gecko: Contiki-NG for Silicon Labs (using GSDK)

This guide’s aim is to help you with using Contiki-NG for Silicon Labs (using Gecko SDK).

This port supports the efr32mg12p332f1024gl125 opn and the brd4162a and brd4166a boards.

Port Features

The following features have been implemented:

  • Support for the 802.15.4 mode of the radio, including IPv6 using 6LoWPAN

  • Support CSMA and TSCH

  • Contiki-NG system clock and rtimers

  • UART driver

  • Watchdog driver

  • RNG driver seeded from radio

  • LED and Button driver

  • Coffee File System

The port is organized as follows:

  • Silicon Labs CPU drivers are located in the arch/cpu/gecko folder.

  • The Gecko SDK is located in the arch/cpu/gecko/lib/gecko_sdk folder.

    • This will be installed automatically as a git submodule.

  • Silicon Labs boards configuration are located in the arch/platform/gecko/<Board> folder.

    • OPNs’s:

      • efr32mg12p332f1024gl125

    • Boards:

      • brd4162a

      • brd4166a

Prerequisites and Setup

In order to compile need:

  • An ARM compatible toolchain

    • The toolchain used to build Contiki-NG is arm-gcc, also used by other arm-based Contiki-NG ports.

    • If you use the docker image or the vagrant image, this will be pre-installed for you. Otherwise, depending on your system, please follow the respective installation instructions (native Linux / native macOS).

  • GNU make

  • Simplicity Commander for programming

  • Git LFS

    • The Gecko SDK includes some pre-compiled libraries, Rail Libary, needed for the radio driver. These libraries are checked in using Git LFS to improve the checkout performance.

Getting Started

Once all tools are installed it is recommended to start by compiling and flashing examples/hello-world application. This allows to verify that toolchain setup is correct.

To compile the example, go to examples/hello-world and execute:

make TARGET=gecko

If the compilation is completed without errors flash the board:

make TARGET=gecko hello-world.upload

Examples

This target supports all the common IPv6 examples available under the examples/ folder.

Compilation Options

The Contiki-NG TARGET name for this port is gecko, so in order to compile an application you need to invoke GNU make as follows:

make TARGET=gecko

In addition to this port supports the following variables which can be set on the compilation command line:

  • DEVICE_SERIAL_NO=<serial number>
    Allows to choose a particular WSTK by its serial number (available on the display of the WSTK). This is useful if you have more than one board connected to your PC and wish to flash a particular device using the .upload target.

  • DEVICE_IP_ADDRESS=<ip address>
    Allows to choose a particular DK by its ip address (available on the display of the WSTK). This is useful if you have more than one board connected to your network and wish to flash a particular device using the .upload target.

  • BOARD={brd4162a/brd4166a} Allows to specify if the which board is used. The default board is brd4162a

Support

For bug reports or/and suggestions please open a github issue.

License

All files in the port are under BSD license. The Gecko SDK and auto generated files are licensed on a separate terms.

Resources