreeRTOS Github Repository Migration Guide.

This tutorial provides instructions for getting started with the Infineon XMC4800 IoT Connectivity Kit. If you do not have the Infineon XMC4800 IoT Connectivity Kit, visit the Amazon Partner Device Catalog to purchase one from our partner.

If you want to open a serial connection with the board to view logging and debugging information, you need a 3.3V USB/Serial converter, in addition to the XMC4800 IoT Connectivity Kit. The CP2104 is a common USB/Serial converter that is widely available in boards such as Adafruit's CP2104 Friend.

Before you begin, you must configure Amazon IoT and your FreeRTOS download to connect your device to the Amazon Cloud. See First steps for instructions. In this tutorial, the path to the FreeRTOS download directory is referred to as freertos.

Overview

This tutorial contains instructions for the following getting started steps:

  1. Installing software on the host machine for developing and debugging embedded applications for your microcontroller board.

  2. Cross compiling a FreeRTOS demo application to a binary image.

  3. Loading the application binary image to your board, and then running the application.

  4. Interacting with the application running on your board across a serial connection, for monitoring and debugging purposes.

Set up your development environment

FreeRTOS uses Infineon's DAVE development environment to program the XMC4800. Before you begin, you need to download and install DAVE and some J-Link drivers to communicate with the on-board debugger.

Install DAVE

  1. Go to Infineon's DAVE software download page.

  2. Choose the DAVE package for your operating system and submit your registration information. After registering with Infineon, you should receive a confirmation email with a link to download a .zip file.

  3. Download the DAVE package .zip file (DAVE_version_os_date.zip), and unzip it to the location where you want to install DAVE (for example, C:\DAVE4).

    Note

    Some Windows users have reported problems using Windows Explorer to unzip the file. We recommend that you use a third-party program such as 7-Zip.

  4. To launch DAVE, run the executable file found in the unzipped DAVE_version_os_date.zip folder.

For more information, see the DAVE Quick Start Guide.

To communicate with the XMC4800 Relax EtherCAT board's on-board debugging probe, you need the drivers included in the J-Link Software and Documentation pack. You can download the J-Link Software and Documentation pack from Segger's J-Link software download page.

Establish a serial connection

Setting up a serial connection is optional, but recommended. A serial connection allows your board to send logging and debugging information in a form that you can view on your development machine.

The XMC4800 demo application uses a UART serial connection on pins P0.0 and P0.1, which are labeled on the XMC4800 Relax EtherCAT board's silkscreen. To set up a serial connection:

  1. Connect the pin labeled “RX<P0.0” to your USB/Serial converter's “TX” pin.

  2. Connect the pin labeled “TX>P0.1” to your USB/Serial converter's “RX” pin.

  3. Connect your serial converter's Ground pin to one of the pins labeled “GND” on your board. The devices must share a common ground.

Power is supplied from the USB debugging port, so do not connect your serial adapter's positive voltage pin to the board.

Note

Some serial cables use a 5V signaling level. The XMC4800 board and the Wi-Fi Click module require a 3.3V. Do not use the board's IOREF jumper to change the board's signals to 5V.

With the cable connected, you can open a serial connection on a terminal emulator such as GNU Screen. The baud rate is set to 115200 by default with 8 data bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit.

Monitoring MQTT messages on the cloud

Before you run the FreeRTOS demo, you can set up the MQTT client in the Amazon IoT console to monitor the messages that your device sends to the Amazon Cloud.

To subscribe to the MQTT topic with the Amazon IoT MQTT client

  1. Sign in to the Amazon IoT console.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Test, then choose MQTT test client to open the MQTT client.

  3. In Subscription topic, enter your-thing-name/example/topic, and then choose Subscribe to topic.

When the demo project successfully runs on your device you see "Hello World!" sent multiple times to the topic that you subscribed to.

Build and run the FreeRTOS demo project

Import the FreeRTOS demo into DAVE

  1. Start DAVE.

  2. In DAVE, choose File, Import. In the Import window, expand the Infineon folder, choose DAVE Project, and then choose Next.

  3. In the Import DAVE Projects window, choose Select Root Directory, choose Browse, and then choose the XMC4800 demo project.

    In the directory where you unzipped your FreeRTOS download, the demo project is located in projects/infineon/xmc4800_iotkit/dave4/aws_demos.

    Make sure that Copy Projects Into Workspace is unchecked.

  4. Choose Finish.

    The aws_demos project should be imported into your workspace and activated.

  5. From the Project menu, choose Build Active Project.

    Make sure that the project builds without errors.

Run the FreeRTOS demo project

  1. Use a USB cable to connect your XMC4800 IoT Connectivity Kit to your computer. The board has two microUSB connectors. Use the one labeled “X101”, where Debug appears next to it on the board's silkscreen.

  2. From the Project menu, choose Rebuild Active Project to rebuild aws_demos and ensure that your configuration changes are picked up.

  3. From Project Explorer, right-click aws_demos, choose Debug As, and then choose DAVE C/C++ Application.

  4. Double-click GDB SEGGER J-Link Debugging to create a debug confirmation. Choose Debug.

  5. When the debugger stops at the breakpoint in main(), from the Run menu, choose Resume.

In the Amazon IoT console, the MQTT client from steps 4-5 should display the MQTT messages sent by your device. If you use the serial connection, you see something like this on the UART output:

0 0 [Tmr Svc] Starting key provisioning...
1 1 [Tmr Svc] Write root certificate...
2 4 [Tmr Svc] Write device private key...
3 82 [Tmr Svc] Write device certificate...
4 86 [Tmr Svc] Key provisioning done...
5 291 [Tmr Svc] Wi-Fi module initialized. Connecting to AP...
.6 8046 [Tmr Svc] Wi-Fi Connected to AP. Creating tasks which use network...
7 8058 [Tmr Svc] IP Address acquired [IP Address]
8 8058 [Tmr Svc] Creating MQTT Echo Task...
9 8059 [MQTTEcho] MQTT echo attempting to connect to [MQTT Broker].
...10 23010 [MQTTEcho] MQTT echo connected.
11 23010 [MQTTEcho] MQTT echo test echoing task created.
.12 26011 [MQTTEcho] MQTT Echo demo subscribed to iotdemo/#
13 29012 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 0'
.14 32096 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 0 ACK'
.15 37013 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 1'
16 40080 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 1 ACK'
.17 45014 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 2'
.18 48091 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 2 ACK'
.19 53015 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 3'
.20 56087 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 3 ACK'
.21 61016 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 4'
22 64083 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 4 ACK'
.23 69017 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 5'
.24 72091 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 5 ACK'
.25 77018 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 6'
26 80085 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 6 ACK'
.27 85019 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 7'
.28 88086 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 7 ACK'
.29 93020 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 8'
.30 96088 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 8 ACK'
.31 101021 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 9'
32 104102 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 9 ACK'
.33 109022 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 10'
.34 112047 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 10 ACK'
.35 117023 [MQTTEcho] Echo successfully published 'Hello World 11'
36 120089 [Echoing] Message returned with ACK: 'Hello World 11 ACK'
.37 122068 [MQTTEcho] MQTT echo demo finished.
38 122068 [MQTTEcho] ----Demo finished----

Build the FreeRTOS demo with CMake

If you prefer not to use an IDE for FreeRTOS development, you can alternatively use CMake to build and run the demo applications or applications that you have developed using third-party code editors and debugging tools.

Note

This section covers using CMake on Windows with MingW as the native build system. For more information about using CMake with other operating systems and options, see Using CMake with FreeRTOS. (MinGW is a minimalist development environment for native Microsoft Windows applications.)

To build the FreeRTOS demo with CMake

  1. Set up the GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain.

    1. Download a Windows version of the toolchain from the Arm Embedded Toolchain download page.

      Note

      We recommend that you download a version other than "8-2018-q4-major", due to a bug reported with the “objcopy” utility in that version.

    2. Open the downloaded toolchain installer, and follow the installation wizard's instructions to install the toolchain.

      Important

      On the final page of the installation wizard, select Add path to environment variable to add the toolchain path to the system path environment variable.

  2. Install CMake and MingW.

    For instructions, see CMake Prerequisites.

  3. Create a folder to contain the generated build files (build-folder).

  4. Change directories to your FreeRTOS download directory (freertos), and use the following command to generate the build files:

    cmake -DVENDOR=infineon -DBOARD=xmc4800_iotkit -DCOMPILER=arm-gcc -S . -B build-folder -G "MinGW Makefiles" -DAFR_ENABLE_TESTS=0

  5. Change directories to the build directory (build-folder), and use the following command to build the binary:

    cmake --build . --parallel 8

    This command builds the output binary aws_demos.hex to the build directory.

  6. Flash and run the image with JLINK.

    1. From the build directory (build-folder), use the following commands to create a flash script:

      echo loadfile aws_demos.hex > flash.jlink
      echo r >> flash.jlink
      echo g >> flash.jlink
      echo q >> flash.jlink

    2. Flash the image using the JLNIK executable.

      JLINK_PATH\JLink.exe  -device XMC4800-2048 -if SWD -speed auto -CommanderScript flash.jlink

      The application logs should be visible through the serial connection that you established with the board.

Troubleshooting

If you haven't already, be sure to configure Amazon IoT and your FreeRTOS download to connect your device to the Amazon Cloud. See First steps for instructions.

For general troubleshooting information about Getting Started with FreeRTOS, see Troubleshooting getting started.