How to interface with Windows from MSP-EXP430F5529LP via USB, preferably from Energia?

Question

This may sound trivial, but I did not find a step-by-step guide. Energia has plenty of examples, e.g. SerialCallResponseASCII

So the main command is

Serial.print("Hello");

etc.

However, I see nothing (or garbage) in Energia's Serial Monitor. Having worked with serial ports (but not with USB) I know that there are tons of settings that can mismatch (baud rate and such). What are the defaults for Energia (or for MSP430, if Energia does not change them)?

Next step is to see the input/output on my Windows 7. All I know as far as cmd is "copy con: com4:" and "copy com4: con:", and I do it in two different cmd windows. That is probably not how to do that. I am going to bite the bullet and download Putty or something, but what's the command-line way to do this?

Just seems that this is such a standard "hello, world" task, and yet I don't find a straighforward way to solve it. Maybe there is a manual.. don't know. My search fetched nothing.

Edit: I made it work, for the most part. I am not ready to answer my own question yet, because I don't understand how or why it works.

What I did was this: I set up Energia's port to COM4: in order to upload my code; and to COM3: in order to talk to the launchpad via USB (I presume that's UART) using Serial.println() and such. I don't understand why.

Also, I downloaded Putty and could talk to my device through it; I still don't know how to do the same from command prompt.

Answer 1

Nice, I didnt know they added more boards to their launchpad lineup. I have multiples of most of their boards will have to go out and get some of this one you have.

this a fancier part, it does have one or more uarts on it.

As with many boards of this type (microcontroller eval boards) there is the device we get to play with and not always but often another device that is directly connected to the usb. that device we normally dont get touch it communicates with the ide or flash loader tools, etc and then often uses some protocol for the part we play with (jtag, etc) to reprogram that parts flash so we can download programs to it.

The less expensive through hole launchpad board did not have a part with a uart originally it now does but the last time I looked you had to use additional hardware to connect to it. This board does what is not atypical of this class of boards, the part we play withs uart is connected to the part we dont play withs uart, and via the usb the part we dont play withs uart looks like a serial port to the host and the thing connected to it is the part we play with.

This is how this board is setup so that usb interface is there both to reprogram the msp430 and to give us serial access to it.

Being windows I cannot help you too much I am 99% linux now. putty should work, in the dos days you did the copy con or copy com con type stuff, does that work anymore, I have no idea it has bee a couple of decades since I tried that last. since you have been successful with putty that means the only unknown is your command line (in theory). putty, I assume, if not others can log the com port input to a file so the effect is the same other than perhaps not being able to script it.

You may have to just write your own command line program. to read from com and write to file.