Getting Started with Tiva ARM Cortex M4 Microcontrollers

The book deals with laboratory experiments around ARM microcontroller. ARM microcontrollers, which are classified as 32-bit devices, are currently the most popular of all microcontrollers. They cover a wide range of applications that extend from traditional 8-bit devices to 32-bit devices. Of the various ARM sub-families, Cortex-M4 is a middle level microcontroller that lends itself well for data acquisition and control and digital signal manipulation applications. ARM microcontrollers are manufactured under license by dozens of manufacturers and Texas Instruments is one such prominent manufacturer.  Given the prominence of ARM microcontroller, it is important that it should be incorporated in academic curriculums. However, that doesn’t seem to the case primarily because of the lack of teaching material – textbooks and comprehensive laboratory manuals. While there are a few textbooks, they are too out dated which has kept them from being considered as suitable teaching aids; there is atotal absence of any laboratory text dealing with contemporary offerings from the ARM family architecture.  The proposed lab manual deals with the architecture of the Tiva Cortex-M4 ARM microcontrollers from Texas Instruments. It describes various ways of programming these microcontrollers. The Tiva Launchpad – a low cost evaluation kit from Texas Instruments is used in this lab manual. However, given the meagre peripherals and sensors available on the kit, we describe the design of Padma – a circuit board full of rich set of peripherals and sensors that connects to the Tiva Launchpad and exploits the rich on-chip features of the Tiva microcontroller family. Each and every resource of the microcontroller – Digital Input and output, Timers and counters, serial communication channels, analog to digital conversion, interrupt structure and power management features are involved in a set of more than 70 experiments to help teach a full semester course on these microcontrollers. However, beyond these exercises of physical interfacing, the lab manual describes an inexpensive BoB (Break Out Board) that allows the student to learn how to design and build standalone projects. A few illustrative projects are also described in the manual.