Installation and Setup

Prerequisites

In order to build the examples, you need the NXP MCUXpresso SDK for the Kinetis KW41Z and some additional packages.

Get the NXP MCUXpresso SDK

NXP provides the MCUXpresso SDK at mcuxpresso.nxp.com. Click SDK Builder and choose New Configuration in the dropdown menu. Select the MKW41Z512VHT4 processor. Select Select Additional Configuration Settings and choose Linux with all toolchains. Finally click Go To SDK Builder. Once your SDK is available for download, download and unpack it to a desired directory.

Install a Toolchain

In a Debian/Ubuntu Linux based environment you need to install the following list of packages:

apt install cmake gcc-arm-none-eabi gdb-arm-none-eabi

If you need tools to debug a BLE application you may want to additionally install bluez:

apt install bluez

To generate the documentation you need Doxygen:

apt install doxygen

Install pyOCD

pyOCD is used for flashing the examples onto the phyWAVE module. Get the source code from

git clone https://github.com/PHYTEC-Messtechnik-GmbH/pyOCD/tree/pr-target-kw41z

and follow the instruction of the included README.rst to install pyOCD. It is recommended to install pyOCD locally for your user from source with:

python setup.py install --user

Note: If flashing fails with a USB timeout error or similar and you are using a virtual machine as your host setting a lower frequency may be necessary. Set the --frequency value to e.g. 100000 in cmake/pb-daplink.cmake:

...
add_custom_target(flash
  COMMAND pyocd-flashtool --target ${PYOCD_TARGET} --chip_erase --frequency 100000
...

Clone the phyWAVE BSP

Clone the phyWAVE BSP to your preferred directory:

git clone https://github.com/PHYTEC-Messtechnik-GmbH/phywave-mcux-bsp

This repository includes the BSP and examples for the phyNODE-Athena development board described in this manual.

Environment Setup

Before configuring the build files of the examples the following environment variables have to be set (e.g. in your ~/.bashrc):

# do not change this
export GCC_TOOLCHAIN_DIR=/usr/

# original MCUXpresso SDK from NXP
export MCU_SDK_KW41Z_DIR=/home/user/foo_dir/mcux-sdk/

# general board support for these examples
export PHYWAVE_SDK_DIR=/home/user/foo_dir/phywave-mcux-bsp/

Building and flashing an example

Connect the debugger via USB to the host computer. To build and flash any example enter its base directory and execute cmake and make:

# enter the base directory of an example
cd examples/phynode_ble/

# generate the Makefile
cmake .

# build the example (does not flash)
make

# build and flash
make flash

Documentation

Each example project contains a README.md with a brief introduction about their usage and functionality.

Note that the MCUXpresso SDK from NXP downloaded previously contains documentation for the underlying framework and RTOS.