I need to give a time estimate on a completely new technology for me (MSP430 microprocessor by Texas Instruments) [closed]

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I've done my share of C and embedded systems, but that was, scary to say, 20 years ago! I've been a Java programmer since 1999. Suddenly, I've been asked to estimate a simple project involving C and an embedded system, MSP430 processor.

What's involved? I've found that there is a debugging plugin for Eclipse, which may be a good news, for me.

Obviously, nothing can be estimated without knowing the complexity of the project. Let's assume, for the sake of an argument, that this is a "Hello, world!" kind of a thing. What would be an overhead for me for creating an environment, hooking up the debugger, learning to compile and upload and debug, etc?

Beyond that, my rough estimate is, all development would be my Java development time times 5 for the first week. Maybe times 10. Is this accurate? Is there a lot of specialized knowledge, custom libraries, etc?

I was once very good at debugging memory leaks, array and stack overflows and other good things, but now remember it as a nightmare.

Answer 1

The TI MSP430 is an extremely simple device. From a development standpoint, you have a couple options:

1. Use an IDE such as IAR Embedded Workbench or TI Code Composer Studio (Eclipse-based).
2. Use command-line tools (msp-gcc).

The User's Guide for the specific MSP430 device will be your friend. Anything that is device-specific will be found in the chip's Datasheet. TI has an abundance of drivers freely available on their website to get you started. They may not be the most efficient methods for performing a certain task, but they can be used as stepping stones to getting your application going. You can find these software examples here.

You'll need a good understanding of the MSP430 peripherals before you can really start getting your hands dirty - how do I configure the clock system? how do I communicate UART (serial)? how do I toggle GPIO?