FRDM-MCXW71
Overview
The FRDM-MCXW71 is a compact and scalable development board for rapid prototyping of the MCX W71 wireless MCU. It offers easy evaluation of the MCX W71’s multiprotocol wireless support for Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, Thread and Matter. The board includes an on-board MCU-Link debugger, industry standard headers for easy access to the MCU’s I/Os, an accelerometer, a light sensor and external SPI flash memory.
The MCX W71x family features a 96 MHz Arm® Cortex®-M33 core coupled with a multiprotocol radio subsystem supporting Matter, Thread, Zigbee and Bluetooth LE. The independent radio subsystem, with a dedicated core and memory, offloads the main CPU, preserving it for the primary application and allowing firmware updates to support future wireless standards.
Hardware
MCXW71 Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller running up to 96 MHz
1MB on-chip Flash memory unit
128 KB TCM RAM
On-board MCU-Link debugger with CMSIS-DAP
For more information about the MCXW71 SoC and FRDM-MCXW71 board, see:
Supported Features
The frdm_mcxw71
board target in Zephyr currently supports the following features:
Interface |
Controller |
Driver/Component |
---|---|---|
NVIC |
on-chip |
nested vector interrupt controller |
SYSTICK |
on-chip |
systick |
PINMUX |
on-chip |
pinctrl |
GPIO |
on-chip |
gpio |
LPUART |
on-chip |
serial port-polling; serial port-interrupt |
LPI2C |
on-chip |
i2c |
LPSPI |
on-chip |
spi |
FMU |
on-chip |
flash |
TPM |
on-chip |
pwm |
WDOG32 |
on-chip |
watchdog |
LPTMR |
on-chip |
counter |
BLE |
on-chip |
Bluetooth |
FLEXCAN |
on-chip |
can |
VREF |
on-chip |
regulator |
LPADC |
on-chip |
adc |
Fetch Binary Blobs
To support Bluetooth, frdm_mcxw71 requires fetching binary blobs, which can be achieved by running the following command:
west blobs fetch hal_nxp
Programming and Debugging
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 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 (J12) of the board.
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 J10, 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_mcxw71/mcxw716c 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 v3.7.0-xxx-xxxx ***
Hello World! frdm_mcxw71/mcxw716c
Debugging
Here is an example for the Hello World application.
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b frdm_mcxw71/mcxw716c 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 v3.7.0-xxx-xxxx ***
Hello World! frdm_mcxw71/mcxw716c
Bluetooth
BLE functionality requires to fetch binary blobs, so make sure to follow
the Fetch Binary Blobs
section first.
Two images must be written to the board: one for the host (CM33) and one for the NBU (CM3).
- To flash the application (CM33) refer to the Flashing
section above.
- To flash the NBU, follow the instructions below:
Install
blhost
from NXP’s website. This is the tool that will allow you to flash the NBU.
- Enter ISP mode. To boot the MCU in ISP mode, follow these steps:
Disconnect the
FRDM-MCXW71
board from all power sources.Keep the
SW3
(ISP) button on the board pressed, while connecting the board to the host computer USB port.Release the
SW3
(ISP) button. The MCXW71 MCU boots in ISP mode.Reconnect any external power supply, if needed.
Use the following command to flash NBU file:
# On Windows
blhost.exe -p COMxx -- receive-sb-file mcxw71_nbu_ble.sb3
# On Linux
./blhost -p /dev/ttyxx -- receive-sb-file mcxw71_nbu_ble.sb3
Please consider changing COMxx
on Windows or ttyxx
on Linux to the serial port used by your board.
The NBU file can be found in : <zephyr workspace>/modules/hal/nxp/zephyr/blobs/mcxw71/mcxw71_nbu_ble.sb3
For more details:
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.