Monday, April 12, 2010

mbed (Cortex-M3) and MPE Forth

Mbed is a neat little NXP LPC1768 based Cortex M3 development environment. It has a web based IDE, but I'm not interested in that. You can flash it by dragging a *.bin file to its embedded flash drive. Once you drag, you reset (via pushbutton) and a second or two later the device is reprogrammed.

This made a nice target for MPE's Forth 7 Cortex-M3 cross compiler. (I purchased the inexpensive "Stamp" version for ~ $115).

There was no included Mbed support, so I attempted a port. The port was easy -- I got the LEDs to blink. Now to figure out what to do with the thing...

While the LPC1768 has some interesting low power modes, the extra programming/flash-drive circuitry of the mbed doesn't allow full exploitation. However, until the Gecko Starter Kit becomes available, the mbed will do (for development purposes).

2 comments:

  1. Hello Todd

    Are you using an MBED SBC ? I just got one and I want to use the Forth language or LUA .....
    Any suggestions ....
    Any successes I have will be FLOSSED.

    Gus in Denver

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous8:51 PM

    Oh yeah my email is todd-orama@nope9.com

    Gus in Denver

    ReplyDelete