Arduino as an ISP for Texas Instruments Microcontroller?

Using Arduino Microcontrollers
1

A couple of times, I have seen complaints that programming the Texas instruments with a launchpad has the complication of doing it all in ASM, which is a very cryptic language, unlike C.

People have gotten around this by using Energia, a AVR-Style compiler designed for the launchpad.

I would like to know: Is it possible to use the Arduino board as an in-system-programmer for JUST the Texas Instruments MCU?
I want to be able to program an MSP430, like like I would program an external Atmel Chip.

2

No.
I mean, theoretically possible, but... Voltage conversion, unwritten software...

Launch pad comes with a C compiler, btw...

3

Tomalo:
programming the Texas instruments with a launchpad has the complication of doing it all in ASM, which is a very cryptic language, unlike C.

Harder work? Yes, but not cryptic.

Assembly language is far more logical than C, nothing 'cryptic' about it.

4

C is cryptic to most people out there, even some professional programmers.

Real AVR C is cryptic to most programmers without understanding the GPIO stuff.

DDRD = 1<<PD2;
PORTD = 1<<PD2;

GICR = 1<<INT0;
MCUCR = 1<<ISC01 | 1<<ISC00;

Set up port D pin 2 as input, set the pullup, enable it as INT0 on rising edges. You need to consult the datasheet to figure out what is going on here (comments removed for emphasis).

5

Tomalo:
A couple of times, I have seen complaints that programming the Texas instruments with a launchpad has the complication of doing it all in ASM, which is a very cryptic language, unlike C.

People have gotten around this by using Energia, a AVR-Style compiler designed for the launchpad.

I would like to know: Is it possible to use the Arduino board as an in-system-programmer for JUST the Texas Instruments MCU?
I want to be able to program an MSP430, like like I would program an external Atmel Chip.

There are many c compiler option for the msp430. CCS Texas Instruments C/C++ compiler, IAR has a commercial compiler and then there is the free msp430-gcc c/c++ compiler. TI provides samples in C. Energia is an Arduino port of the msp430. It implements an Arduino API, most straight Arduino code just works. The launchpad device Buy Texas Instruments parts | Ordering resources | TI.com is $10. It is equivalent to buying an AVR dragon. It is both a programmer and a hw debugger. There is no reason to use asm unless you want to.

If you want to go into the larger chips. There are many other options. All of them can be programmed in C or C++.

There is no reason to use an ISP with the msp430 chips. You can get a real hardware debugger / programmer usb device for less than the cost of an FTDI module.

TI code examples for the msp430g2553 MSP430G2553 data sheet, product information and support | TI.com
Energia forum: http://forum.43oh.com/forum/28-energia/
Energia http://energia.nu
Fabooh http://github.com/RickKimball/msp430_code/

-rick

6

In a nutshell, what do you think these MSP430s do that AVR does not? I see there are a bunch of options on Digikey but mostly they have the same peripherals, similar number of pins, similar amounts of flash and RAM, very slightly better clock speeds (up to 25Mhz instead of 20Mhz) than tiny/mega AVR (not including XMEGA AVR which compares even better than plain AVR at 32Mhz and additional peripherals such as DAC). I get they are 16 bit, but does that often matter? Anyway, what is the draw?

7

I can get the TI chips for free.

I guess I may just invest in a LaunchPad and use Energia. The $10 isn't too bad, it's the 2-4 week backorder that had me searching.

8

Tomalo:
I can get the TI chips for free.

TI will sample to almost anybody. :grin: I just got some programmable gain amplifiers to test out on an idea that I have. I prefer samples when I have no idea what the hell I am doing and am at my most likely to fry something.

9

I downloaded above Energia IDE . It worked similar to arduino only we need to make changes in library and port naming.
The wire library didn't worked. Wire liberary works fine unless sda and scl pins are connected . Once pins are removed MSP gets hangs. I would like to is it normal behavior with MSP kits or not.