Geir Førre, President and CEO of ENERGY MICRO, knew very well even before the company was founded in 2007 that the market launch of a microcontroller with outstanding functional and physical properties would not be the only way to make the company a success. In fact he understood the importance of creating a basis which would result in a drastic simplification of development work and also reduce the time required for such work. Geir Førre is therefore proud to have a team on board under the leadership of Øyvind Grotmol, ENERGY MICRO‘s VP for Simplicity, which focuses on this objective every single day. The result of this work, which has now been underway for many years, is not only reflected in the legibility and structure of data sheets, reference manuals and application notes. Concepts which allow the fast and uncomplicated system integration of the required target application have particularly been used for the programming and presentation of source code libraries, application notes and demos. In addition ENERGY MICRO provides specially developed tools which offer helpful additional functions in the design implementation which are simply not available for conventional ARM-based development environments. What could be more logical than combining the results of this work under a single roof in a software console? The answer is called Simplicity Studio.

The appearance of Simplicity Studio is similar to an app for an iPad. The various icons in the central main window are split clearly into areas called “Tools“, “Chip Documentation“, “Software and Kits“, “Resources“ and “Updates“. A single click on the required icon takes the user to new contents which take the form of documentation, tools or graphic interfaces with further selection functions. On the left-hand side there is a drop-down menu in whose list appear the Tiny-Gecko, Gecko and Giant-Gecko block families together with a brief configuration description. After selecting a block the console is automatically reconfigured so that the main menu only displays the icons which are relevant to the selected block. The launch of the new Zero-Gecko family and the wireless chips with the product name Draco has resulted in a logical extension of the Simplicity Studio with the corresponding contents, tools and functions.
 
Special mention should be made of the complete integration of the free energy saving tools, the range of which is increasing all the time. For example the latest version of the energyAware™ Commander includes an intuitive programming interface for handling debug options, firmware upgrades, lock functions and program transfers. These functions cannot only be used for the EFM32 development kits but are also fully applicable to the use of off-board MCUs as long as the integral J-Link debugger from the development kits is used as the programming interface.

The energyAware™ Designer on the other hand simplifies the pin design which is often extremely time-consuming.
Using a graphic interface this enables the developer to assign peripherals such as UART and ADC to the various pin locations. The available peripherals and housing designs are automatically adjusted to the block selection. If there are overlaps in a pin assignment they are marked in red and alternatives are offered. The pin setting can finally be exported to a C source code file and report file.

ENERGY MICRO is particularly proud of the energyAware™ Profiler which is the first product to allow debugging energy-hungry functions during the runtime. The developer has three views available for this purpose – an energy profiler, a source code viewer and a display of the current consumption in real-time. During the runtime the energy profiler finds the current consumption of individual functions and sorts them in the energy profiler on the basis of their consumption. The developer can thus see immediately which functions offer the greatest potential for improving energy consumption. Clicking on the current curve automatically takes the user to the source code so that the developer can immediately view the relationship between the execution of commands and power consumption. This allows program parts which consume power unnecessarily and require reprogramming to be detected by very simple means. Furthermore the tool allows the real-time execution to be stopped, the power graph to be analyzed in more detail and data to be exported. As with the commander the profiler can also be used for off-board MCUs as long as an EFM32 development kit and its integral power measuring function is used as the debug interface.

In the “Software and Kits“ section the user will find a wide range of application notes and demos in C source code as well as extensive documentation for the development kits. Developers will be particularly pleased with the integral CMSIS (Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard) reference which covers the entire EFM32 C code library. The “Resources” section rounds off the package with online links and product presentations.

The “Download” section is used to remind the user that new updates are available. Clicking on this enables these updates to be integrated into Simplicity so that the developer is kept up to date at all times. Whilst the user is online the ring-hand window also provides the user with the latest news linked to the ENERGY MICRO homepage.

The Simplicity Studio is another major step forwards for ENERGY MICRO in the pursuit of its objective to simplify everyday development work for an EFM32 controller by means of new and intuitive ideas and thus also to drastically reduce development times. Simplicity ensures that developers are only one icon click away from the latest version of data sheets, errata sheets, C source code libraries, etc.

Simplicity Studio is available free of charge to download for Windows at: www.energymicro.com/simplicity

Versions for Linux and Mac are also on the roadmap.

Further information is available! Just contact us!