An Integrated Development Environment for
NXP LPC2000 ARM-based Microcontrollers

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What is Armaide?

Armaide is a fast and responsive integrated ARM development environment running on Windows. It consists of a multi-file, fully featured, syntax-aware programmer's editor, native code ARM compiler and linker. It is designed for developing reliable software to run on the powerful NXP / Philips LPC2000 family of ARM-based microcontrollers. 

The programming language used in Armaide is Oberon-07.  Its highly-evolved consistent structure, the result of decades of language design experience, enables you to write efficient and reliable software with the readability of Pascal and Delphi. The result is the processing power and low-level access of C with none of the associated risks of buffer overruns, memory leaks etc. etc. 

Many programming errors that might otherwise lead to confusing results are trapped at compile / link time before you even get to run your program. Most of the remainder are automatically trapped at runtime. Because the system identifies the exact point of failure you don't squander valuable development time hunting down spurious secondary side-effects.

To help you get started, ready to compile and run LPC2000-specific source code examples are distributed with all editions of Armaide - such as the example code for a simple LED-blinking program. Oberon programming text books describing in detail the source code used to solve a wide range of general programming tasks are readily available as downloadable files. 

Armaide News (Updated: 7 Jan 2010) 

• Version 2.3 released - now supported on Windows 7
• Links to Oberon programming text books included

Oberon-07 Code in Action

The  software used in the following examples is 100% Oberon-07. This includes the startup code, MCU configuration, runtime error trapping and reporting facilities, LCD drivers and the application itself. The file sizes shown are the TOTAL executable sizes.  The full source code is available on request for users of the Professional Edition of Armaide.

AutoCAD Slide Viewer (17 KB) 

Watch the video

The AutoCAD Slide viewer processes a vector graphics image file on a ThaiEasyElec LPC2378 Blue Screen board. The first two AutoCAD Slide images are processed in real time, the second two have built-in delays to show the drawing as it proceeds. The image data file sizes are 5 KB for the Space Shuttle and 28 KB for St Pauls. The data files are appended to the executable and read from flash ROM by the program using Armaide's 'resource management' facilities.

Digital Clock (8 KB)

A simple digital clock application running on a mikroElektronika EasyArm LPC2148 development board with no operating system or external RAM.

Oberon for LPC2000 Microcontrollers

The Armaide compiler is a complete implementation of the standard Oberon-07 language except for 64-bit REALs. It does however support 32-bit IEEE REALs - including multiplication and division operations.

The compiler includes additional features particularly designed for efficient code-generation, low-level programming and access to the capabilities of ARM-based microcontrollers: 

• Generation of regular ARM native code
• Explicit read / write access to memory-mapped peripheral device registers
• Interrupt procedures
• Direct access to the program counter, frame pointer, link register and other special ARM registers
• Leaf procedures: Store parameters and local variables in registers when execution speed is a priority
• Dynamic local arrays

The library modules and linker included with Armaide support the following families of ARM7 microcontrollers from NXP (Philips):

• LPC2101 / 2102 / 2103
• LPC2104 / 2105 / 2106
• LPC2142 / 2144 / 2146 / 2148
• LPC2212 / 2214
• LPC2364 / 2366 / 2368 / 2378

Source code of the startup files and library modules is available.

Armaide IDE Features

   Editing

• Standard Windows, programmer-oriented, text-editing features
• Fast and responsive interactive operation
• Tabbed multi-document interface for editing multiple source files
• Split-screen editing
• Regular expression support in Find / Replace
• Bookmarks
• Line modification indicators
• Optional line numbers, printing features etc. etc.

   Language Syntax-oriented Editing 

• Automatic syntax colouring of Oberon language elements as you type 
• Auto-indexing of procedures and imports of each source file for easy code navigation
• Auto-capitalisation of Oberon keywords as you type 

   Development

• Control the Editing, Compiling, and Linking generation cycle from the menu
• Capture compilation errors in a separate window
• Click on an error line to take you to the actual line in the source
• Automatic linking - no need for complex make files, obscure command line parameters etc. etc. 
• Generates standard HEX files ready to upload to the target ARM microcontroller 
• Optional command-line compiler and linker for use with batch files and 'make' tools.

Technical Support

Accurate and responsive technical support is a crucial part of the usefulness of any software - particularly software development systems. Prospective customers can try this out as direct technical support via our website is available to Evaluation Edition users.

LPC2000 Development Boards

Armaide has been tested with a range of LPC2000-based development and educational boards, with a variety of features, including the following:

Company	Board	Est.	Price
Coridium Corp	ARMmite	$US	49.00
Embedded Artists	LPC2106 RS232 QuickStart Board	EUR	39.00
	LPC2148 USB QuickStart Board		49.00
	+ QuickStart Prototype board		+20.00
MikroElektronika	EasyARM Board with LPC2148 MCU	$US	159.00
	+ LPC2214 MCU		+46.00
Olimex	LPC2378-STK Development Prototype Board	EUR	119.95
ThaiEasyElec	BlueScreen LPC2378	$US	116.95

System Requirements

Refer to the ReadMe file for details.