Project Description
In 2010, I received a free LPC1768 development kit from NXP Microcontrollers. It ended up sitting in my office for 15 years until I rediscovered it while cleaning out my electronics drawer. Curious to see whether it still worked — and whether the build libraries were still available — I opened the box and gave it a try.
My idea was to build an embedded application using an NXP Semiconductors microcontroller to read analog voltage levels from a potentiometer using the onboard ADC. My biggest concern was the availability of compiler tools and libraries due to the age of the microcontroller.
Technical Overview
Steps:
- Rotating the potentiometer generates a variable analog voltage signal.
- The NXP Semiconductors microcontroller samples the analog voltage using its onboard analog-to-digital converter (ADC).
- The ADC converts the analog signal into a corresponding digital value for processing.
- The microcontroller evaluates the sampled voltage level and determines the appropriate LED output state.
- One to three LEDs are illuminated to visually represent the measured voltage range.
Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
Because of the age of the LPC1768 development board and the discontinuation of the Mbed Studio ecosystem that originally supported it, locating compatible libraries and build tools proved to be a significant challenge.
After extensive research and troubleshooting, including the use of GCC-based toolchains and guidance from ChatGPT, I successfully compiled a binary compatible with the NXP Semiconductors LPC1768 microcontroller.