NXP MR-CANHUBK3

Overview

NXP MR-CANHUBK3 [1] is an evaluation board for mobile robotics applications such as autonomous mobile robots (AMR) and automated guided vehicles (AGV). It features an NXP S32K344 [2] general-purpose automotive microcontroller based on an Arm Cortex-M7 core (Lock-Step).

NXP MR-CANHUBK3 (TOP)

Hardware

  • NXP S32K344

    • Arm Cortex-M7 (Lock-Step), 160 MHz (Max.)

    • 4 MB of program flash, with ECC

    • 320 KB RAM, with ECC

    • Ethernet 100 Mbps, CAN FD, FlexIO, QSPI

    • 12-bit 1 Msps ADC, 16-bit eMIOS timer

  • NXP FS26 Safety System Basis Chip [3]

  • Interfaces:

    • Console UART

    • 6x CAN FD

    • 100Base-T1 Ethernet

    • JST-GH connectors and I/O headers for I2C, SPI, GPIO, PWM, etc.

More information about the hardware and design resources can be found at NXP MR-CANHUBK3 [1] website.

Supported Features

The mr_canhubk3 board configuration supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

SIUL2

on-chip
pinctrl
gpio
external interrupt controller

WKPU

on-chip

interrupt controller

LPUART

on-chip

serial

QSPI

on-chip

flash

FLEXCAN

on-chip

can

LPI2C

on-chip

i2c

ADC SAR

on-chip

adc

LPSPI

on-chip

spi

WDT

FS26 SBC

watchdog

EMAC

on-chip

ethernet mdio

eMIOS

on-chip

pwm

EDMA

on-chip

dma

The default configuration can be found in the Kconfig file boards/arm/mr_canhubk3/mr_canhubk3_defconfig.

Connections and IOs

Each GPIO port is divided into two banks: low bank, from pin 0 to 15, and high bank, from pin 16 to 31. For example, PTA2 is the pin 2 of gpioa_l (low bank), and PTA20 is the pin 4 of gpioa_h (high bank).

The GPIO controller provides the option to route external input pad interrupts to either the SIUL2 EIRQ or WKPU interrupt controllers, as supported by the SoC. By default, GPIO interrupts are routed to SIUL2 EIRQ interrupt controller, unless they are explicity configured to be directed to the WKPU interrupt controller, as outlined in dts/bindings/gpio/nxp,s32-gpio.yaml.

To find information about which GPIOs are compatible with each interrupt controller, refer to the device reference manual.

Note

It is important to highlight that the current board configuration lacks support for wake-up events and power-management features. WKPU functionality is restricted solely to serving as an interrupt controller.

LEDs

The MR-CANHUBK3 board has one user RGB LED:

Devicetree node

Color

Pin

Pin Functions

led0 / user_led1_red

Red

PTE14

FXIO D7 / EMIOS0 CH19

led1 / user_led1_green

Green

PTA27

FXIO D5 / EMIOS1 CH10 / EMIOS2 CH10

led2 / user_led1_blue

Blue

PTE12

FXIO D8 / EMIOS1 CH5

The user can control the LEDs in any way. An output of 0 illuminates the LED.

Buttons

The MR-CANHUBK3 board has two user buttons:

Devicetree node

Label

Pin

Pin Functions

sw0 / user_button_1

SW1

PTD15

EIRQ31

sw0 / user_button_2

SW2

PTA25

EIRQ5 / WKPU34

System Clock

The Arm Cortex-M7 (Lock-Step) are configured to run at 160 MHz.

Serial Console

By default, the serial console is provided through lpuart2 on the 7-pin DCD-LZ debug connector P6.

Connector

Pin

Pin Function

P6.2

PTA9

LPUART2_TX

P6.3

PTA8

LPUART2_RX

CAN

CAN is provided through FLEXCAN interface with 6 instances.

Devicetree node

Pin

Pin Function

Bus Connector

flexcan0
PTA6
PTA7
PTA6_CAN0_RX
PTA7_CAN0_TX

P12/P13

flexcan1
PTC9
PTC8
PTC9_CAN0_RX
PTC8_CAN0_TX

P14/P15

flexcan2
PTE25
PTE24
PTE25_CAN0_RX
PTE24_CAN0_TX

P16/P17

flexcan3
PTC29
PTC28
PTC29_CAN0_RX
PTC28_CAN0_TX

P18/019

flexcan4
PTC31
PTC30
PTC31_CAN0_RX
PTC30_CAN0_TX

P20/P21

flexcan5
PTC11
PTC10
PTC11_CAN0_RX
PTC10_CAN0_TX

P22/P23

Note

There is limitation by HAL SDK, so CAN only has support maximum 64 message buffers (MBs) and support maximum 32 message buffers for concurrent active instances with 8 bytes payload. We need to pay attention to configuration options:

  1. CONFIG_CAN_MAX_MB must be less or equal than the maximum number of message buffers that is according to the table below.

  2. CONFIG_CAN_MAX_FILTER must be less or equal than CONFIG_CAN_MAX_MB.

Devicetree node

Payload

Hardware support

Software support

flexcan0
8 bytes
16 bytes
32 bytes
64 bytes
96 MBs
63 MBs
36 MBs
21 MBs
64 MBs
42 MBs
24 MBs
14 MBs

flexcan1
8 bytes
16 bytes
32 bytes
64 bytes
64 MBs
42 MBs
24 MBs
14 MBs
64 MBs
42 MBs
24 MBs
14 MBs

flexcan2
8 bytes
16 bytes
32 bytes
64 bytes
64 MBs
42 MBs
24 MBs
14 MBs
64 MBs
42 MBs
24 MBs
14 MBs

flexcan3
8 bytes
16 bytes
32 bytes
64 bytes
32 MBs
21 MBs
12 MBs
7 MBs
32 MBs
21 MBs
12 MBs
7 MBs

flexcan4
8 bytes
16 bytes
32 bytes
64 bytes
32 MBs
21 MBs
12 MBs
7 MBs
32 MBs
21 MBs
12 MBs
7 MBs

flexcan5
8 bytes
16 bytes
32 bytes
64 bytes
32 MBs
21 MBs
12 MBs
7 MBs
32 MBs
21 MBs
12 MBs
7 MBs

Note

A CAN bus usually requires 60 Ohm termination at both ends of the bus. This may be accomplished using one of the included CAN termination boards. For more details, refer to the section 6.3 CAN Connectors in the Hardware User Manual of NXP MR-CANHUBK3 [1].

I2C

I2C is provided through LPI2C interface with 2 instances lpi2c0 and lpi2c1 on corresponding connectors P4, P3.

Connector

Pin

Pin Function

P3.2

PTD9

LPI2C1_SCL

P3.3

PTD8

LPI2C1_SDA

P4.3

PTD14

LPI2C0_SCL

P4.4

PTD13

LPI2C0_SDA

ADC

ADC is provided through ADC SAR controller with 3 instances. ADC channels are divided into 3 groups (precision, standard and external).

Note

All channels of an instance only run on 1 group channel at the same time.

FS26 SBC Watchdog

On normal operation after the board is powered on, there is a window of 256 ms on which the FS26 watchdog must be serviced with a good token refresh, otherwise the watchdog will signal a reset to the MCU. This board configuration enables the FS26 watchdog driver that handles this initialization.

Note

The FS26 can also be started in debug mode (watchdog disabled) following these steps:

  1. Power off the board.

  2. Remove the jumper JP1 (pins 1-2 open), which is connected by default.

  3. Power on the board.

  4. Reconnect the jumper JP1 (pins 1-2 shorted).

External Flash

The on-board MX25L6433F 64M-bit multi-I/O Serial NOR Flash memory is connected to the QSPI controller port A1. This board configuration selects it as the default flash controller.

Ethernet

This board has a single instance of Ethernet Media Access Controller (EMAC) interfacing with a NXP TJA1103 [4] 100Base-T1 Ethernet PHY. Currently, there is limited driver for this PHY that allows for overiding the default pin strapping configuration for the PHY (RMII, master, autonomous mode enabled, polarity correction enabled) to slave mode.

The 100Base-T1 signals are available in connector P9 and can be converted to 100Base-T using a Ethernet media converter such as RDDRONE-T1ADAPT [5].

Programming and Debugging

Applications for the mr_canhubk3 board can be built in the usual way as documented in Building an Application.

This board configuration supports Lauterbach TRACE32 [6] and SEGGER J-Link [7] West runners for flashing and debugging applications. Follow the steps described in Lauterbach TRACE32 Debug Host Tools and J-Link Debug Host Tools, to setup the flash and debug host tools for these runners, respectively. The default runner is J-Link.

Flashing

Run the west flash command to flash the application using SEGGER J-Link. Alternatively, run west flash -r trace32 to use Lauterbach TRACE32.

The Lauterbach TRACE32 runner supports additional options that can be passed through command line:

west flash -r trace32 --startup-args elfFile=<elf_path> loadTo=<flash/sram>
   eraseFlash=<yes/no> verifyFlash=<yes/no>

Where:

  • <elf_path> is the path to the Zephyr application ELF in the output directory

  • loadTo=flash loads the application to the SoC internal program flash (CONFIG_XIP must be set), and loadTo=sram load the application to SRAM. Default is flash.

  • eraseFlash=yes erases the whole content of SoC internal flash before the application is downloaded to either Flash or SRAM. This routine takes time to execute. Default is no.

  • verifyFlash=yes verify the SoC internal flash content after programming (use together with loadTo=flash). Default is no.

For example, to erase and verify flash content:

west flash -r trace32 --startup-args elfFile=build/zephyr/zephyr.elf loadTo=flash eraseFlash=yes verifyFlash=yes

Debugging

Run the west debug command to start a GDB session using SEGGER J-Link. Alternatively, run west debug -r trace32 to launch the Lauterbach TRACE32 software debugging interface.

References