Specifications

UART, which allows the board to be programmed using the provided software

installed on a Windows-based development machine, as well as both sending

and receiving serial data outside of the debug environment. Using a serial

terminal window, data can be transferred back and forth at a rate of 9600bps with

no flow control.

The debug header is the physical connection that provides both the power input

to the target board, as well as the serial transmit and receive lines to the

microprocessor. The connector is a Mill-Max header, model 850-10-006-20-

001000. This will be designed into the printed circuit board that delivers power to

the microprocessor, and will serve as a fixed mounting solution for the target

board. Table 3.2.3-1 describes the debug header physical pin specifications.

Pins 3 and 4 will be used for programming the target.

Table 3.2.3-1 MSP430 debug and power header pinout, reprinted with

permission from Texas Instruments.

Texas Instruments has seen fit to provide us with two different development

environment software programs for writing and debugging code on the MSP430

target board. One is their in-house compiler suite called Code Composer Studio,

which sets an upper limit of 8KB on the program size. The other program is a

third-party development environment created by IAR Systems, called IAR

Embedded Workbench. The version of IAR Workbench provided with the

development board sets an upper limit on the program code of 4KB. While this

may become a deal-breaker late in the software development cycle, it is widely

recognized industry-wide that the IAR development tools are far more user-

friendly and robust than the equivalent Code Composer tools made by TI.

After having the software developers spend time learning how to utilize the two

options for a development environment, It was decided by the group to use Code

Composer Studio v4. While the wireless code was easier to get working in the

IAR Workbench tool suite, the 4KB limit on the software that could be built and

loaded onto a target board proved to be too much. Without an extra 4KB of

memory, software could not be written to drive serial data to and from the LCD

screen, or to analyze time-varying analog signal output from the pressure and

alcohol sensors. Code Composer allows the development team to make more

effective use of the hardware available for the project. On top of that, Code