Other Parts Discussed in Thread: MSP430-FLASHER, MSP-FET, , DRV8955
Tool/software: Code Composer Studio, MSP430-FLASHER
Hello,
I apologize if this has already been addressed in a different question / thread, I have been unable to find it. There seems to be many approaches to this and many differing answers.
My main goal is to use an MSP430 on a board that I am designing but I am having trouble figuring out how best to program the MSP430. I have seen multiple solutions and am unsure which would require the least amount of iteration due to my lack of knowledge. To be entirely clear, my entire purpose of exploring this topic is to try to use a single USB connection to a host PC to program my custom PCB.
From my understanding, there are three ways to program an MSP430:
- Traditional JTAG connection using an MSP-FET programmer
- SBW (Spy-Bi-Wire) connection using an MSP-FET - I'm not even sure if I can use this because of the chipset I have selected
- BSL connection using a USB to UART chip such as an FTDI FT232RL
I was opting to try to implement the BSL connection by using the TX/RX and RTS/DTR pins on my FT232RL but at this point I feel like it's going to be quite complicated to implement the bootloader initialization signals.
I'm relatively novice in baremetal programming so I'm not sure how long it will take to write the code necessary to access the BSL and flash the rest of program memory.
The project I'm working on requires really fast turn around and I do not think I have the time to iterate on a programming interface. Therefore, my feeling is that a traditional JTAG connection using an MSP-FET may be the easiest solution, especially for the MSP430F2617, given that I have not seen an SBW configuration for any of the JTAG pins.
The documentation (slau319af) states that I can probably use an MCU with dedicated JTAG pins to access the BSL but I am not entirely sure I understand how to do this implementation. The documentation points to which pins I should use for the F2xx family of MSP430 (P1.1 for TX and P2.2 for RX) but I'm not sure how to utilize the RTS/DTR pins. From what I have read it seems that I can use the TCK pin in lieu of the TEST pin and still use the RST/NMI pin. I believe this is where RTS/DTR would be connected.
There does not seem to be a ton of resources about how to utilize the BSL in lieu of the standard JTAG/SBW interface with the MSP-FET.
Ideally, I would like to be able to use CCS to interface with this for prototyping purposes. At the end of the day, my main goal with the MSP430 is to generate a PWM signal with variable delay and duty cycle to then drive a DRV8955. I could probably use a different MCU with a simpler programming interface but I would like to stay within the TI ecosystem.
Thanks for your time. Any insight into this would be appreciated as I am learning a lot of this for the first time. :)