This post is dedicated to all of you developers that have no bloody clue what product you are going to develop using the Synergy Platform . . . yet. We all start out in this place so don’t feel bad. In fact, your situation is so common Renesas provides a Synergy kit just for you – the Synergy Starter Kit, aka SK. Synergy SKs provide an inexpensive way to get hands-on familiarity with the Synergy Platform, exercise the Synergy Software Package’s (SSP) Application Framework and leverage the capabilities of the ThreadX RTOS to simultaneously manage connectivity and user interface activities. Renesas currently offers the SK-S7G2, a trimmed-down version of the DK-S7G2 development kit. Using the SK-S7G2, I was able to access the e 2 studio Integrated Solution Development Environment (ISDE) in a snap and start to get familiar with tools like TraceX and GUIX Studio. The SK lets me tap into most of the SSP’s functionality. For example, I can configure software, rebuild the demo code, set breakpoints, single-step through the code, make minor modifications, debug the code and even measure the performance and memory size footprint of my application. As with Synergy DKs , the SK-S7G2 provides high speed connectivity over Ethernet, USB-HS host and USB-FS device; CAN; wireless connectivity to mobile Internet devices via BLE 4.0; color graphics, audio, and capacitive touch user interface features. When I’m ready to add my own functionality to the baseline, the SK-S7G2 kit can be expanded via Arduino and Pmod connection points. With standard Pmods you can add peripheral hardware modules like an Ambient Light Sensor, GPS Receiver, 3-axis Accelerometer or 3-axis Digital Gyroscope to support your custom code development. My first experience with the SK was in October, shortly before Renesas launched the kits at its DevCon Developer Conference. The lessons stuck. I gained a better understanding of the RTOS threads, stacks and APIs, and learned how to leverage the SSP Application Frameworks, modify the demo code to my own application (once I figured out what I wanted to do) and customize the graphics and connectivity. And much of this work didn’t require me to actually write any code, since the code generators take care of all the low and mid-level interfaces. That I really liked! I also appreciated that the kit supported my GUI development on the QVGA color display by providing access to the GUIX Studio desktop design tool. Using GUIX I was able to create UI graphics and flow before compiling to the MCU target. Again without writing low level code! Do you see a pattern here? Check out the Synergy SK-S7G2 Quick Start Guide to get rolling. Next time we’ll talk Product Examples (PE), with particular emphasis on the PE-HMI kit. Professor_IoT Hot Tip: Synergy SK Demos and Applications Once you get your kit you can download some amazing demos and applications from the Synergy Gallery. These include examples for user interfaces with GUIX; USB connectivity for HID, Mass Storage Device or Host applications using USBX; and Networking examples for a web server, DHCP and DNS applications using NetX. You can download all these directly from the Synergy Gallery .
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