
A short tutorial on how to use the IAR Embedded Workbench 5.3 to program and debug MSP430 microcontrollers on a windows box.The article teaches the reader to create and compile a simple C Project to blink the LED on a launchpad development board from Texas Instruments.The article can also be used with other MSP430 emulators like MSP430 Flash Emulation Tool (MSP-FET).
IAR Embedded Workbench for MSP430 is a commercial integrated development environment developed by IAR Systems. The IDE comes in a paid full version and a code limited trial version.The free version can be downloaded from the IAR website free of charge and supports all the MSP430 derivatives. It is limited to a program size of 4KB.This would sufficient for programming most MSP430G2xxx series that comes with Launchpad development kit.
If you require more program size than 4 KB then you can try Code Composer Studio from Texas Instruments (Free Version -16 KB code limit) or Open source MSPGCC compiler.