Research launchpad booster pack format

[adkaster]

Research launchpad booster pack format

[agdespopoulos]

TI - Build Your Own BoosterPack
MSP432 dev board user's guide, specific pinout on page 16

PCB Templates (Kicad, Altium, EAGLE, etc)

[agdespopoulos]

Power

Supply 3v3 and GND to J6. Almost definitely can supply 3v3 to J1 (normal boosterpack header), they're just tied together. (MSP324 launchpad user's guide, page 13)

Can we supply 5v to J1? I don't think so. The debug power domain on the MSP432 launchpad has a regulator to convert from 5v to 3v3, but its probably better to keep that entire side of the board powered down.

[ADKaster]

From what I saw browsing the user's guide, it seemed like everything on the debug side of the board is optional. We don't need their energy trace technology, we don't need their debug chip if we have our own programmer/debugger/ICE dongle, and we don't need their USB header if we provide our own. Though it would probably be easiest to keep using their USB header.

[agdespopoulos]

For development yes. For powering in flight/normal use, we should try to power through the boosterpack headers (since we're using them anyway). If we use 3v3, we can just power the MSP432 side and completely ignore the debug side. Using 5v, the debug side has to regulate that down to 3v3, which also turns on all the stuff on that side, which shouldn't do anything, but its probably easier to just not power it up at all.

[ADKaster]

Definitely fair, no point using the debugger when we're not going to be debugging. External power supply was one of the things we wanted to put on a board with an MCU anyway. We should make sure to disable the debug UART for flight software though. Trying to use those pins when they're not connected to a PC isn't going to help anyone.

[agdespopoulos]

Just supplying 3v3.