FRDM-MCXW70

Overview

The FRDM-MCXW70 is a compact and scalable development board for rapid prototyping of the MCX W70 wireless MCU. It offers easy evaluation of the MCX W70’s multiprotocol wireless support for Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, Thread and Matter. The board includes an on-board MCU-Link debugger, industry standard headers for easy access to the MCU’s I/Os, an accelerometer, a light sensor and external SPI flash memory.

The MCX W70x family features a 96 MHz Arm® Cortex®-M33 core coupled with a multiprotocol radio subsystem supporting Matter, Thread, Zigbee and Bluetooth LE. The independent radio subsystem, with a dedicated core and memory, offloads the main CPU, preserving it for the primary application and allowing firmware updates to support future wireless standards.

Hardware

  • MCXW70 Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller running up to 96 MHz

  • 1.5 MB on-chip Flash memory unit

  • 256 KB TCM RAM

  • On-board MCU-Link debugger with CMSIS-DAP

For more information about the MCXW70 SoC and FRDM-MCXW70 board, see:

Supported Features

The frdm_mcxw70 board supports the hardware features listed below.

on-chip / on-board
Feature integrated in the SoC / present on the board.
2 / 2
Number of instances that are enabled / disabled.
Click on the label to see the first instance of this feature in the board/SoC DTS files.
vnd,foo
Compatible string for the Devicetree binding matching the feature.
Click on the link to view the binding documentation.

frdm_mcxw70/mcxw70ac target

Type

Location

Description

Compatible

CPU

on-chip

ARM Cortex-M33F CPU1

arm,cortex-m33f

ADC

on-chip

LPC LPADC1

nxp,lpc-lpadc

ARM architecture

on-chip

NXP NBU interruption information1

nxp,nbu

Bluetooth

on-chip

NXP BLE HCI information1

nxp,hci-ble

CAN

on-chip

NXP FlexCAN controller1

nxp,flexcan

Clock control

on-chip

NXP K4 Generation SCG (System Clock Generator) IP node1

nxp,scg-k4

on-chip

Generic fixed-rate clock provider1

fixed-clock

Counter

on-chip

NXP Low Power Periodic Interrupt Timer (LPIT)1

nxp,lpit

on-chip

Child node for the Low Power Periodic Interrupt Timer node, intended for an individual timer channel4

nxp,lpit-channel

on-chip

NXP LPTMR11

nxp,lptmr

DMA

on-chip

NXP MCUX EDMA controller1

nxp,mcux-edma

Flash controller

on-chip

NXP MSF1 Flash Memory Module (FMU)1

nxp,msf1

GPIO & Headers

on-chip

Kinetis GPIO4

nxp,kinetis-gpio

I2C

on-chip

NXP LPI2C controller2

nxp,lpi2c

IEEE 802.15.4

on-chip

NXP MCXW71 IEEE 802.15.4 node1

nxp,mcxw-ieee802154

Input

on-board

Group of GPIO-bound input keys1

gpio-keys

Interrupt controller

on-chip

ARMv8-M NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller)1

arm,v8m-nvic

on-chip

NXP Wakeup Unit (WUU)1

nxp,wuu

LED

on-board

Group of GPIO-controlled LEDs1

gpio-leds

on-board

Group of PWM-controlled LEDs1

pwm-leds

MMU / MPU

on-chip

ARMv8-M MPU (Memory Protection Unit)1

arm,armv8m-mpu

MTD

on-chip

Flash node2

soc-nv-flash

on-board

Fixed partitions of a flash (or other non-volatile storage) memory2

fixed-partitions

Pin control

on-chip

NXP PORT Pin Controller4

nxp,port-pinmux

on-chip

NXP PORT Pin Controller1

nxp,port-pinctrl

Power management

on-chip

NXP Core Mode Controller (CMC)1

nxp,cmc

on-chip

NXP System Power Control (SPC)1

nxp,spc

PWM

on-chip

MCUX Timer/PWM Module (TPM)23

nxp,kinetis-tpm

RNG

on-chip

Kinetis TRNG (True Random Number Generator)1

nxp,kinetis-trng

RTC

on-chip

NXP Real Time Clock (RTC)1

nxp,rtc

Serial controller

on-chip

NXP LPUART2

nxp,lpuart

SPI

on-chip

NXP LPSPI controller3

nxp,lpspi

SRAM

on-chip

Generic on-chip SRAM2

mmio-sram

Timer

on-chip

ARMv8-M System Tick1

arm,armv8m-systick

Watchdog

on-chip

NXP watchdog (WDOG32)11

nxp,wdog32

on-chip

NXP External Watchdog Monitor1

nxp,ewm

Fetch Binary Blobs

To support Bluetooth, frdm_mcxw70 requires fetching binary blobs, which can be achieved by running the following command:

west blobs fetch hal_nxp

Programming and Debugging

The frdm_mcxw70 board supports the runners and associated west commands listed below.

flash debug rtt debugserver reset attach
jlink ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
linkserver ✅ (default) ✅ (default) ✅ ✅

Build and flash applications as usual (see Building an Application and Run an Application for more details).

Configuring a Debug Probe

A debug probe is used for both flashing and debugging the board. This board is configured by default to use the MCU-Link CMSIS-DAP Onboard Debug Probe.

Using LinkServer

Linkserver is the default runner for this board, and supports the factory default MCU-Link firmware. Follow the instructions in MCU-Link CMSIS-DAP Onboard Debug Probe to reprogram the default MCU-Link firmware. This only needs to be done if the default onboard debug circuit firmware was changed. To put the board in DFU mode to program the firmware, short jumper JP8.

Configuring a Console

Connect a USB cable from your PC to J28, and use the serial terminal of your choice (minicom, putty, etc.) with the following settings:

  • Speed: 115200

  • Data: 8 bits

  • Parity: None

  • Stop bits: 1

Application Building

Openthread applications

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b frdm_mcxw70 samples/net/sockets/echo_server -- -DEXTRA_CONF_FILE=overlay-ot.conf

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b frdm_mcxw70 samples/net/sockets/echo_client -- -DEXTRA_CONF_FILE=overlay-ot.conf

Application Flashing

Here is an example for the Hello World application.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b frdm_mcxw70 samples/hello_world
west flash

Open a serial terminal, reset the board (press the RESET button), and you should see the following message in the terminal:

*** Booting Zephyr OS build v4.2.0-xxx-xxxx ***
Hello World! frdm_mcxw70/mcxw706c

Debugging

Here is an example for the Hello World application.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b frdm_mcxw70/mcxw70ac samples/hello_world
west debug

Open a serial terminal, step through the application in your debugger, and you should see the following message in the terminal:

*** Booting Zephyr OS build v4.2.0-xxx-xxxx ***
Hello World! frdm_mcxw70/mcxw70ac

NBU Flashing

BLE functionality requires to fetch binary blobs, so make sure to follow the Fetch Binary Blobs section first.

Two images must be written to the board: one for the host (CM33) and one for the NBU (CM3).

  • To flash the application (CM33) refer to the Application Flashing section above.

  • To flash the NBU Flashing, follow the instructions below:

    • Install blhost from NXP’s website. This is the tool that will allow you to flash the NBU.

    • Enter ISP mode. To boot the MCU in ISP mode, follow these steps:

      • Disconnect the FRDM-MCXW70 board from all power sources.

      • Keep the SW2 (ISP) button on the board pressed, while connecting the board to the host computer USB port.

      • Release the SW2 (ISP) button. The MCXW70 MCU boots in ISP mode.

      • Reconnect any external power supply, if needed.

    • Use the following command to flash NBU file:

Flash BLE only NBU on Windows
blhost.exe -p COMxx -- receive-sb-file mcxw70_nbu_ble.sb3

Please consider changing COMxx on Windows or ttyxx on Linux to the serial port used by your board.

The NBU files can be found in : <zephyr workspace>/modules/hal/nxp/zephyr/blobs/mcxw70/ folder.

For more details:

Troubleshooting

Using Segger SystemView and RTT

Note that when using SEGGER SystemView or RTT with this SOC, the RTT control block address must be set manually within SystemView or the RTT Viewer. The address provided to the tool should be the location of the _SEGGER_RTT symbol, which can be found using a debugger or by examining the zephyr.map file output by the linker.

The RTT control block address must be provided manually because this SOC supports ECC RAM. If the SEGGER tooling searches the ECC RAM space for the control block a fault will occur, provided that ECC is enabled and the RAM segment being searched has not been initialized to a known value.

Support Resources for Zephyr

References