Looking for means to transfer data from PC to ucontroller

Dan S17 said:

Any other possible solutions or suggestions?

With CCS 6.1 was able to use GUI Composer to change a variable on a program running on a LAUNCHXL-RM42 when JTAG was used to change the variable on the target - although had to pause the running program to allow GUI Composer to change the variables as couldn't get the LAUNCHXL-RM42 to work with "Continuous Refresh".

. Is GUI Composer only in CCS 6.1? I am running 6.0.1.

How do you pause the running program on the ucon?

[I found some CCS training which said on Hercules devices that CCS is supposed to be able to access memory over JTAG while the target CPU continues to run - so raised a query on the CCS forum about having to pause the target to access memory. See https://e2e.ti.com/support/development_tools/code_composer_studio/f/81/t/413892 ]

Do you think that I could change the contents of a array of structs on the target using this method?

Hi Chester

Is there a way in which I could use GUI Composer to assign values to an array of 200 ints on the target? The values of the array elements would be stored in a file on the host PC.

Dan

Dan S17 said:

Is there a way in which I could use GUI Composer to assign values to an array of 200 ints on the target? The values of the array elements would be stored in a file on the host PC.

Given that you only want to assign values from the contents of a file, using GEL_MemoryLoad() or the Load Memory Wizard. from CCS to load a block of memory from a file might be simpler. CCS supports loading memory from binary or text file formats. See the "Saving and Loading Memory Data Files" topic in CCS help for details.

Hi Chester

Thanks for the tip. When using the Load Memory Wizard am I given a pointer to or an address for the location of the memory which would contain my array? To use this feature am I ultimately reflashing data to EEPROM rather than placing it in ucontroller RAM? I am asking this question because I am trying to find a way to read data into an array stored in the ucontroller RAM so that I don't wear out the EEPROM by repeatedly erasing and writing to flash memory.

Daniel

When using the Load Memory Wizard am I given a pointer to or an address for the location of the memory which would contain my array?

If you untick the "Use the file header information to set the start address and size of the memory block to be loaded", on the second page of the Load Memory dialogue you can enter the start address, either as an address in hexadecimal or as the name of variable. An array named "global_array" in RAM in this example:

So, yes you can specify the address (or name) of the memory which contains the array.

To use this feature am I ultimately reflashing data to EEPROM rather than placing it in ucontroller RAM

[E.g. I tried getting the Load Memory dialogue to write to Hercules flash which simply didn't change the flash - since the Load Memory dialogue doesn't know how to perform writes to non-volatile memory.]

Dan S17 said:

Do I have to pause the code on the microcontroller, using the pause button in CCS, and then use the Load Memory gui?

Is there a Load Memory routine and a pause routine that I could call instead of using the Load Memory and CCS GUI?

menuitem "Data Data"

hotmenu Pause_Load_And_Run()
{
	int is_halted;
	unsigned int original_delay;
	unsigned int changed_delay;
	
	is_halted = GEL_IsHalted ();
	
	if (!is_halted)
	{
		GEL_Halt ();
	}
	
	original_delay = delay;
	GEL_MemoryLoad (&delay, 0, 1, "/home/Mr_Halfword/workspace_v6_1/RM42_GUI_composer/delay_data.dat");
	changed_delay = delay;
	
	GEL_TextOut ("delay changed from %d to %d\n",,,,, original_delay, changed_delay);
	
	if (!is_halted)
	{
		GEL_Run ();
	}
}

This adds a command to CCS under Scripts -> Data Data -> Pause_Load_And_Run which:

a) Pauses the target if already running.

b) Uses GEL_MemoryLoad to set the contents of the delay variable on the target from a file.

c) Displays the value of the delay variable before and after the memory load so you can check the memory load worked.

d) Sets the target running if was running.

I copied the <ccs_install_directory/ccsv6/ccs_base/emulation/gel/rm42l432.gel GEL file into the project directory, added the above code and then changed the Target Configuration to use the modified rm42l432.gel GEL file for the CortexR4: