Question about visual design in ModusToolbox

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WaMa_286156
Level 5
Level 5
First comment on blog 100 replies posted 50 replies posted

I was more than interested to see the video concerning ModusToolbox.  The videos are good on what they cover.  What the first video does not cover bothers me.

One glaring omission in the first video was the ability to add your own custom designed logic (via UDB manipulation) to the PSOC6, either visually or through code (i.e. Verilog).  In the Cypress Creator, it is possible to do either Visual design with the IP Toolbox on pre-crafted components, or using Verilog for the PSOC 6.2 and below (PSOC5, PSOC4, PSOC3).  They did mention 3rd party designs, but there was no hint you could create your own IP.

Since, according to video #1, all new PSOC products will be supported only by the ModusToolbox, is this a signal that Cypress will no longer support the custom logic design methodology?  Are they removing UDB's from future products?  If they are supporting custom design, will it be visual, or just code.  If code, will the magic incantation be published?

If no custom logic design is supported, I am very disappointed.  It removes future versions of PSOC6 from strong consideration for new products, at least for me.  I will stick with PSOC 6.2 (still supported by PSOC Creator) or below.  PSOC5 works well for us, due to being CMOS, and it works at very high temperatures (needed for automotive and Oil Field.)

16 Replies
markgsaunders
Employee
Employee
50 sign-ins 10 solutions authored 5 solutions authored

Hello!

I need to re-watch that video but we are misleading you if we say "all new PSOC products will be supported only by the ModusToolbox". I hope we are not scaring everyone! We are still supporting PSoC Creator and adding new devices to that product.

Along with our MCU focus, Cypress are developing new devices that complement the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity chips. There is less configurable content in those devices because their primary function is a "compute engine" for the stack and applications. These devices are going to have more memory (on and off-chip) and run faster, but still provide PSoC features like integrated analog, CapSense, MagSense, and standard MCU peripherals. These devices are a natural fit for ModusToolbox rather than PSoC Creator because it provides the software-first development approach our customers in this area demand.

Clearly, like me, you are a keen user of UDBs because of the amazing and unique configurability they provide. That's not going away!

Regards, Mark.

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This is very disappointing. What separates PSOC from all the other ARM CPU vendors is the hardware design capabilities. I'm not sure why Cypress thinks that by adding WiFi/BT that the hardware design requirements go away. Why not have a nicely integrated tool that works for both PSOC and WiFi/BT chips. Even worse, why have two development tools that don't work nicely together. I too thought that ModusToolBox was a way to integrate the capabilities of PSOC Creator and WICED. Now you have three tools that don't integrate. You did a great job with PDL, so why not just add the WiFi library to PSOC Creator?

I would love to have a PSOC device with more memory (on and off chip) and run faster. What happened to PSOC with cortexM7?

Also the way WICED configures I/O pins for components is just stupid and confusing. Components pins are fixed and not fully defined (SPI0, SPI1, SP2, etc), so you have to modify Cypress code to add more components and used alternative pins. This should not happen. Why not retain the pin layout used in PSOC creator.

I too am hoping to see the schematic capability integrated into Modus. Right now it appears that if I need IoT I must give up schematic mode and use Modus and if I need schematic I must use Creator and give up wifi.

If I have misunderstood, please let me/us know, Mark.

Thank you!

Mark A

Yes, I'm afraid that's where we are today. We are working on ways to empower UDB-based design in ModusToolbox but it's not in the product today.

Hi,

I just wanted to add my voice to those expressing some bewilderment with all this.

I have completed a number of designs using PSoC 4 with Creator, making great use of the UDBs, programmable analog, BLE etc. I was away on other things for just over a year, but am now looking at some new designs. Based on the PSoC 6 data sheets, I had intended to go with that series, but then I pulled out the PSoC 6 BLE Poineer Kit I have, and started to look at building some test applications, only to discover all this confusion with these new tool-chain offerings and what silicon is and isn't supported by them. I am now very confused and apprehensive about going with the PSoC 6 range and have decided to use PSoC 5 devices instead and stick with Creator.

I was disappointed to see that Creator has not been updated since Version 4.2, and am now worried that my many hours of time invested in this silicon/tool-chain offering might now be at risk.

Your PSoC UDB/Analog fabric and its associated schematic design feature in Creator was a game changer for me, also for a number of clients I work with. As mentioned in another posting in this forum, your PSoC offering lives or dies by this - it is THE differentiator when compared with other MCU vendors.

I sincerely hope my fears are unfounded.

Best regards,

Peter

Rolf_Nooteboom
Level 5
Level 5
10 sign-ins 5 solutions authored First solution authored

As EAP ModusToolbox user I share the concerns.

At around 1994 I started working with Microchip and was using assembly language and later on the HITECH C compiler. Then in 2001 I started using PSoC together with PSoC Designer and I was really astonished by the flexibility of PSoC! It was even possible to create your own analog filters inside these incredible nice devices.

Then PSoC3 and PSoC-Creator came out. I still remind the first time I started working with PSoC Creator, it was like MAN, am I dreaming?!! PSoC Creator was the tool of the future, like everyone drives a T-Ford and you drive a Mustang. You can just drag and drop UARTs, flip-flops, ANDs, NORs, XORs, rotary decoders, glitch filters and so much more into your microcontroller!! In a sudden there was no other microcontroller even close to the capabilities of PSoC. Let me tell you, hacked the sh#t out of PSoC using UDB's!

Now, almost 10 years later PSoC Creator is still modern and one of the nicest tools to work with. It could use a facelift here and there but overall it's a good IDE and the graphical design tool still rules.

With ModusToolbox it looks-and-feels like stepping 15 years back in time. I really did my best to keep positive but I've to say this is very hard. Especially when 80% of the building errors are due to one of the 10+ path settings for your project which are almost hidden in between the tons of other settings and configurations.

However, there are good things coming along as well. With OpenOCD for PSoC it's now possible to use the IDE of your choice. Together with the configuration tool which now can be called from command line, setting up a PSoC dedicated IDE is possible. If I have some spare time, I will try to set-up VScode with Cmake + GDB + OpenOCD for use with PSoC. PSoC Creator is written in C# and I already looked into it's source code (using .NET reflector, and yes it's not obfuscated!). It seems to be possible to develop a separate tool for doing the UDB design creation.

Having said that, I still have good faith in Cypress' vision and I believe with Cypress 3.0 they will specially focus on differentiating products to solutions for automotive, industrial and IoT markets. Cypress may take out the fixed-function (SCB) blocks an put a few UDBs in place.

Differentiation guaranteed!:

Wired connectivity to any sensor or bus: CHECK.

Picosecond state machine: CHECK

CAN BUS: CHECK

Extreme flexibility: CHECK

16 channel PWM: CHECK

Cheers!

Rolf

Looking at ModusToolbox video 2, it appears as though Cypress have implemented a much better pin assignment solution as apposed to the dumb method in WICED. However, how are custom components supported in ModusToolbox? The page layout for the component selection appears to be fixed and won't update dynamically as components are added. If this is true, that would be a disaster.

Since I use MacOS and Linux, I was never happy that PSOC creator never supported OSX and Linux, but I am very pleased that ModusToolbox does support the OSX and Linux.

It would be much more helpful if Cypress would layout their development plans for ModusToolbox so that the community can way in on features that are important for a successful development platform.

Regards,

John

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The page layout for the component selection appears to be fixed and won't update dynamically as components are added. If this is true, that would be a disaster.

Hi John.

Unfortunately there's no support (yet?) for UDB components inside Modus which is imho a disaster as well! UDB's are the main differentiator why one choose PSoC over any other CPU (at least for me).

The other (bright!) side of ModusToolbox is that it now becomes possible to use the tools on any other IDE or environment. I recently made a set-up for VS Code and it all runs so incredible smoothly.

Hope Cypress decides to continue on UDB support for PSoC6, even so if it's only on a Windows environment. I guess they could strip out the schematic editor of PSoC Creator fairly easy to make it a standalone editor.

Thanks!

Rolf

Hi Rolf,

Do you have any sample you can share of your VS Code setup?

Thanks,

Paul.

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I am exactly this opinion. I have already posted something like this in the beta phase of MT. Cypress seems to give up its biggest selling point.

But worse: If I read from Wiced Studio, ModusToolbox, MBDE-CLI, MBEDStudio and now also Zerynth Studio. I am a bit confused.

Helmut

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   I've recently ported PSoC5's UDB UART to PSoC6 in PSoC Creator with success!  

In PSoC Creator there's a 'device level Component enable' setting in the Component configuration which is just set to "incompatible" for PSoC6 by default. It took me about one hour to look into the UDB UART component, copied it for use in a new Components folder, changed the setting from "incompatible" to "production" for PSoC6, enabled the "View in catalog" and modified minimum part of the code as includes were missing.

I just don't know why Cypress don't enable the UDB components in PSoC Creator, it's such a value to have it back again!

We finally have the freedom back to route IO’s the way WE want. We can hook up PWMs, UARTs, SPIs, timers and so much stuff again!

Now let's hope Cypress spends just 0.001% of it's resources to enable UDBs for Creator again.  

Dear user_2405011,

that's great. Can you describe this in more detail, so that you can understand it, possibly for USBFS?

Thank you!

Helmut

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USBFS is not a UDB component. You'll need to select a PSoC with USBFS capabilities.

Here I posted how to use UDBs for PSoC6 in Modus: Re: How do I create a custom UDB solution in the Modus toolbox?

Will Cypress be able to share the dotnet source of PSoC Creator's graphical designer? I mean the sources are there, visible if you put the assembly into dotnet reflector     ‍♂️

PaGy_1246781
Level 2
Level 2
5 replies posted 5 questions asked First like received

Add me to the list of people disappointed with Cypress' decision to move away from PSoC Creator toward Modus Toolbox.  I have worked with PSoCs since the early 2000s.  The programmable hardware and design environments (PSoC Designer and PSoC Creator) are what made the PSoC special.  PSoC Creator is a pleasure to use.  So far, using Modus Toolbox has been like pulling teeth.  The fact that it doesn't support UDBs (such an important part of the post-PSoC1 era devices) makes it even less desirable.

What was Cypress thinking?  They had (have) a great design & development environment in PSoC Creator.  Was it really so incompatible with IoT?

Paul

Rolf_Nooteboom
Level 5
Level 5
10 sign-ins 5 solutions authored First solution authored

I made two components for PSoC6 available for the public: I2C component and the UART component (both UDB).

Route the UART or I2C to any IO you like!

https://forum.onethinx.com/t/how-to-use-udb-components-on-psoc6/365

RuPi_283656
Level 4
Level 4
10 sign-ins First solution authored 25 replies posted

Another year goes by and someone new finds out!  Yesterday I installed Modus Toolbox and it took me about an hour to realize that I hate it!  Like someone else said, it was like stepping back 15 years.  Maybe more like 20 years!  Today I am deleting it and going back to Creator, and PSoC5 if necessary.