Unboxing And Updating A Texas Instruments MSP430FR5969 Ultra Low Power FRAM MCU

[Tonights post is by Ed Smith, a member of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group]

I just received a Texas Instruments (TI) MSP430FR5969 LaunchPad! This is my unboxing post, Ill also cover updating the onboard programmers firmware for use with Energia.

Well kick things off with a few specs, or at least a quick product description. This is an unboxing not a review, after all.

The MSP430FR5969 MCU is aimed at extreme low power consumption, to the point where when it is operating at full power it consumes ~100µA/MHz. Thats quite low; at 16MHz its consuming a measly 1.6mA. In the various sleep modes the power draw is measured in handfuls of micro-amps, and in deep-sleep it even gets down to nano-amps.

The FR5969 LaunchPad takes that MCU and gives it a home, as well as a built in programming interface, breakout headers (with very nice labels, as well see later), buttons, LEDs, lots of jumpers, and a 0.1F supercap. Thats not µF, thats not mF, thats a tenth of a Farad, something that would have cost a tremendous amount of money a decade ago.

For bonus points, Energia already supports this platform.

The box is a simple affair, nothing especially flashy other than the rocket logos. Even those arent flashy per se, not compared to modern marketing anyway. Its a sturdy box, I approve.

Inside the box we find, not surprisingly, an anti-static bag with a LaunchPad in it! There actually is a surprise in here, Ill focus on it later.

This is the bottom of the board, in case you hadnt guessed.

Here we have the top side, there are hints of greatness here too.

The last thing in the box is a beefy mini-USB cable, to connect the LaunchPad to your computer for programming and/or power. Its very nice of TI to include this, and I appreciate it.

Out of the bag we get more detail, we can see the two user buttons plus reset button, a wide array of jumpers for controlling how much of the MCU core is connected to the debug/USB/power side of the board, as well as the supercap and two user addressable LEDs. Note the amount of text near the headers!

On the bottom there are two things I really, really like. One is the amount of pin information printed near the headers, Ill zoom in on it in a bit. The other is the plastic standoffs. This is something lacking in the vast majority of dev boards out there.

The board sits nicely on the standoffs and bottom headers, no worries about short circuits to metal tables no MCU tipping over when you try to plug something in. Its a small thing, but I appreciate it.

The silkscreen on both sides of the board is very informative, it gives you plenty of options for charging or not charging the supercap, using or not using the supercap, current monitoring, voltage monitoring, USB power or external power, etc. It also has significantly more pin information next to the headers than one usually sees. Not only the port numbers, which is standard, but also designations as to which pins do what. Serial TX and RX are marked on most boards, MOSI/MISO/SCK(SCLK) for SPI and SCL+/SDA+ for i2c are not usually marked, and they are here. This cuts down on the amount of time needed looking at datasheets and pinout diagrams substantially. I dearly hope that other companies will follow TIs lead here; they seem to be thinking about the end user.

All is not roses with the FR5969 LaunchPad however. Maybe it is roses, and were getting to the thorns now. In any event, there are two revisions of this MCU. The first revision to come out, and the new Energy Trace revision. Energy Trace adds a solid set of features to check where the energy is going, but it also requires a newer firmware version for the on board programmer. Unfortunately for some reason or another it doesnt seem to have made it on to the first round of Energy Trace boards! On the plus side, updating the firmware is fairly easy.

Updating the MSP430FR5969 EZ-FET Firmware via Energia

This guide assumes youre going to be using Energia to do your programming, or at least your firmware updating. Code Composer Studio also ships with an updater I believe, and you can download a standalone command line updater as well.

The first step is to open Energia and find the Update programmer menu. Its under the Tools menu and is not hard to find.

You will need to run this a few times, as there is a bug in the update script somewhere that times out after updating one device, and there are three devices on this board that need updating.

For the moment, run it until you start getting errors. I was able to update two out of three devices without any further effort.

Once you start getting errors you will need to close Energia and download the TI MSP430 Flasher utility, the command line program I mentioned above, you can find it here:
 MSP430 Flasher Link


Once you have downloaded and installed it, you need to open two folders. One is the MSP430Flasher install directory (click the pictures to the right for a larger size), the other is the mspdebug directory inside the Energia install directory. The pictures to the right show the paths on my computer.


Once you find the two directories you want to copy HIL.dll and MSP430.dll from MSP430Flasher into Energias mspdebug directory. Backing up Energias copies of those two files isnt a bad idea, I created a directory called "OEM" and moved the originals into it, then copied the new HIL and MSP430 dlls.


Once you have copied those two files, re-open Energia (if you didnt close it before, close it and re-open it) and run Update Programmer again. Instead of throwing errors it should happily update the remaining piece of firmware. If you feel like being sure, run it again and make sure its happy that time too.

Presto! Your MSP430FR5969 LaunchPad is now ready to use, enjoy!

- Ed Smith

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Adafruits 3D Printed Wearable Video Goggles

Im not a gamer, but I still think it would be fun to make and test drive Adafruits recent microcontroller (it uses an Arduino Micro) project titled "3D Printed Wearable Video Goggles."

There are three reasons I think this would be a good project to work on.

1. The 3D printed goggle housing sounds like a challenge and a great learning exercise because theyre printed with both PLA (polylactic acid) and Ninjaflex (a thermoplastic elastomer) and the two materials are fused together.
2. There are a couple people in the Humboldt area I know of but havent met who do 3D printing. Working on a project like this might be a good opportunity to meet them.
3. It seems like having a wearable personal monitor might be a fun change from the normal way to view a computer screen, and for certain applications, such as video, it might be more engaging and absorbing than a standard computer monitor or screen.

Ninjaflex is a relatively new 3D printing feedstock. A May 2014 post on 3D Printing Industry profiled the Fenner Drives material, which seems like a typical maker story.

"Until recently, prototyping flexible components was a time-consuming and cumbersome process,” said Fenner Drive product development engineer Stephen Heston “It was a big gap in the market, because so many engineered products utilize elastomeric parts.  Without materials that closely approximate the properties of the end product, it is impossible to create truly functional prototypes.” After discovering that 3D printing enthusiasts were trying to use existing Fenner Drives belting material as filament, Heston found that while it was not an ideal material in its current form, with a few months of tweaking it soon could become one. The final product has a textured surface that allows it to be used in most 3D printers with a spring loaded extruder...Most impressively however is the replica of a small childs

3D printed Ninjaflex flexible model of childs heart (Channel 11)

defective heart that surgeons in Kentucky recently 3D printed using his CT scans. By printing a model one and a half times the actual size from a highly flexible material, the doctors were able to pre-visualize the best way to repair the defect without having to perform the risky surgery blind. The fact that the model only cost about $600 and most likely saved a small child’s life is actually pretty incredible. It also would not have been useful to the doctors if it had been printed from a less flexible material. You can watch the local news story here."

This YouTube video about Ninjaflex gives a pretty good idea of what the material is like. Of course, like all new materials, Ninjaflex is not without its particular challenges. On the LulzBot webpage for Ninjaflex, they say:

"The flexibility of this material makes it nearly impossible to print using a standard extruder, so weve designed the Flexystruder, a Gregs Wade-style extruder that fully constrains flexible filaments like Ninjaflex, which is available for purchase here!"

Both PLA and ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) can be tricky to 3D print with, so I imagine theres a definite learning curve for the Ninjaflex, especially if you are using a standard 3D printer extruder and LulzBot is correct about the difficulty of printing it with a standard extruder. Before trying to print the Adafruit goggles, it would pay to make a few test prints with the Ninjaflex by

Screenshot showing 3D printed parts of goggle (Adafruit)

itself, then a few test prints laying Ninjaflex down on top of a PLA base.

Adafruit did a Layer By Layer post about the goggles, in which they give lots of graphics showing different sections of the 3D build and throw in a few project tips, like:

"Adjust the overall size of the goggle frame by editing the curves that make it up. Measure your forehead, cheeks and nose to adjust the cylinders that make the cuts into the hood...Adjust the goggle hood shape by editing each cylinder. The bigger one controls the forehead shape. Measure the depth and width of your head to get a general size for the hood."

The only 3D printers I know in Humboldt are Justin Tuttle and Shawn Dean of InPrinting. Ive been told there are 3D printers at Humboldt State University and at College of the Redwoods, but I havent met them yet. One or both of them may have already printed with Ninjaflex -- Ill have to contact them to find out if they have, and if not, maybe theyll be interested in getting some and trying it out.

The third reason I think the Adafruit goggles would be a fun project is because Ive never worn a head-mounted personal monitor. Im not so much interested in the gaming aspect, although I would like to check out some older computer games on various ancient emulators such as an Apple II or Apple IIgs. But the main reason Id like to try the goggles is to see how engaging the head-mounted and enclosed display would be when watching videos or movies. It seems like it would be either really enjoyable or very restricting. Who knows -- maybe Ill get the chance to find out!

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