Energia Brings Arduino IDE To The TI Launchpad

The Arduino IDE is an abstraction layer for the AVR chip which the board is based around. So it’s no surprise that it is now possible to use the Arduino IDE with the TI Launchpad board. This makes it dead simple for beginners to play around with the inexpensive and low-power MSP430 platform. This is all thanks to a lot of hard work on part of the Energia developers.

The project branches from Arduino so the look, feel, and function are all about the same. Most notably, the color scheme has migrated to red to match the board color of the Launchpad. You can configure the hardware the same way by selecting a COM port and target board. Almost everything is already working, but you should check the known issues page so that you don’t try to use a function that hasn’t been ported. Right now the list includes the random and random seed functions, as well as tone, notone, and micros. There is also an issue with analogWrite; it will only produce half the requested frequency and duty cycle can only be set from 0-50%. Still this is a great development if you’re most comfortable working from this IDE.

40 thoughts on “Energia Brings Arduino IDE To The TI Launchpad

      1. The great thing about this, and the Arduino platform in general, is that it enables people for whom finding and installing discrete, non-gui, software packages is intimidating. They can move to using gcc directly, a programmer and a different editor later, if necessary.

        TI really ought to throw these guys a few bucks. This will introduce the 430 family to a lot of people.

        And emacs for a non-technical user!?!? hahahahahahahahahahaha. That was a nice laugh to start the morning with. ;-)

    1. @Galane

      Yo, that is really funny….

      I was looking @ my 99/4a yesterday, thinking “Man what if I could make a hardware replica of the TI-99/4a by stringing a couple of launchpads logether?”

      I do not think one would be enough. I think you would need one just to handle the sub-qvga video, one to translate the storage, and one for the keyboard.

      … unless you figure out how to add the f1612 into the mix? Then you could just use one board, and an i/o expander.

      I actually was looking @ the 99/4a, because I want to get it onto the hackaday retro site. I think the Arduino + Ethernet shield should work nicely. I have just be overwhelmed with my schoolwork.

      This reminds me, Is there a linux binary for this IDE, or source somewhere?

  1. This is great. I bought a couple of Launchpads when they first came out, but they’ve been collecting dust since I mainly use a Mac. I did install a Windows-based IDE using Parallels, but I found it bloated for just playing around with the boards.

    I’ll have to dig them out and see how they work with this.

  2. More blinking leds projects to come.

    Also this post fails to explain what it adds.

    Is arduino now a language as well and it will be complied into msp430 code? Is this just a text editor?

  3. Oh wow. Just the other day I was lamenting the fact that I haven’t really done anything with the 6 launchpad kits I have, mostly because I haven’t taken the time to learn to code for it.

    But being able to run Arduino code on an MSP430? That sure changes things!

    1. Again Thank you guys for lettin’ me (and from the comments, as well as many others) who brought the Launchpad and never used it cuz we didn’t get around learnin’ how to program it.
      Keep it up

  4. @Neil Cherry: Than what’s the point of using a crippled abstraction layer with a huge overhead, supporting very few devices and pulling in a very weird buildsystem?

    1. Emacs is not crippled … oh Arduino. ;-) I don’t know actually, I thought about that very thing after I posted the reply.

      The only answer I could come up with was that it’s easy for beginners or if you want to get something done quickly. As a friend pointed out recently, if I could buy time that would be a product worth marketing! In a way the Arduino system does that, buys you a little time.

  5. Now if we could just convince the Arduino fans to start calling “sketches” what they are: programs. And that “shields” are just boards. Oh, and to align their pins to a 100 mil grid. And why such wierd board shapes?

    The software TI supplied was more than reasonable, but the Arduino based stuff is welcome.

    On the other hand, the ST Discovery has been a disappointment. Great board! Powerful processor! Then they just dump a list of vendors that you may be able to piece together a tool-chain from. Come on ST, you can do better.

  6. So, now that we have this sweet, new ide for the launchpad, how about shields?

    When is someone going to design an adapter, of sorts, so we can install arduino shields on the launchpad.

    Also, I know I asked already, but is there a linux version for this? Or maybe source to compile one?

  7. I was having trouble setting this program up on my machine (I’m not a “super” ubuntu user per se). I did figure out how to get it going, eventually. Using the linux version (found in the issues section of the github page) required compiling msp430g++ which was not as hard as I had made it out to be in my head.

    If you’re having trouble you are welcome to check out my blog about it.

    http://blog.onaclovtech.com/2012/07/energia-setup.html

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