LED Visor, MSP430 (Software)

This post is the third in a multi-post set: 

• LED Visor, MSP430 (Concept)
• LED Visor, MSP430 (Schematic Capture, Layout)
• LED Visor, MSP430 (Software) 
• LED Visor, MSP430 (Final Build into Visor) 

For this project I decided to use the Free version of Code Composer Studio, provided by TI. I have been working with version 4.1.

CCS provides a nice Eclipse based editor with a integrated complier and debugger. It installed without issues on my windows 7 64 bit machine.

I broke my software up into several pieces:

• Main: The section which pulls everything together.
• Standard.h: A section for constants, macros, typdefs, etc. which are shared across the entire project.
• Button driver : This code de-bounces button presses, and sends back button press and button released events.
• Led Driver: This is really a serial driver. It sends out data to the CAT4008 LED driver device.
• Led Patterns: Code which generates different patterns for the LED. Some patterns are hard coded, and others are functions.

In order to save power, I designed the software to only drive 1 LED at a time. In order to make it look like more then 1 LED is on at a time, we use persistence of vision.

The software can be downloaded from a google code repository found here. The Source file are:

• Main.c
• Standard.h
• buttons.h
• buttons.c
• LedDriver.h
• LedDriver.c
• LedPattern.h
• LedPattern.c

The other files are the Code Composer Studio project files.

When running, the code :

• scans for button presses
• If SW2 is pressed, the code will change the pattern being run.
• If SW1 is pressed, the speed at which the code is run is changed.
• One the LED pattern is determined, it is clocked out to the LED driver.
• The MSP430 goes into a sleep mode until the next clock interrupt starts the cycle again.