Cortex M3 jump from application back to bootloader and back to application - embedded

I have a bootloader and a firmware where the initial jump from bootloader to firmware works like a charme but when I have the scenario jumping back from application, make some stuff and jump back to my application. There I got some curious problem which ends in a hard fault. This problem comes up if I will activate the interrupts via __enable_interrupts() from IAR.
What are the right register to clear and reset all?
I have set the MSP and the PC to the beginning of the application/bootloader.
It is neccessary that I don't use NVIC_Systemreset for that purpose.
Hope anyone can help me with that question?

There is an ST application note about bootloader.
In addition to patterns described above, user can execute bootloader
by performing a jump to system memory from user code. Before jumping
to bootloader user must:
Disable all peripheral clocks
Disable used PLL
Disable interrupts
Clear pending interrupts
This is why when you activate interrupts the bootloader crashes.
EDIT
To address #Clifford thoughts STM32 system bootloader exits with jump to master defined address with go command. This address should be reset vector not main so that heap, stack and FW will be correctly initialized. After that you can either do system_reset to be in a known HW state or you must fully configure the peripherals you use in application because they are not set bat to reset state after bootloader used them.
Note: If you choose to execute the Go command, the peripheral
registers used by the bootloader are not initialized to their default
reset values before jumping to the user application. They should be
reconfigured in the user application if they are used. So, if the IWDG
is being used in the application, the IWDG prescaler value has to be
adapted to meet the requirements of the application (since the
prescaler was set to its maximum value). For some products, not all
reset values are set. For more information please refer to the known
limitations detailed for each product’s bootloader versions.

sorry for late response.
After some more investigations I have found the problems.
For more clarifications about what I have done, here are some points which were also mentioned by your comments.
Disabled all Peripherals
Disbaled PLL
Disabled all interrupts
Clear alle pending interrupts
What I unfortunately forgot to mention that we use embOS.
And this was the problem here. There is the CORE registers http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dui0552a/CHDBIBGJ.html
In the CONTROL Register there was a bit set: SPSEL
If this bit is set to "1" then embOS got problems with normal operation.
The solution for this is simple:
__set_CONTROL(0x0);
When this is called the jumping from embOS to Bootloader and back to embOS works perfectly.

Related

Using EXTI line for software event

I'm using STM32F4 and I want to generate a pulse. the question is how do I know the pulse is generated by set certain bit of swier in exti or not? is there any way to detect the generated pulse, or any alternative way to indicate that? how should I do to achieve that way with std library?
any code to config exti for soft event mode, and how to detect or indicate generated pulse
The "pulse generator" in the diagram is merely a description of how the event generation hardware works. It is not a user accessible function.
The difference between an interrupt and an event is not clear in ST's manuals, but an interrupt signals the NVIC, and will result in the associated handler code being executed, while an event is used to directly signal a peripheral device.
So here if the configured EXTI edge occurs, and the corresponding event mask bit is set, a pulse is generated signalling some other internal on-chip peripheral.
there any way to detect the generated pulse
Not in the context of that diagram. It is probably irrelevant to whatever it is you are trying to do.
how should I do to achieve that way with std library?
Classic X-Y problem, you have fixated a solution and are asking questions about the solution. You need to ask about the problem. Unfortunately it is entirely unclear what that problem is.
Moreover what "std library"? Are you using the older "standard peripheral library" or the abysmal CubeMX library?
If you want to simply generate an output pulse in response to an edge in an input, then most of the timer peripherals support that with zero software overhead. Search your parts reference manual for "One-pulse mode" in relation to any of the available timer peripherals.

How to implement hardware interrupts in uCOS II and TM4C123G (ARM M4) MCU?

Background:
I am using uCOS II, Keil uVision 5, and a TIVA board with the TM4C123GH6PM MCU on it. I was given a the port for uCOS II as well as a blank project file to get started. I wrote the tasks needed and the program works correctly but now I am interested in implementing interrupts and trying to understand how they can coexist with an RTOS. This is all done in C.
Issue:
Interrupts do not work; they simply don't fire up. There are instances where the other tasks won't execute either. The core issue is that I don't really understand how interrupts can coexist with the RTOS. I've written code (in both assembly and C) on baremetal where interrupts work perfectly and I fully understand how they work when there is no layer in-between the code and the cpu.
What I've Tried:
I read the book and reference manual that came with uCOS-II and searched for ways to implement interrupts. No mentioning whatsoever; the only thing mentioned about interrupts is how they interact with the scheduler so interrupts are only covered in the theoretical domain.
I asked on the micrium (original vendor) forum and no reply/seems like a dead forum
I looked at the libraries included with the uCOS port and found something useful:
bsp_int is the library that deals with the interrupts. BSP stands for Board Support Package and is intended to facilitate the interaction between the software and the code
The library has functions to register an interrupt and enable it. The rtos uses its own table of ISR handlers mapped to the NVIC of the cpu. All handlers are filtered through a generic handler. The two useful functions from this library are:
bsp_intVectSet which takes the interrupt trigger ID (i.e bsp_int_id_gpiof) and a pointer to the interrupt handler and registers it
bsp_intEn which takes the interrupt ID and enables it
The bsp_int library is included in bsp.c which calls the initialization function (from bsp_int) for interrupts (bsp_IntInit())
The bsp.h file is included in the main application file (app.c)
app.c main is the entry point of the program. The main disables interrupt, initializes uCOS (i.e the kernel) creates the first/starting task called AppTaskStart, and starts multitasking (i.e gives control to the rtos and the function never returns). I'm assuming the kernel reenables interrupts since it needs those to run
So the way the rtos works (to my understanding) is that it hijacks the systick timer so at every clock tick, the kernel is called and is able to schedule the tasks.
AppTaskStart, which is the very first task to execute within the kernel domain, calls bsp_init (in which, bsp_IntInit is called to initialize the interrupt table and more) and performs other initialization tasks
The way I've set up interrupts without a kernel before, was using the Tivaware library (in C) provided by TI. It has functions for creating interrupts, specifying the trigger (i.e rising/falling edge, timer overflow, etc.), and enabling them. This method works and I thought is what I should be using to set up the interrupt I want
So I used the tivaware library to set up interrupts on one of the gpio ports (to which, mechanical switches are connected) on the rising edge. The code for this, as well as other code to start the port f peripheral, set the switches pins to input, and enable pull-ups, is included in bsp_init (bsp.c) which is called from AppTaskStart which is called from main. So far everything works perfectly, the rtos initiliazes, and all its tasks execute accordingly. When I try to move the code directly to the main and flash the program onto the board, the rtos initializes (leds blink) but then the tasks don't execute. Any ideas why that might be?
If I add the code to also enable and register the interrupt for when the switch is closed in the same function, using code from the tivaware library, the rtos does not initialize.
Do I need to setup/register/enable interrupts using the tivaware library as well as register and enable them using the board support package (bsp) library? The way I understand this so far is that the bsp is registering/enabling interrupts for the kernel only whereas the tivaware code is enabling them by directly writing to the registers so the latter is needed to setup the cpu portion of the interrupts and the former is needed to setup the OS portion of the interrupts. But I don't know. I really don't understand how they've designed incorporating interrupts under uCOS II. They do specify how the interrupt handler should be written and what macros to use but nothing else.
What should I try next? Does anybody have any experience with working with these two components (the rtos and the board)?
I am just stuck at this point and I've been playing with the code, moving stuff around, trying to find a clue/lead to solving this issue. I can't even debug the rtos because uVision does not support uCOS and I can't use step-debugging because interrupts are firing at every clock-tick and the PC is being changed constantly so the IDE can't follow it.
I know IAR Embedded Workbench has support for uCOS-II and I have the app on my laptop and I tried setting up a project but I was only given a port/starter project for Keil and I don't know how to set one up for IAR EW. The only ports on Micrium's website are for the TM4C129 series and I tried using that to start an IAR EW project but I couldn't get it to work (libraries not being linked/missing files).
Thank You!
Does anybody have any experience with working with these two components (the rtos and the board)?
I'm afraid I haven't worked with uCos (but with other OSes, mainly SysBios and FreeRTOS) and I haven't worked with Tiva (but with Sitara AM335x) yet. Still, I think some hints below may be helpful for you (and apply in spite of the different implementations you are using).
What should I try next?
These are the steps I recommend you to consider. You can put them into any order you find most helpful.
interrupt priorities of ISRs that call RTOS library APIs must not be higher than the level that is taken into account by RTOS, otherwise the RTOS-internal states may get corrupted, and anything can happen. Please check your OS documentation.
Please verify the position of the interrupt vector table and its contents:
Does every vector table entry point to one of the ISR wrapper handlers provided by the RTOS, or do you also find "independent" ISR implementations? If so, what do the latter do?
If you find pointers into third-party libraries you don't have the code for, don't give up. These can be as important...
Even more important than including the right header to bsp_Int... APIs is that interrupt management of all software components runs through one unique API, e.g., the bsp_Int... one.
Your assumptions about app.c/main() sound reasonable. Please make sure that you also know about every component that accesses interrupts indirectly.
AppTaskStart, which is the very first task to execute within the kernel domain, calls bsp_init (in which, bsp_IntInit is called to initialize the interrupt table and more) and performs other initialization tasks
Please check what happens if you place a breakpoint at the top of every task function. Then you should be able to watch all tasks start and run into its breakpoint once.
The way I've set up interrupts without a kernel before, was using the Tivaware library (in C) provided by TI. It has functions for creating interrupts, specifying the trigger (i.e rising/falling edge, timer overflow, etc.), and enabling them. This method works and I thought is what I should be using to set up the interrupt I want
You should make sure that the Tivaware library only uses interrupts in a way that is compatible to your RTOS. You can do this by RTM or reading the sources.
So I used the tivaware library to set up interrupts on one of the gpio ports (to which, mechanical switches are connected) on the rising edge. The code for this, as well as other code to start the port f peripheral, set the switches pins to input, and enable pull-ups, is included in bsp_init (bsp.c) which is called from AppTaskStart which is called from main. So far everything works perfectly, the rtos initiliazes, and all its tasks execute accordingly. When I try to move the code directly to the main and flash the program onto the board, the rtos initializes (leds blink) but then the tasks don't execute. Any ideas why that might be?
Could it be that an electronic problem at one of the controller pins connected to the interrupt starts triggering that interrupt all the time?
If I add the code to [...]
Have you tried creating a
minimal reproducible example?
When you do this, you can enhance the effect by simultaneously performing
rubber duck debugging.
Do I need to setup/register/enable interrupts using the tivaware library as well as register and enable them using the board support package (bsp) library? The way I understand this so far is that the bsp is registering/enabling interrupts for the kernel only whereas the tivaware code is enabling them by directly writing to the registers so the latter is needed to setup the cpu portion of the interrupts and the former is needed to setup the OS portion of the interrupts. But I don't know. I really don't understand how they've designed incorporating interrupts under uCOS II. They do specify how the interrupt handler should be written and what macros to use but nothing else.
This sounds dangerous. I haven't worked with Tiva yet, but instead with another TI chip (AM335x). There we had a similar situation, different libraries accessing different/overlapping parts of the same system resource by means of different abstraction layers. Situation only started improving when we tidied up the mess of abstraction layers ignoring each other and ported some code to a common abstraction layering scheme.
And some PS:
You can write your ISRs in C or assembler, as you like. Depending on the quality of your toolchain and optimisation settings, assember may yield better performance (or not at all), and by calling C APIs from assembler, some programmers tend to make new mistakes. I'd recommend to stay within C until you know in detail what is happening around your OS and IRQs.

How would an ISR know what pin cause the interrupt?

Interrupts can be enabled for a specific pin(s) on a digital I/O port, correct? How would the ISR determine which pin caused the interrupt?
Because the vector table has only one slot for the Port1 ISR. So the same ISR function gets called no matter which input pin on Port1 needs attention unless I'm wrong...
As other people have suggested in comments this can be MCU dependent, but for ARM(The core behind MSP432) generally the answer is it doesnt know, it looks for it.
ARM has a vectored interrupt system, which means that every source has its own vector of interrupt, so CPU can easily find out which source is triggering thr interrupt. so far so good.
but then it happens that a device can trigger multiple interrupts, like GPIO as you said, in this case, CPU knows that which port has triggered interrupt so fires it's ISR but then it is ISR responsibility to poll device registers to figure out exact interrupt source, there are many of this peripherals with multiple interrupt, timers, DMAs just to name a few.
This is exactly why normally peripherals have an interrupt enable bit, that lets them trigger interrupts, but they also have bit masks that controls what exactly can trigger that interrupt internally,
Also have a look at this link for an in action example, specially at their ISR that does exactly the same as described above
In a typical MCU, there are hundreds, or at a stretch even thousands of potential interrupt sources. Depending on the application, only some will be important, and even fewer will be genuinely timing critical.
For a GPIO port, you typically enable only the pins which are interesting to generate an interrupt. If you can arrange only one pin of a port to be generating the interrupt, the job is done, your handler for that port can do the work, safely knowing that it will only be called when the right pin is active.
When you care about the cause within a single peripheral, and don't have the luxury of individually vectored handlers, you need to fall back on the 'non vectored' approach, and check the status registers before working out which eventual handler function needs to be called.
Interestingly, you can't work out which pin caused the interrupt - all you can see is which pins are still active once you get round to polling the status register. If you care about the phasing between two pulses, you may not be able to achieve this discrimination within a single GPIO unless there is dedicated hardware support. Even multiple exception vectors wouldn't help, unless you can be sure that the first exception is always taken before the second pin could become set.

On reset what happens in embedded system?

I have a doubt regarding the reset due to power up:
As I know that microcontroller is hardwired to start with some particular memory location say 0000H on power up. At 0000h, whether interrupt service routine is written for reset(initialization of stack pointer and program counter etc) or the reset address is there at 0000h(say 7000) so that micro controller jumps at 7000 address and there initialization of stack and PC is written.
Who writes this reset service routine? Is it the manufacturer of microcontroller chip(Intel or microchip etc) or any programmer can change this reset service routine(For example, programmer changed the PC to 4000h from 7000h on power up reset resulting into the first instruction to be fetched from 4000 instead of 7000).
How the stack pointer and program counter are initialized to the respective initial addresses as on power up microcontroller is not in the state to put the address into stack pointer and program counter registers(there is no initialization done till reset service routine).
What should be the steps in the reset service routine considering all possibilities?
With reference to your numbering:
The hardware reset process is processor dependent and will be fully described in the data sheet or reference manual for the part, but your description is generally the case - different architectures may have subtle variations.
While some microcontrollers include a ROM based boot-loader that may contain start-up code, typically such bootloaders are only used to load code over a communications port, either to program flash memory directly or to load and execute a secondary bootloader to RAM that then programs flash memory. As far as C runtime start-up goes, this is either provided with the compiler/toolchain, or you write it yourself in assembler. Normally even when start-up code is provided by the compiler vendor, it is supplied as source to be assembled and linked with your application. The compiler vendor cannot always know things like memory map, SDRAM mapping and timing, or processor clock speed or what oscillator crystal is used in your hardware, so the start-up code will generally need customisation or extension through initialisation stubs that you must implement for your hardware.
On ARM Cortex-M devices in fact the initial PC and stack-pointer are in fact loaded by hardware, they are stored at the reset address and loaded on power-up. However in the general case you are right, the reset address either contains the start-up code or a vector to the start-up code, on pre-Cortex ARM architectures, the reset address actually contains a jump instruction rather than a true vector address. Either way, the start-up code for a C/C++ runtime must at least initialise the stack pointer, initialise static data, perform any necessary C library initialisation and jump to main(). In the case of C++ it must also execute the constructors of any global static objects before calling main().
The processor cores normally have as you say a starting address of some sort of table either a list of addresses or like ARM a place where instructions are executed. Wrapped around that core but within the chip can vary. Cores that are not specific to the chip vendor like 8051, mips, arm, xscale, etc are going to have a much wider range of different answers. Some microcontroller vendors for example will look at strap pins and if the strap is wired a certain way when reset is released then it executes from a special boot flash inside the chip, a bootloader that you can for example use to program the user boot flash with. If the strap is not tied that certain way then sometimes it boots your user code. One vendor I know of still has it boot their bootloader flash, if the vector table has a valid checksum then they jump to the reset vector in your vector table otherwise they sit in their bootloader mode waiting for you to talk to them.
When you get into the bigger processors, non-microcontrollers, where software lives outside the processor either on a boot flash (separate chip from the processor) or some ram that is managed somehow before reset, etc. Those usually follow the rule for the core, start at address 0xFFFFFFF0 or start at address 0x00000000, if there is garbage there, oh well fire off the undefined instruction vector, if that is garbage just hang there or sit in an infinite loop calling the undefined instruction vector. this works well for an ARM for example you can build a board with a boot flash that is erased from the factory (all 0xFFs) then you can use jtag to stop the arm and program the flash the first time and you dont have to unsolder or socket or pre-program anything. So long as your bootloader doesnt hang the arm you can have an unbrickable design. (actually you can often hold the arm in reset and still get at it with the jtag debugger and not worry about bad code messing with jtag pins or hanging the arm core).
The short answer: How many different processor chip vendors have there been? There are many different solutions, as many as you can think of and more have been deployed. Placing a reset handler address in a known place in memory is the most common though.
EDIT:
Questions 2 and 3. if you are buying a chip, some of the microcontrollers have this protected bootloader, but even with that normally you write the boot code that will be used by the product. And part of that boot code is to initialize the stack pointers and prepare memory and bring up parts of the chip and all those good things. Sometimes chip vendors will provide examples. if you are buying a board level product, then often you will find a board support package (BSP) which has working example code to bring up the board and perhaps do a few things. Say the beagleboard for example or the open-rd or embeddedarm.com come with a bootloader (u-boot or other) and some already have linux pre-installed. boards like that the user usually just writes some linux apps/drivers and adds them to the bsp, but you are not limited to that, you are often welcome to completely re-write and replace the bootloader. And whoever writes the bootloader has to setup the stacks and bring up the hardware, etc.
systems like the gameboy advance or nds or the like, the vendor has some startup code that calls your startup code. so they may have the stack and such setup for them but they are handing off to you, so much of the system may be up, you just get to decide how to slice up the memorires, where you want your stack, data, program, etc.
some vendors want to keep this stuff controlled or a secret, others do not. in some cases you may end up with a board or chip with no example code, just some data sheets and reference manuals.
if you want to get into this business though you need to be prepared to write this startup code (in assembler) that may call some C code to bring up the rest of the system, then that might start up the main operating system or application or whatever. Microcotrollers sounds like what you are playing with, the answers to your questions are in the chip vendors users guides, some vendors are better than others. search for the word reset or boot in the document to try to figure out what their boot schemes are. I recommend you use "dollar votes" to choose the better vendors. A vendor with bad docs, secret docs, bad support, dont give them your money, spend your money on vendors with freely downloadable, well written docs, with well written examples and or user forums with full time employees trolling around answering questions. There are times where the docs are not available except to serious, paying customers, it depends on the market. most general purpose embedded systems though are openly documented. the quality varies widely, but the docs, etc are there.
Depends completely on the controller/embedded system you use. The ones I've used in game development have the IP point at a starting address in RAM. The boot strap code supplied from the compiler initializes static/const memory, sets the stack pointer, and then jumps execution to a main() routine of some sort. Older systems also started at a fixed address, but you manually had to set the stack, starting vector table, and other stuff in assembler. A common name for the starting assembler file is CRT0.s for the stuff I've done.
So 1. You are correct. The microprocessor has to start at some fixed address.
2. The ISR can be supplied by the manufacturer or compiler creator, or you can write one yourself, depending on the complexity of the system in question.
3. The stack and initial programmer counter are usually handled via some sort of bootstrap routine that quite often can be overriden with your own code. See above.
Last: The steps will depend on the chip. If there is a power interruption of any sort, RAM may be scrambled and all ISR vector tables and startup code should be rewritten, and the app should be run as if it just powered up. But, read your documentation! I'm sure there is platform specific stuff there that will answer these for your specific case.

polling hardware button's state

I need to implement the following feature for my device running embedde linux on a 200mhz MIPS cpu:
1) if a reset button is pressed and held for less then a second - proceed with reboot
2) if a reset button is pressed and held for at least 3 sec. - restore the system's configuration with default values from NVRAM and then reboot.
I'm thinking of two ways:
1) a daemon that constantly polls the button's state with proper timings via GPIO ioctls
(likely too big overhead, lots of context switching ?)
2) simple char driver polling the button, measuring timings and reporting the state, for example, via /proc to user space where daemon or a shell script can check and do what's required.
And for both cases I have no idea how to measure the time :(
What would you suggest/recommend?
You have to implement those in hardware. The purpose of the "restore defaults from NVRAM" is to restore a so-called "bricked" device.
For example, what if an NVRAM seting is modified (cosmic ray?) such that the device cannot boot? In that case, your proposed button-polling daemon will never execute.
For the one-second held reboot, use an RC (resistor + capacitor) circuit to "debounce" the button press. Select an RC time constant which is appropriate for the one second delay. Use a comparator watching the RC voltage to signal the RESET pin on the MIPS cpu.
For the three-second press functionality (restore NVRAM defaults), you have to do something more complicated, probably.
One possibility is to put a tiny PIC microcontroller into the reset circuit, but only use a microcontroller with fuse (non-erasable) ROM, not NVRAM.
An easier possibility is to have a ROM containing defaults on the same circuit and bus as the NVRAM. A J/K flip-flop latch can become part of your reset circuitry. You'll also need a three-second-tuned RC circuit and comparator. On sub-three-second presses, the flip-flop should latch a 0 output and on three-second-plus presses, the 2nd RC circuit should trigger the comparator after 3 seconds and present a 1 to the J/K latch, which will toggle its output.
The flip-flop output Q will store the single bit telling your circuit whether this reset cycle was subsequent to a three-second push. If so, that output Q is driving the chip select to the NVRAM and Q* is driving the chip select to ROM. (I assume chip select is negative logic on both NVRAM and ROM chips.)
Then when your CPU boots, it will fetch the settings from either the NVRAM or the ROM, depending on the chip select line.
Your boot code can detect that it booted with ROM chip select, and can later reset the J/K flip-flop with a GPIO line. Then the CPU will be able to write good values back into the NVRAM. That unbricks the device, hopefully.
You want to use ROM that is not erasable or reusable. That kind of ROM is the most resistant to static electricity, power supply trouble, and radiation. Radiation is much more present than we generally realize, and the amount of cosmic ray flux is multiplied by taking a device onboard an airliner, for example.
I am not familiar with the MIPS processor and the GPIO/interrupt capabilities of the pin that you could be using but a possible methodology could be as follows.
Configure the input pin as an interrupt input.
When the interrupt fires disable the interrupt and start a short 100ms-ish timer
When the timer triggers check that the button is still pressed (for debounce). If it is not then re-enable the GPIO interrupt and restart, otherwise set the timer to re-trigger after the 3 second timeout.
When the timer triggers this time then if the button is not pressed then do your reboot otherwise reset the system configuration and reboot.
If the pin cannot provide an interrupt then step 1 will be a polling task to look at the input.
The time between the reset button being pressed and the full reset process being run will always be 3 seconds from a debounced button press. In a reset situation this may not be important particularly if as part of step 3 you make it apparent to the user that a reset sequence has started - blank the display for example.
If you want to do this in software, you need to put this in kernel (interrupt) code, rather than in a shell script or daemon. The better approach would be to put this in hardware.
In my experience, the likely reason for resetting the device will be bad user code which has locked or bricked the processor. If the issue is a corruption of memory due to RF energy or something of that nature, you may require hardware or an external (hardened) processor to reflash the device and fix the problem.
In the bad-user-code case, processor interrupts and kernel code should continue to run, while user code may be completely stalled. If you can poll the pin from an interrupt, you stand a much better chance of actually getting the reset you expect. Also, this enables you to do event-driven programming, rather than constantly polling the pin.
One other approach (not to the specs you listed, but a popular method for achieving the same goal) would be to have the startup routines check a GPIO line, and hold a button down when you want to re-initialize the device. On most embedded Linux devices which I've seen, the "Reset" button is wired to a dedicated reset pin on the microcontroller, and not to a GPIO pin. You may have to go with this route, unless you want to start cutting traces.