Well, I haven’t personally used this setup, but I think it should work for you. Couple of points:
The starter kit doesn’t come with a battery holder.
Programming from your laptop shouldn’t be a problem as long as the target board it externally powered. I don’t think you’ll get enough juice from the port to power the board.
Hi Gavin – I’ve been doing a lot of MSP430 designs in my consulting business the past couple years (working on two new designs right now actually). Here’s a few comments and things you might run into:
The MSP-449STK-2 starter kits I bought from Sparkfun all had battery holders with a mating connector and leads installed.
Pete – my MSP-449STK-2 starter kit did have a battery holder. Has that changed?
You may have trouble with a laptop and JTAG dongle regardless of powering the kit from the parallel port or battery pack. Neither the Olimex dongle or the TI dongle would work correctly with my Dell laptop parallel port.
The dongles all work fine from any of my desktop PCs. Laptop parallel ports seem to be really “hit or miss” with regards to the parallel port JTAG dongles.
I started with IAR Embedded Workbench (TI Kickstart kit) but bought Quadravox AQ430 tools when I outgrew the 4K code limit. There are some very good MSP430 tools out there – Rowley Crossworks, Quadravox, Imagecraft and Hi-Tech all make very good tools at much better price than IAR. Then there’s always GCC for the MSP430 if you are inclined towards open source tools.
On your battery question… you may have some troubles and here’s why. The MSP430 is spec’d to run from 1.8V to 3.6V. Everything looks good so far. But if you read the specs carefully, you’ll find that Flash programming is only specified from 3.0V to 3.6V. You can stretch the lower limit to about 2.7V based on my experience and that of some people who have tested the MSP430’s extensively over the voltage range but at anything less than 3.0V you are taking your chances that programming won’t work.
So what I generally do with my designs is either use 3 cells and a 3.0/3.3V LDO micropower regulator if I’m using NiMH cells – or – I use 2 alkaline cells if I must have a 2 cell system. With a 3 cell pack of any kind you’ll need a regulator because 3 fully charged NiMH or 3 nominal 1.5V alkaline cells will exceed the MSP430’s maximum voltage rating. I’ve also used the MSP430 with a single Li-Ion cell and a LDO regulator.
BTW, the MSP-449STK-2 starter kit is an excellent kit. I have a couple here for quickly throwing together test code to try. I also bought several for a medical instrument project and stripped the displays from them to use on another PCB of my design. That’s a whole 'nother story though…
MGP:
Pete – my MSP-449STK-2 starter kit did have a battery holder. Has that changed?
It did? Open mouth, insert foot…
I guess I’ll hafta check my sources a little closer.
Pete
MGP took much effort to write this long post, so I am more inclined to think he did get one battery holder . Last time I glanced through the specification again, I did see a in it, I guess it was added after you ordered your kit.
