Microcontroller-resident software development environment supporting application-level asynchronous event handling, interactive debugging and pin variables for embedded systems
US8117587B1 · kind B1 · utility
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Jul 22, 2008 |
| Grant date | Feb 14, 2012 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Sep 19, 2030 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F11/3698
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
An operating system including a software development environment is programmed into the on-chip flash memory of a system-on-a-chip type microcontroller. The software development environment is configured to reside entirely in the microcontroller's on-chip flash memory and includes an editor, a line-by-line bytecode compiler, a flasher, and an interactive debugger. A user operating a terminal emulator on a host computer connects to the microcontroller chip by means of a serial (USB) connection based on an FTDI protocol, or other serial link, in order to develop a BASIC program for the embedded system. The operating system is configured to permit external I/O pins on the microcontroller chip to be mapped to special “pin variables” for manipulation or examination by the user program, and to manage internal peripherals (timers, UARTs) of the microcontroller chip so as to permit application-level interrupt handling.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.