Exercise - Transferring a Program to the Microcontroller

<sidebar>Sidebar: Adding Finishing Touches</sidebar> This exercise looks at transferring to the microcontroller, the flowchart 'Lamp1.fcf' which you tested and simulated in the exercise Simulating a Program.
This involves:

• Compiling the program (translating it into a form which the microcontroller can use).
• Moving it to the connected microcontroller.
• Storing it in the microcontroller's memory.

For more details about this part of the process, see Adding Finishing Touches.

Load the Flowcode Flowchart

• Open the flowchart called 'Lamp1.fcf' which you tested in the exercise Simulating a Program.

Specify the chip

• Open the Project Options through the 'Build' menu and then navigate to the 'Choose a Target' tab (Build > Project Options... > Choose a Target)

Make sure you have an appropriate chip selected, if the 'No chip'/'SIM chip' is selected then there is no target chip specified to compile to.

Then make sure that the appropriate target chip is connected and ready to compile to.

Compile the program

• Click on the 'Compile to chip' icon.

The 'Compiler Messages' box appears and shows the progress of the process.

First of all, the program is converted into 'C' language.

This is then translated into another language called 'Assembler'.

Finally, the resulting code is transferred to the microcontroller.

The good news is that all of this happens automatically, without the need for any intervention from you!

What next?

Now you have tested that the program performs on hardware correctly, develop your flowchart further by documenting it for clear interpretation by others and for future expansion purposes as described in the exercise Exercise - Documenting a Flowchart.