MakeCode Arcade smart shield firmware

Firmware for shields with screen/buttons that enable MakeCode Arcade. The shield drives the screen (in particular it can bit-bang a 320x240 parallel connection screen).

This firmware is just an example. Shield manufactures can use it as a base for their own development.

More information on Arcade shield can be found at in the Arcade shield spec and in particular in the PDF schematic.

Building

You will need a Unix-like environment to build the firmware. On Windows, you can use Windows Subsystem for Linux or mingw32.

• install arm-none-eabi-gcc (we've been using 9-2019-q4-major)
• install openocd (optional when using Black Magic Probe)
• install GNU Make
• run make; you should get a successful build

Upon first run of make, a Makefile.user file will be created. You will want to adjust the settings in there - there are comments in there that should guide you through the process.

To deploy the firmware to a module you will need a debugger interface. You have three options:

• Black Magic Probe; you can also re-program other debuggers with BMP firmware
• a CMSIS-DAP debugger; we've been using Particle Debugger; make sure to disconnect micro:bit USB port from your computer when using this
• an ST-LINK/V2 or one of its clones - this is the default setting You will want to set the right interface in Makefile.user.

First deployment

Head to main.c, uncomment call to show_test_screen(). Now deploy your program by running make run (or make r for short). You'll likely need to have micro:bit connected to the shield to close the power circuit. You should see vertical stripes on the screen.

If you don't:

• make sure the screen is hardware-configured as 8-bit parallel (and not 16-bit or SPI)
• make sure the screen is using pins D[17:10] for communication (IM3-0 are 1001); see Section 4. of ILI9341 datasheet
• make sure it's an ILI9341 screen; if not you may need to edit ili9341.c file

Once you have the screen running, comment out show_test_screen() and deploy again. You now should be able to run Arcade games on the micro:bit.

Notable make targets

Other than the building/deployment targets, the following might be of note:

• make gdb - run GDB debugger
• make clean - clean (duh!)

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.opensource.microsoft.com.

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This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

Legal Notices

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