This is a "bare metal" runtime for the Freescale Freedom FRDM-KL25Z ARM development board ($13). It builds with the GCC ARM toolchain, with no other external dependencies.

Quick start on Linux or Mac OS X:

• Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/payne92/bare-metal-arm.git
• Grab and unpack GCC ARM toolchain:
  • On Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-none-eabi
  • On Mac & Linux: cd bare-metal-arm; make gcc-arm
• make

This will create a demo.srec image file to flash onto the development board. (If you're using the standard bootloader, plug the SDA USB port to a host computer. On Linux, type make deploy. On other systems, copy the .SREC file to the FRDM-KL25Z volume.)

If everything is working, the RGB LEB will flash a few times and then be steady green. You can access the USB SDA serial port (at 115,200 baud) and see the accelerometer and touch input status.

References:

• Freescale Freedom FRDM-KL25Z
  • Where to buy: Newark, Digi-Key
• KL25 Sub-Family Reference Manual
• GCC ARM toolchain
• Newlib C library

Most vendor provided toolchains are daunting. They're large and complicated because they support a wide range of processors, libraries, and commerical C compilers. These tools are usually laden with complex configuration tools, lots of source macros and #ifdef statements, and code that's been ported down several generations of processors.

In contrast, this project is a small (<1,000 lines without USB) simple, and clean bare metal framework that builds from the command line. It has no external library or tool dependencies, only supports GCC, and has minimal use of assembly.

The interrupt vectors and reset code are in _startup.c. The CPU comes out of reset in _reset_init() which:

• Copies initialized constant values from flash ROM to RAM
• Configures the main clock (48Mhz)
• Jumps to _start() in the Newlib C library

After the C library is done initializing, it invokes main() (implemented in demo.c).

andy@payne.org

payne.org/blog