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Embedded Systems – Assignment 01
Make It Blink
Introduction
The tasks of this assignment are designed to familiarize you with the laboratory equipment and the lab reporting
procedures. Therefore, the actual programming problem is quite simple: cause the LED on the Tern ACore board to
blink at an observable rate. The materials provided by Tern and the instructor contain several versions of this
program which you may use as you see fit.
Because this course assigns no homework aside from laboratory work the write-ups are extremely important. This
assignment description attempts to step you through the level of detail you need to include in your report. Following
these guidelines will ensure a passing grade, but not necessarily an A. The report must be well written and complete
in order to receive an outstanding mark. A complete report documents every issue in the assignment.
Task 1
The first task is to get the LED to blink. You need to complete the following steps.
- Open Paradigm and make a new project to contain the program.
- Write the Blink program.
- Compile and debug the program.
- Download the program to the processor.
- Demonstrate a blinking LED.
This is going to take some reading. You will first need to figure out how to make a project in Paradigm, include the
correct configuration files in order to program for a remote target and link to the ACore processor. You’ll need to
familiarize yourself with the ACore layout in order to figure out which processor pin is connected to the LED.
You’ll need to figure out how to program an I/O pin so that it acts like an output and then you’ll need to figure out
how to write consecutive ones and zeros to the pin. All this information is contained in the AMD manuals.
Additionally, some of it is in the Tern documentation and some of it is in the textbook. Don’t ask for help until you
have read the documentation.
You should make a screenshot of the paradigm project window showing all the files included in your project. Your
report should include the screenshot along with links to all the source files. You should place informative comments
into your code, detailing any tricky or difficult issues you faced while programming. For each of the bullets in this
task you should write a line or two describing the steps you took to accomplish the exercise. Your report should
serve you as a reference in future labs when you need to create another project, write a program, and compile and
download code. As a reference, your report should include detailed instructions about creating and setting up
projects in Paradigm. Your report should also convince whoever reads it that you knew what you were doing. If
you had any troubles or faced any issues while completing the task you should write a line or two about them. Note,
the more quirks you discover and document about the lab environment now, the easier it will be when you get to the
complicated assignments.
Task 2
The second task is to become familiar with some of the debugging features in Paradigm. Figure out which tools
allow you to do the following exercises. Note: most of the Paradigm tools also have speed buttons on the toolbar.
- View variables associated with the program executing on the AMD processor.
- Run the program, stop execution, resume execution and reset the program so it starts over from the
beginning.
- Set a breakpoint. Run to the breakpoint, resume execution and remove the breakpoint.
- Single step the program through its execution stepping both into and over instructions.
To pass off task 2, demonstrate the use of these tools to the instructor/TA.
For your report you should make screenshots of the buttons / menus items you used to accomplish the bulleted
exercises. You should write a line or two describing each bullet. You should include anything you discovered about
the tools, good or bad. Your report should serve you as a reference in future labs when you need to use these tools.
