Instructions and download here: http://www.electricrock.co.nz/blog/microchip-c30/.

Latest version of the script can be found here: http://www.electricrock.co.nz/blog/microchip-c30/

The most notable update is that my previous C30 building tutorials are now deprecated in favor of a new bash script that does it automagically. Check out the page for more details.

I bought a DLP-RFID1 USB RFID tag reader/writer from Digikey (Cat # 813-1013-ND). However, I was unable to locate sufficient libraries to develop software that uses it under Linux. So I have written a C++ library to do this. Read on for more information and to download it.

The DLP-RFID1 comprises an FTDI USB-Serial IC connected to a microcontroller. Therefore the library I have developed is based on libftdi. Currently, it is very basic and supports only polling for tags (not reading and writing tags). As I currently have no need for reading and writing tags I don’t plan to add this functionality unless someone asks for it.

The library can be downloaded from http://www.electricrock.co.nz/files/rfid1/librfid1-0.1.0.tar.bz2. Documentation is provided in the package.

This is my first time making a library package for Linux, so if you find any problems or have any suggestions please leave a comment and let me know.

This an update to my previous tutorial for building Microchip’s C Compiler for PIC24 MCUs and dsPIC DSCs (herein referred to as C30). This update covers building v3.20 of the compiler (as opposed to v3.12) under Ubuntu 9.10.  Again, this is mostly gleaned from  http://embeddedfreak.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/compiling-mplab-c30-v311b-under-linux, but adapted for the latest version of C30.

These instructions also work for v3.22 and are reported to work with v3.23.

Installation

Install prerequisite software

• Install packages from the Ubuntu repositories:

  sudo aptitude install build-essential bison flex tofrodos

• Install wine (instructions available from the Wine website: http://www.winehq.org/download/deb). I used the following steps to install the latest version (you can just install the one in the Ubuntu repositories if you aren’t worried about being bleeding edge):

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
  sudo aptitude install wine

Setup paths

The exports below can be varied depending on where you prefer things to be put. At the risk of stating the obvious I’ll outline what each of the exports is for:

• C30BUILD is the temporary directory where the C30 tool suite is built.
• C30INSTALL is  where it will be installed to.
• DOWNLOADDIR is where you save files to when downloading.
• WINEPREFIX is where you want to install the proprietary tool suite.

export C30BUILD=$HOME/c30-build
export C30INSTALL=$HOME/Apps/pic30
export DOWNLOADDIR=$HOME/Downloads
export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/Apps/pic30-wine

Download sources, etc.

• From Microchip’s website download the sources for the compiler and binutils.  They can be found on this page: http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=1406&dDocName=en023073. You will need to login to download.  You want to get:
  • GCC Code for MPLAB ASM30 for dsPIC/PIC24 v3.20
  • MPLAB C30 v3.20 GCC Source
• Download the academic or evaluation version of the proprietary compiler from the C30 website (http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=1406&dDocName=en010065)
• Download the patches. I have adapted these from those provided by John Steele Scott (see my previous post) to work with v3.20.
  • Binutils: http://www.electricrock.co.nz/c30/pic30-binutils-3.20.tar.bz2
  • GCC: http://www.electricrock.co.nz/c30/pic30-gcc-3.20.tar.bz2

Building Binutils

• Unzip the sources.

  mkdir -p $C30BUILD/binutils
  cd $C30BUILD/binutils
  tar -zxvf $DOWNLOADDIR/mplabalc30v3_20.tar.gz
  tar -jxvf $DOWNLOADDIR/pic30-binutils-3.20.tar.bz2
  

• The microchip sources have been edited on windows, so we need to convert files to unix line endings so that they can be patched.

  find . -type f -exec dos2unix '{}' ';'

• Apply the patches.  So far as I can tell, these fix a few compile issues with the microchip compiler and make it play nicer under Linux.

  for i in pic30-binutils-3.20/patches/*.diff; do echo "Applying patch $i..."; patch -p0 < $i; done

• Build it, the version number in DMHCP_VERSION needs to match the version of the non-free compiler you install.

   cd acme/
  CFLAGS=-DMCHP_VERSION="v3.20-Debian" ./configure --prefix=$C30INSTALL --target=pic30-coff
  

• Before we can make it we need to touch some files otherwise it doesn’t get built properly.

  find . -name "*.y" -o -name "*.l" -exec touch '{}' ';'

• Make it.

  make

• Install, if you install to a location that you don’t have write permission to (e.g. /usr/local) you will need to use sudo.

   make install 

Building GCC

• Similar process to binutils above for building GCC.

  mkdir -p $C30BUILD/gcc
  cd $C30BUILD/gcc
  tar -zxvf $DOWNLOADDIR/mplabc30v3_20.tar.gz
  tar -jxvf $DOWNLOADDIR/pic30-gcc-3.20.tar.bz2
  find . -type f -exec dos2unix '{}' ';'
  for i in pic30-gcc-3.20/patches/*.diff; do echo "Applying patch $i..."; patch -p0 < $i; done

• We take a slight deviation from binutils here as we create a separate directory for GCC to build in, apparently it likes it that way.

  mkdir build
  cd build
  CFLAGS=-DMCHP_VERSION="v3.20-Debian" ../gcc-4.0.2/gcc-4.0.2/configure --prefix=$C30INSTALL --target=pic30-coff --enable-languages=c

• Then we have to touch c-parse.y cause (according to embeddedfreak) it doesn’t get generated correctly, so we need it to be recreated. I just followed the instructions and it worked.

  touch ../gcc-4.0.2/gcc-4.0.2/gcc/c-parse.y

• Build it and install it (again, use sudo for make install if you have to).

  make
  make install

• Link the binutils into GCC’s tool path so it can find them, and create a link to GCC itself so we don’t have to type the version number every time:

  ln -s $C30INSTALL/bin/pic30-coff-as $C30INSTALL/libexec/gcc/pic30-coff/4.0.3/pic30-coff-as
  ln -s $C30INSTALL/bin/pic30-coff-ld $C30INSTALL/libexec/gcc/pic30-coff/4.0.3/pic30-coff-ld
  ln -s $C30INSTALL/bin/pic30-coff-gcc-4.0.3 $C30INSTALL/bin/pic30-coff-gcc

Next Steps

The rest of the steps are just the same as for building v3.12.  I won’t repeat myself here, just check out my previous tutorial and follow the steps from Setup the non-free part onward.