MSP430FG4618 Experimenters Board

03/22/2021

Quite some time ago I acquired a couple of these MSP430 development boards.
They sat around in a box because I didn’t have a way to program them.
Until a co-worker pointed me at this: https://www.ti.com/lit/pdf/slaa535 . A way to use an inexpensive MSP430 LaunchPad board as a programmer. I just happened to have a couple of Launchpad boards and after following the simple instructions I was able to get a simple “blink” program loaded onto the board. (Note: Launchpad BSL files download link is provided below. I used the BSLDEMO2.exe program as I was unable to get Scripter.exe to work)

The MSP430FG4618 Experimenters Board has got a bunch of great stuff to play around with on it
The MSP430FG4618 processor has 166K of flash and 8K of RAM, 1 8bit and 2 16bit Timers, a 12 Channel ADC and a true DAC (both 12bit) UART, USART and DMA support.
It can be configured to run at 8MHZ.

The Experimenters board has an LCD, 3 User LEDs, 2 user pushbuttons, a speaker, microphone, and an optically isolated RS232 port. There’s also a capacitive touch sensing area controlled by a second MSP430F2013 processor.
Here's a link to the board's user's guide: https://www.ti.com/lit/pdf/slau213

I’m currently using TI’s Code Composer Studio V8 (CCS V8) to write code for the board.
This is an eclipse based IDE and I’m quite comfortable with it now.

So far I’ve just done some basic experiments with the UART/USART, ADC,DAC, LEDs and the LCD display. (link to the sample project is included below)

UPDATE: I swapped out the Launchpad based BSL Programmer for a re-programmed USBASP board. read about it here: USB-HID BSL Programmer for MSP430FG4618

Description of download links:

MSP430FG4618_UART4.zip Demo project source (CCS V8 )

slaa535a.zip Launchpad Based BSL programmer files.