abecedarian 330 Posted May 31, 2015 Share Posted May 31, 2015 good Layout, two point I seen from, button are too close to Ethernet connector and maybe can harm finger during press, why not exchange LED and button position and give more clearance to reset too? Board border can be more usable for all 4 button too. On middle left I see an XTAL, the four fine pitch connector are dedicated to two board or just one daughter? If one again this component is on the daughter area. I agree that the buttons should be farther away from the Ethernet jack, in particular User2 and RESET since those are the ones closest to the tabs extending from the jack. I wasn't involved in the design of the board but will try forward any comments I hear to those responsible for the design. Since this processor provides much more functionality than the previous processors used on the earlier LAUNCHXL2 boards, there was a need to provide those functions. These were brought out to the four "fine pitch" connectors shown on the schematics and labeled as "mezzanine" connectors. The new LPs and previous LAUNCHXL2 LPs should otherwise be pin compatible when using either the BoosterPack headers or the two 50 pin headers along the sides of the boards. I will say they "should" be compatible but haven't cross-referenced the LaunchPads' pins to verify that. The meaning to be taken from this is that hardware developed to use the previous LAUNCHXL2 board should be "plug and play" with only a bit of modification to the program itself to accommodate the new processor. Going on a little further, and considering those mezzanine connectors only bring out functionality not available from the BP and 50 pin headers, to try and ascribe them to some 'daughter' function would depend on the daughter function since each pin within can be assigned different functions. All of those pins, well at least those that are not 3v3 or GND connected, can be GPIO, for instance. Some of those pins provide EMIF functionality as well as N2HET also, so what those pins do isn't any particular fixed function. It would be the user / developer who decides what they do. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
abecedarian 330 Posted May 31, 2015 Share Posted May 31, 2015 For those just joining in, someone at TI has let slip information about the new Hercules LaunchPad. Given that I haven't signed an NDA or similar, and that astute observers could find the leaked information, I've decided to do a quick summary about it. Processor: TMS570LC4357 or RM57L843 * both of the above processors are pin compatible. The former uses big-endian format and the latter is little-endian, or so I've been told. Board dimensions: 130mm x 67mm, not including protrusions from the USB and Ethernet connectors. Board features: Up to 300MHz clock rate for LC4357 and 330MHz for 57L843, compared to 180MHz for the LS12x and 200Mhz for the RM46x LaunchPads. XDS110 ICDI using TM4C129 processor with status LEDs, and as I've been told EnergyTrace support, but I haven't verified that yet. Support for external 5v DC power with user-installed barrel jack. Support for external debug probe with user-installed header. Two 40 pin BoosterPack headers placed in accordance with BoosterPack(80) standards, one populated with stackable headers. Two 1x50 pin protoboard headers, unpopulated, one each on the long sides of the board. Four 60 pin mezzanine connectors to bring additional functions not exposed on the BP or protoboard headers. Ethernet jack / magnetics with PHYTER. 5 user buttons: PORRST, RESET, USER1, USER2 and OSC_KILL. Previous boards had a 2 pin jumper for OSC_KILL. Two USER LEDs; ERR LED, 5V LED Other observations:Various jumpers that were 2 pin types on the previous LaunchPad have been replaced with solder bridges and SMT pads. This means that if you want to disconnect the 3v3 and 5v0 signals between the BP headers and the on-board regulators or provide external 5v0 through the barrel jack, you have to remove the solder from the bridges before you do so. If you want to selectively enable / disable these things, you have to install SMT jumper / headers as well. This board has mounting holes like the previous board, and these holes maintain the same relationship to the BP headers. So, if you're working on something with the previous LP and only use the BP headers and mounting holes, you'll be fine. But if you are using the two 50 pin positions along the sides of the board, their relation to the mounting holes has changed a bit: they have essentially moved two holes down / farther away from the USB connector. The pre-release boards have no 'out-of-box' firmware, so to speak, as that is still being worked on: they shipped with LwIP demos, but I've yet to experiment with it. The pre-production processors also have some noteworthy errata which will likely be true when these go to full production / general availability. Many of these errata do have work-around solutions, and many are also incorporated in HalCoGen as well. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
RROMANO001 6 Posted May 31, 2015 Share Posted May 31, 2015 Going on a little further, and considering those mezzanine connectors only bring out functionality not available from the BP and 50 pin headers, to try and ascribe them to some 'daughter' function would depend on the daughter function since each pin within can be assigned different functions. All of those pins, well at least those that are not 3v3 or GND connected, can be GPIO, for instance. Some of those pins provide EMIF functionality as well as N2HET also, so what those pins do isn't any particular fixed function. It would be the user / developer who decides what they do. This board IMHO can serve just to do some intermediate development using a simple 2 or 4 layer PCB to evaluate all function of this, so again: fine pitch EMIF connector require again a fine pitch pcb and this can cost same as full board if TI don't provide good expansion. I see also on these fine pitch some HRPWM signals are present, so I suppose this processor got C2000 series motor control from them. This can require isolation too, this case a TM4C129 was chosen for emulation, why not use isolated Ethernet network for debug interface in parallel to USB? Good was to have HRPWM also on external .1" header to use as low cost evaluation. So how much it cost processor and LP? https://store.ti.com/570lc-protrace.aspxthis is good but not for a low cost on this page: http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/microcontrollers_16-bit_32-bit/c2000_performance/safety/tms570/products.page#p980=10/100 part TMS570LS1227-PGE how can I find price? click on device report as too much usual 404 page not found: http://www.ti.com/product/tms570ls1227-pge/samplebuy Quote Link to post Share on other sites
abecedarian 330 Posted May 31, 2015 Share Posted May 31, 2015 @@RROMANO001 Go to the page for the processor itself then click on the SAMPLE / BUY tab, for example http://www.ti.com/product/TMS570LS1227/samplebuy. TMS570LS1227 is about $15-16 USD each in 1000 quantity, depending on package. TMS570LC4357 is about $39 USD in 1000 quantity. http://www.ti.com/product/TMS570LC4357/samplebuy RROMANO001 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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