LPCOpen from NXP
A Software Development Platform with FreeRTOS

Introduction

LPCOpen is NXP's free software development platform for its LPC brand of ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers. The goal of LPCOpen is to provide you with everything necessary to get up and running on LPC microcontrollers as quickly as possible during the evaluation phase, and to provide you with a working platform as a starting point during the development phase.

LPCOpen is structured in four layers, from low level chip and peripheral support at the bottom, to example applications at the top. Each layer uses the interfaces provided by the layer below it.

LPCOpen packages are provided for the IAR, Keil and NXP's own free LPCXpresso tools, and target popular off the shelf development boards from Embedded Artists, NGX and Keil. Many of the packaged examples use FreeRTOS.

The series of walk through steps available on this website demonstrate how to get started with LPCOpen. Note that users of LPC17xx and LPC18xx microcontrollers also qualify for free commercial licenses for FreeRTOS-Plus-CLI and FreeRTOS-Plus-FAT SL. Also see the FreeRTOS page on NXP's LPCWare website.

Worthy of Special Note: USB Drivers in ROM

Integrating and using USB drivers is often a source of great frustration when developing a low level board support package. In recognition of this NXP have actually built USB drivers directly into the hardware of selected LPC microcontroller parts - not only providing you with a working hardware solution, but also saving you the flash memory space that would otherwise be taken up with hardware drivers.

LPCOpen includes header files that map a set of C callable functions onto this hardware feature, and the LPCOpen practical walk through presented on this website demonstrates just how easy they are to use.

Other LPCOpen Benefits

• Supports all NXP Cortex-M based MCUs
• Similar APIs across processor families
• Thoroughly tested, maintained, and documented code, with quick start guides
• Meaningful application examples using multiple peripherals, running stand-alone or with FreeRTOS
• Steadily increasing number of example applications, including USB audio, HID, Web Server, etc

LPCOpen Driver and Middleware Components

On-chip Peripheral Drivers I2C I2S UART CAN Ethernet Flash ADC DAC RTC LCD Timer

USB Interface to hardware USB drivers Open source device and host stacks HID, MSD, keyboard, mouse, CDC, etc. Middleware lwIP CHAN FATfs RTOS FreeRTOS Graphics emWIN (library) SWIM

See how to use LPCOpen in the practical walk through.