FRDM-MCXA156

Board Overview

FRDM-MCXA156

Name:

frdm_mcxa156

Vendor:

NXP Semiconductors

Architecture:

arm

SoC:

mcxa156

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Overview

FRDM-MCXA156 are compact and scalable development boards for rapid prototyping of MCX A144/5/6 A154/5/6 MCUs. They offer industry standard headers for easy access to the MCU’s I/Os, integrated open-standard serial interfaces, external flash memory and an on-board MCU-Link debugger. Additional tools like our Expansion Board Hub for add-on boards and the Application Code Hub for software examples are available through the MCUXpresso Developer Experience.

Hardware

• MCX-A156 Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller running at 96 MHz

• 1MB dual-bank on chip Flash

• 128 KB RAM

• USB full-speed with on-chip FS PHY. USB Type-C connectors

• 1x FlexCAN with FD, 1x I3Cs

• On-board MCU-Link debugger with CMSIS-DAP

• Arduino Header, FlexIO/LCD Header, SmartDMA/Camera Header, mikroBUS

For more information about the MCX-A156 SoC and FRDM-MCXA156 board, see:

• MCX-A156 SoC Website

• MCX-A156 Datasheet

• MCX-A156 Reference Manual

• FRDM-MCXA156 Website

• FRDM-MCXA156 User Guide

• FRDM-MCXA156 Board User Manual

• FRDM-MCXA156 Schematics

Supported Features

The frdm_mcxa156 board supports the hardware features listed below.

on-chip / on-board

Feature integrated in the SoC / present on the board.

2 / 2

Number of instances that are enabled / disabled.
Click on the label to see the first instance of this feature in the board/SoC DTS files.

vnd,foo

Compatible string for the Devicetree binding matching the feature.
Click on the link to view the binding documentation.

frdm_mcxa156

/

mcxa156

frdm_mcxa156@/mcxa156 target

Type	Location	Description	Compatible
CPU	on-chip	ARM Cortex-M33F CPU1	arm,cortex-m33f
ADC	on-chip	LPC LPADC1 1	nxp,lpc-lpadc
CAN	on-chip	NXP FlexCAN controller1	nxp,flexcan
Clock control	on-chip	LPC SYSCON & CLKCTL IP node1	nxp,lpc-syscon
Counter	on-chip	NXP MCUX Standard Timer/Counter1 4	nxp,lpc-ctimer
	on-chip	NXP LPTMR1	nxp,lptmr
DAC	on-chip	NXP MCUX LPDAC1	nxp,lpdac
DMA	on-chip	NXP MCUX EDMA controller1	nxp,mcux-edma
Flash controller	on-chip	NXP MSF1 Flash Memory Module (FMU)1	nxp,msf1
GPIO & Headers	on-chip	Kinetis GPIO5	nxp,kinetis-gpio
	on-board	GPIO pins exposed on NXP LCD 8080 interface (e.g., used on LCD-PAR-035 panel)1	nxp,lcd-8080
I2C	on-chip	NXP LPI2C controller2 2	nxp,lpi2c
I3C	on-chip	NXP MCUX I3C controller1	nxp,mcux-i3c
Input	on-board	Group of GPIO-bound input keys1	gpio-keys
Interrupt controller	on-chip	ARMv8-M NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller)1	arm,v8m-nvic
LED	on-board	Group of GPIO-controlled LEDs1	gpio-leds
MIPI-DBI	on-chip	NXP FlexIO LCD controller1	nxp,mipi-dbi-flexio-lcdif
Miscellaneous	on-chip	NXP FlexIO controller1	nxp,flexio
MTD	on-chip	Flash node1	soc-nv-flash
	on-board	Fixed partitions of a flash (or other non-volatile storage) memory1	fixed-partitions
Pin control	on-chip	NXP PORT Pin Controller5	nxp,port-pinmux
	on-chip	NXP PORT Pin Controller1	nxp,port-pinctrl
PWM	on-chip	NXP eFLEX PWM module with mcux-pwm submodules2	nxp,flexpwm
	on-chip	NXP MCUX PWM1 5	nxp,imx-pwm
Reset controller	on-chip	LPC SYSCON Peripheral reset controller1	nxp,lpc-syscon-reset
Sensors	on-board	NXP P3T1755 digital temperature sensor connected to I2C bus1	nxp,p3t1755
	on-chip	NXP low-power analog comparator (LPCMP)1 1	nxp,lpcmp
Serial controller	on-chip	NXP LPUART2	nxp,lpuart
SPI	on-chip	NXP LPSPI controller1 1	nxp,lpspi
SRAM	on-chip	Generic on-chip SRAM2	mmio-sram
Timer	on-chip	ARMv8-M System Tick1	arm,armv8m-systick
USB	on-chip	NPX Kinetis USBFSOTG Controller in device mode1	nxp,kinetis-usbd
Watchdog	on-chip	LPC Windowed Watchdog Timer1	nxp,lpc-wwdt

Connections and IOs

The MCX-A156 SoC has 5 gpio controllers and has pinmux registers which can be used to configure the functionality of a pin.

Name	Function	Usage
PIO0_2	UART	UART RX
PIO0_3	UART	UART TX

System Clock

The MCX-A156 SoC is configured to use FRO running at 96MHz as a source for the system clock.

Serial Port

The FRDM-MCXA156 SoC has 5 LPUART interfaces for serial communication. LPUART 0 is configured as UART for the console.

Programming and Debugging

The frdm_mcxa156 board supports the runners and associated west commands listed below.

	flash	debug	attach	debugserver	rtt
jlink	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
linkserver	✅ (default)	✅ (default)	✅	✅
pyocd	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅

Build and flash applications as usual (see Building an Application and Run an Application for more details).

Configuring a Debug Probe

A debug probe is used for both flashing and debugging the board. This board is configured by default to use the MCU-Link CMSIS-DAP Onboard Debug Probe.

Using LinkServer

Linkserver is the default runner for this board, and supports the factory default MCU-Link firmware. Follow the instructions in MCU-Link CMSIS-DAP Onboard Debug Probe to reprogram the default MCU-Link firmware. This only needs to be done if the default onboard debug circuit firmware was changed. To put the board in DFU mode to program the firmware, short jumper JP5.

Using J-Link

There are two options. The onboard debug circuit can be updated with Segger J-Link firmware by following the instructions in MCU-Link JLink Onboard Debug Probe. To be able to program the firmware, you need to put the board in DFU mode by shortening the jumper JP5. The second option is to attach a J-Link External Debug Probe to the 10-pin SWD connector (J24) of the board. Additionally, the jumper JP7 must be shortened. For both options use the -r jlink option with west to use the jlink runner.

west flash -r jlink

Configuring a Console

Connect a USB cable from your PC to J21, and use the serial terminal of your choice (minicom, putty, etc.) with the following settings:

• Speed: 115200

• Data: 8 bits

• Parity: None

• Stop bits: 1

Flashing

Here is an example for the Hello World application.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b frdm_mcxa156 samples/hello_world
west flash

Open a serial terminal, reset the board (press the RESET button), and you should see the following message in the terminal:

*** Booting Zephyr OS build v3.6.0-4478-ge6c3a42f5f52 ***
Hello World! frdm_mcxa156/mcxa156

Debugging

Here is an example for the Hello World application.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b frdm_mcxa156/mcxa156 samples/hello_world
west debug

Open a serial terminal, step through the application in your debugger, and you should see the following message in the terminal:

*** Booting Zephyr OS build v3.6.0-4478-ge6c3a42f5f52 ***
Hello World! frdm_mcxa156/mcxa156

Troubleshooting

Using Segger SystemView and RTT

Note that when using SEGGER SystemView or RTT with this SOC, the RTT control block address must be set manually within SystemView or the RTT Viewer. The address provided to the tool should be the location of the _SEGGER_RTT symbol, which can be found using a debugger or by examining the zephyr.map file output by the linker.

The RTT control block address must be provided manually because this SOC supports ECC RAM. If the SEGGER tooling searches the ECC RAM space for the control block a fault will occur, provided that ECC is enabled and the RAM segment being searched has not been initialized to a known value.

Support Resources for Zephyr

• NXP Zephyr Downstream Software Development Kit

• MCUXpresso for VS Code, wiki documentation and Zephyr lab guides

• NXP Zephyr Knowledge Hub

• NXP’s Zephyr landing page (including training resources)

• NXP Support Community forum for Zephyr