Creating New Projects from MAX32660-EVSYS Development Board

The MAX32660-EVSYS evaluation board has its debugging and core parts completely separated. The board is powered by a Micro USB port. A jumper on the board is used to select whether to supply 3.3V or 1.8V to the MAX32660 chip. The MAX32600 supports a 1.8V power supply voltage, which results in lower power consumption and is more suitable for battery - powered applications. The debugger part also has a three-color LED. You can judge the working status of the board based on its color. For example, blue indicates serial port communication, green indicates that the debugger is downloading a program, and red indicates that the debugger has entered the firmware upgrade mode.

The MAX32660 is a processor based on the ARM Cortex-M4F. Therefore, commonly available development tools are supported for software development. For example, MDK-ARM can be used, and the corresponding pack can be downloaded. Here, we would like to introduce the integrated development environment provided by the supplier. In fact, it is a shell-based tool on Eclipse.

Creating New Projects

Eclipse® is an integrated development environment (IDE) that supports the C and C++ languages through the C/C++ Development Tooling (CDT) plugin.

By default, Eclipse creates a workspace to store your project files in (C:/User/<user_name>/workspace) during installation.

To create a new C project called Hello_World_New from scratch

Complete the following steps:

  1. Select File > New > C Project from the menu bar. The C Project dialog box appears.
  2. Specify a name for the project in the Project name field (e.g., specify
    Hello_World_New).
  3. Expand the Executable folder in the Project type field and select Empty Project. By
    default, only the project types that are buildable on the system on which Eclipse is
    running are listed.
  4. Select Cross ARM GCC from the list in the Toolchains field
  5. Click Next. The Select Configurations dialog box appears, as shown in the following figure
  6. Uncheck the Release check box in the Configurations field.
  7. Click Advanced settings. The Properties for Hello_World_New dialog box appears.
  8. Select the C/C++ Build option, as shown in the following figure
  9. Uncheck the Use default build command check box.
  10. Replace the value in the Build command field with make Eclipse=1.
  11. Uncheck the Generate Makefiles automatically check box.
  12. Replace the value in the Build directory field with ${workspace_loc:/Hello_World_New}.
  13. Expand the C/C++ General option, and select Preprocessor Include Paths, Macros
    etc. The Preprocessor Include Paths, Macros etc. dialog box appears, as shown in the following figure
  14. Click the Providers tab.
  15. Select the CDT GCC Build Output Parser check box.
  16. Replace the value in the Compiler command pattern field with .*gcc.
  17. Click Move Up to move the CDT GCC Build Output Parser field to second position on
    the list.
  18. Select the CDT GCC Built-in Compiler Settings Cross ARM field and click Move Up
    to move it to third position on the list.
  19. Click OK. The Select Configurations dialog box reappears.
  20. Click Next. The Cross GNU Arm Toolchain dialog box appears.
  21. Click Finish. The new C project appears on the Project Explorer tab

More contents:

MAX32660-EVSYS User Manual

Summary

The MAX32660-EVSYS evaluation board has a very unique design, which is suitable for evaluating the functions of a chip and is relatively easy to get started with. Although Maxim Integrated does not have a large number of microcontroller products, the MAX32660 is still very distinctive. The chip has a small package, but it uses an M4 core and has a large amount of FLASH and RAM storage, so its performance is very strong. Combined with Maxim’s power management technology, this microcontroller is targeted at wearable devices or handheld devices. For applications with high requirements for both power consumption and performance, such as wearable sports watches, the MAX32660 still has a great competitive advantage.

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