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Getting Frustrated with the TM4C123GH6

Jeremy Brueggeman
Prodigy 30 points
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: EK-TM4C123GXL, ENERGIA

Hello

Recently, I entered an electronics contest (unknowingly) and ended up finishing in second place. Good for me, but not as pertinent as the prize I won which was the TM4C123GH6 with the Wireless RF EM Connection Sensor Hub Boosterpack. Upon getting started, I downloaded and installed CCS v6, LM Flash Programmer, and made sure I had Tivaware. This is where the frustration sets in...

Watching the "Getting Started" videos was like rubbing my face on a cheese grater. It contained all of this wonderful information about what can be done and how things function, but nothing sticks in my head because the videos are too jampacked with everything. It's like fanning through the pages of a dictionary and expecting the person to know perfect English by the last page.

So, I figured if I'm going to be using CCS to write to this device, I better learn CCS and began watching tutorial videos for it. Again...Cheese Grater. After watching these videos trying to retain any information, I'm pretty sure someone needs to set fire to the presenters just to make sure they're really human. 

I did, however, think I stumbled on a piece of the basic nuts and bolts through that 2 week long torture session of monotonous non-teaching and that was to use LM Flash Programmer to install the bootloader. GREAT! This could be the start of exploring and getting to know my device and toying with it to learn instead of beating my head up against a wall trying to make sense of arbitrary device specs! LM Flash Programmer doesn't recognize a .bin file in the Tivaware folders.

There are two things that irritate me about this:

1) The "Getting Started" guides are only useful if you've used other TI products before and make NO way to provide any kind of assistance to someone other than to direct them to this very forum, and any forum format is nothing but a scattering of information that could take years to navigate and decipher. As far as learning something new, forums are about as useful of a learning tool as a ballpoint pen to the eye. I've been looking for simple, basic beginning guides to put me on the right path for this product and have found nothing in the 2 weeks I've been in possession of it. 

2) This is the exact reason more people don't explore electronics. All these brilliant ideas human beings have that could come to life are hidden behind a wall of technical jargon and failed teaching methods. There are easier methods to teach and explain things rather than numbing their minds to the point of where they'd rather just sell the product off to someone else rather than tolerate being put through 2.5 hours worth of lectures that will not let them retain any information conveyed.

Now that I've gotten that rant out of the way and probably irritated you, is there a guide as simple as "Plug this in. Install this program. Now watch what it does" or am I going to have to sit through this garbage again for the next 2 years to try and figure out how to properly use this? That is if I don't shoot myself having to listen to these emotionless automatons explaining everything down to how every last electron moves.

  • 0
    Guru 86745 points

    Hi Jeremy,

    It is very unusual for the LM Flash Programmer to not recognize a .bin file. Are you using the latest version of LM Flash Programmer? Have you installed the Stellaris ICDI drivers for your Tiva Launchpad?

    The .bin file should be at the debug folder example "C:\EK-TM4C123GXL-KEIL-753\examples\boards\ek-tm4c123gxl\hello\ccs\Debug\hello.bin". Using LM Flash Programmer program a simple example program like blinky or hello and see if it works.

    The getting started guide for Tiva Launchpad was made years ago, and not updated for current Tivaware Version. You will encounter build errors if you follow it as is. However, the build errors are fixable.

    Regarding setting up Code Composer Studio for your Tiva Launchpad, I suggest the workbook.pdf from the link below. This guide, is for Tiva Connected Launchpad, so just adjust for it to be a guide for Tiva Launchpad.

    processors.wiki.ti.com/.../Creating_IoT_Solutions_with_the_TM4C1294XL_Connected_LaunchPad_Workshop

    Regarding your frustration about this. There is a saying "empty your cup". There are different meaning to that saying. But, can also mean take a break and drink a cup of coffee.

    - kel

  • 0 in reply to Markel Robregado
    Prodigy 30 points
    I do have the Stellaris ICDI drivers installed and recognized by my computer. I appreciate your calm demeanor in response to my berating, and I understand your meaning behind "empty your cup". I have a tendency to get unruly when things operate abnormally and it's never taken me this long to get a simple program running on a microcontroller. I'm going to shelf this project for the time being and decide whether or not to dive back into it or to sell the board and booster. I'm too irrationally frustrated with this and that isn't a healthy place to be.
  • 0 in reply to Jeremy Brueggeman
    Guru 47900 points

    Jeremy Brueggeman said:
    it's never taken me this long to get a simple program running on a microcontroller

    Long ago - we were taught, "Not to squawk unless we had a "better" alternative."

    You well outline the "weaknesses" w/this vendor's methods - yet completely withhold those "alternate" methods which you judge to have, "Worked better!"   Would not your, "compare & contrast" of those "more successful methods" prove superior to, "just a complaint?"

    This forum does have a rather effective (as forums go) "Search" feature - which has proved greatly helpful to my small tech firm - perhaps to you as well...

  • 0 in reply to cb1
    Prodigy 30 points
    Alright, cupcake. You want me to outline better methods? It may not be written in crayon, but try to follow along anyway.

    When it comes to ease of use, switching between two different programs is inefficient. There are multiple reasons behind this:
    1) That's two different stand alone programs you have to familiarize yourself with
    2) While one may be easily documented to navigate, two begins to jumble together in the learning process making whatever ease that one program had null and void. God forbid neither one of them were easy to navigate...
    3) Takes up more time to figure out how to do something rather than doing something. When you're looking to expand your business' field of customers, you want it to be an easy transition from where they were before. This is standard concepts in business. Now, programming an Arduino takes one program, a Raspberry Pi needs nothing more than to be flashed onto an SD card, and an Altera Cyclone FPGA is even as simple as learning one program, so what makes the Tiva C that much more complicated than an FPGA so that it requires not only 2 stand alone programs but also the drivers all separated? In business, we call that stupid.

    Now, as far as the forums comment goes, the "Search" feature you're coyingly being a *** about brings up every. single. page. containing. the. words. typed. in. Something as simple as "Program the Tiva C" brings up every page with the word "Program", every page with the word "The", every page with the word "Tiva", and last but not least, every page with a "C" in it. That spell out the problem for ya princess? Maybe you need another Mountain Dew and Cheeto binger to power your thinker?
  • 0 in reply to Jeremy Brueggeman
    Guru 47900 points

    The care, kindness & constructiveness of your writing, "Says it all."

  • 0 in reply to Jeremy Brueggeman
    Guru 20670 points
    I don't know why you use 2 stand alone programs. I use one. If you are so fond of arduino you can use Energia and even use Energia programming with CCS so you have debug tools and easier file and workspace exploring.

    I personally like the written available workshops better. True they could not go into much detail, but there's a limit to abstraction when you are configuring hardware! But those workshops are not to just program. They are to learn about the hardware you have too! And yes, that means the specs!

    Documents hard to navigate? I actually find this very untrue! The hardest thing, and that some have complaint, including myself, is being aware of the docs.
    And you start to go straight to bootloader? Well, good luck, that's actually something we all can agree that it's a nightmare in the Tiva. And that's a hell of a jump from starting to learn the MCU.

    And what about drivers all separated? You mean the driverlibrary, TivaWare? I am using other ARM from another manufacturer and I had to download not only the IDE IAR but also the driver library.

    You could have argued and suggested improvements to those really old videos, but instead you basically came to pick a fight.
    And really, the people answering you here are just from the community, trying to help you out of good will only, and you come unloading on them when they are trying to help?- as I said the info available is hard to find, that is a reality - have thought that was a possibility and that the community could help you?
    I will say more, a lot of these community members are professors and full blown engineers, do not speak like this is was a game forum, this is not a place for those type of commentaries you give.


    Now instead of you being like this and me also getting worked up about it, do you want to try to see possible sources of information you are missing and methods of learning you could be doing wrong?
    And if you want to really help instead of bashing on everything and everyone answer this: with which MCUs and in which programming platform do you have experience
  • 0 in reply to Luis Afonso
    Guru 10570 points
    I was wondering about the necessity of multiple programs myself. Mind you I prefer not to use a vendor's IDE to keep my learning curve low and the number of editors I need to understand similarly low.

    In contrast to the OPs difficulties I found this micro to be one of the fastest I've brought up.

    Robert
  • 0 in reply to Jeremy Brueggeman
    Guru 27285 points

    Jeremy Brueggeman said:
    Now, programming an Arduino takes one program, a Raspberry Pi needs nothing more than to be flashed onto an SD card, and an Altera Cyclone FPGA is even as simple as learning one program, so what makes the Tiva C that much more complicated than an FPGA so that it requires not only 2 stand alone programs but also the drivers all separated? In business, we call that stupid.

     Beautiful... Arduino is a simple old piece and not so simple to use... (not more than a simple game)

     Raspberry yes it require just flash SD card.. but then you are so proficient on Linux programming or just you startup system? Using Rasp required me a lot of time reading manuals and see how to use GPIO and peripherals.

     And then last but not least Altera FPGA... Uhm.. I got too old to rock and roll or it is time to leave my work??

     Have you used Quartus also latest version hassle free? Have you discovered how to setup PLL when documentation for Cyclone are still for preceding version?

     Or are you just playing loading a simple prebuilt project?

     CCS is not so different from QUartus and NIOS IDE is quite similar due both are Eclipse based

     so I don't see a great dfference from Quartus than VHDL coding instead of c, I am curious so please can you point what is this big difference?

     This is quartus screenshot

    and this is CCS6 code is for MSP430 not TIVa but don't change a lot than peripheral names and API here are not used at all:

  • 0 in reply to Luis Afonso
    Guru 27285 points

    Luis Afonso said:
    And you start to go straight to bootloader? Well, good luck, that's actually something we all can agree that it's a nightmare in the Tiva. And that's a hell of a jump from starting to learn the MCU.

     Hi Luis and all, I got an Idea why this guy started to try install bootloader and also tossed all nonsense to us.

     On "Arduos" Arduino, all things are not so clean and bootloader need to reside on flash to communicate to ide, this many time get erased or corrupted so who come from hobby time and try to learn stone age devices also experienced the worst....

     This time this guy got a modern age actual processor and cannot figure no bootloader are necessary to load and debug program nor programmer and rom bootloader cannot be errased and no bricked processor can be made from wrong software.

     Arduino stone age habit can generate this behaviour to who try use professional  modern processor.

  • 0 in reply to Jeremy Brueggeman
    Guru 27285 points

    Jeremy Brueggeman said:
    Now, as far as the forums comment goes, the "Search" feature you're coyingly being a *** about brings up every. single. page. containing. the. words. typed. in. Something as simple as "Program the Tiva C" brings up every page with the word "Program", every page with the word "The", every page with the word "Tiva", and last but not least, every page with a "C" in it. That spell out the problem for ya princess? Maybe you need another Mountain Dew and Cheeto binger to power your thinker?

     Hey I see no more reply from IP core genius, I am still struggling learn new quartus interface and finally I found about PLL and some problem, can that guy help me? To convert old project required me to read at almost 2K pages... and still is work in progress.... Finally I hit and reported bug from code generator

     Hey friend can you help me on porting code from cyc 2/3 to cyc 4/5 or max10?  say'd it is so simple.....