Topics

1

MODBUS / MODBUS IP to serial (RTU) gateway

« on: April 29, 2012, 08:53:57 PM »

Hi Mark,

I've been asked to look into providing a simple MODBUS gateway to allow serial (RTU) devices (RS232 & RS485 but not necessarily both at the same time) to be connected via Ethernet (MODBUS IP).

Having had a read of the documentation, this looks to be a pretty simple application for the uTasker MODBUS implementation.

I have a pretty wide range of devices to choose from (ColdFire Kirin3/Kinetis, NXP LPC2xxx/LPC17xx, STM32, TI) though the preference for development tools/compiler would be to use IAR (for ARM or ColdFire).

Can you suggest what the relative benefits/drawbacks of the various platforms are for the uTasker/MODBUS combination? I'd imagine that most would be capable of supporting the simple case above but any indication on which dev kits would be suitable for initial prototype development would be a great help.

Initial minimum project features are for MODBUS IP (IP v4 though the option for IP v6 would be good) & either RS232 or RS485 (possibly as two hardware builds) purely as a gateway.

Next phase would be to add in some simple web server applications & possibly support more than one serial connection at once (e.g. RS232 & RS485).

Then we'd be looking to add in USB Host functionality (we have our own flavour of MODBUS over USB bulk transfers we'd like to support)

We may also be wanting to offer a plain (non-MODBUS) Ethernet to serial gateway (but so far the options for providing a virtual serial port on the PC is looking problematic for this)

We'd like to be able to support this within a family of processors (maybe scaling the memory/package sizes as the complexity rises) rather than mixing solutions across the different vendors.

Any thoughts or suggestions (from you or your other MODBUS customers) would help

Cheers,
    Jez

2

ST^TM STM32 and STR91XF / STM32 F4 Cortex M4 devices

« on: September 29, 2011, 10:57:58 AM »

Hi Mark,

ST have (finally) launched their Cortex-M4 range - I'm hoping to get a dev kit soon & see how compatible all the peripherals etc are.

Obviously the core will run Cortex-M3 code directly but I'm not sure how easy t will be to change the simulator over to use the new device.

Is there any information on this please?

Cheers,
    Jez

3

Luminary Micro ^TM LM3SXXXX / What devices & eval boards are supported

« on: September 21, 2011, 01:01:16 PM »

Hi Mark,

I've been using / comparing uTasker on a variety of processor families in the past (generally very impressed with it all) but have now been asked to consider some of the TI Stellaris parts (partly due to the integrated PHY and impending availability with Cortex-M4 cores).

I've got a few boards available - newest ones I've been presented with are the LM3S9B96 dev board & LM3S9B90 eval kits - but wasn't sure what was supported or not.

Most of your other supported families have the info pinned to the top of the forum but not this one...

Sorry if I've missed the info in another post!

Cheers,
    Jez

4

NXP^TM M522XX, KINETIS and i.MX RT / IAR ColdFire support

« on: March 28, 2011, 12:45:12 PM »

Hi Mark,

A while ago, you mentioned that you were considering looking into adding IAR support for the ColdFire projects - have you got any further with this?

I'm getting close to the point where I'll have to choose whether to tackle a new project in CodeWarrior 10.1 or IAR.

Initially I'm likely to have to do some work on the ColdFire project but we do have a longer-term interest in migrating this to Kinetis, so I could use either tool-chain (we curently use IAR for ColdFire & ARM targets) but am still not very comfortable with Eclipse.

Just after an update if possible.

Cheers,
    Jez

5

µTasker general / Kinetis support

« on: January 25, 2011, 11:17:20 AM »

Hi Mark,

I've just seen your initial info regarding the support for Kinetis - I've got a K60 tower kit ready & waiting.

Will this be a new project type?

Looking forward to hopefully trying it soon!

Cheers,
    Jez

6

NXP^TM LPC2XXX and LPC17XX / LCP177x/178x/18xx/43xx support

« on: November 10, 2010, 11:21:18 AM »

Hi Mark,

I've posted elsewhere about IAR v6 support & Cortex-M4 support...

We're also trying out the new LPC1788 (Cortex-M3 core 'upgreade' from LPC2478) and are looking at the LPC18xx & LPC43xx families for some newer developments too.

Do you currently have any plans to support any of these? If so, what are your thoughts for availability of these?

I'd be quite happy to be an early test candidate for these - I'm trying to get a date when I can get some development boards at the moment. I'll let you know when I have a due date on anything.

Cheers,
    JezC

7

µTasker general / IAR EWARM v6.10

« on: November 10, 2010, 11:16:48 AM »

Hi Mark,

I know it's just been released(!) but when do you think you will be able to offer support for IAR v6 for ARM platforms?

We've not yet set a date for moving to it, but looking at some of the features it offers (including the availability of Cortex-M4 processors from NXP & Freescale now) we'd certainly like to be able to work towards a date to aim for.

So, I guess I should also ask when you think you'll have Cortex-M4 board support? Even a rough date would help (e.g Jan 2011)

I understand that this may be a specialist request - maybe other users can comment on it if they are also after this support?

Cheers,
    JezC

8

NXP^TM LPC2XXX and LPC17XX / Software reset of LPC2478

« on: December 02, 2009, 10:08:41 PM »

Hi,

I'm looking for a way to perform as complete a reset of the LPC2478 through software as I can.

Our hardware currently doesn't include any way for the processor GPIO pins to force an actual hardware reset so I'm hoping there's a way to achieve basically the same result using just software.

On other processors (e.g. Coldfire), there's a reset register which includes the ability to perform a software reset of the whole device - but I can't see anything similar for this processor.

Can anyone offer any suggestions please?

Thanks in advance

Jez

9

MODBUS / MODBUS simulation/testing on PC

« on: September 01, 2009, 03:39:10 PM »

Hi Mark,

Following some comments made by some of your many satisfied customers/users, I was wondering how much of the MODBUS capability was supported on the simulator?

We currently support a subset of the commands for MODBUS RTU over serial line and we're interested in widening this to include MODBUS over IP.

The next question for us is how then to test the additional capability - we have software to independently verify our MODBUS RTU over serial line support but I'm wondering how much need we would have for this for MODBUS over IP?

Basically I guess I'm asking how we can go beyond using the simulation on the PC for testing?
Could we for instance use some of the code in the simulation as the basis for our own MODBUS over IP test software on the PC? Or would we really need to buy some other software to cover this? If so, do you have any recommendations we could follow?

Cheers,
    JezC

10

ST^TM STM32 and STR91XF / Porting to other evaluation boards

« on: July 17, 2008, 10:30:45 PM »

Hi,

I've ordered an IAR STR9 dev kit but also have both the ST STR9-Eval board & Hitex STR9 dev board (and the Hitex STR9 ComStick).

Can you please tell me where to start porting the demo to one/all of these?

I've also got one of the 2M Flash parts on the STR9-Eval -how can I change the demo to support the larger banks for this processor?

Thanks in advance.
Jez