Simple SimpliciTI

TI's SimpliciTI protocol is not really simple to use for a beginner like me but with help it can be. A few years ago when I got my eZ430-RF2500 dev board I tried to look into SimpliciTI but the code was only available for IAR and not CCE which was what I used. I tried "porting" it - porting in quotes because I really didn't know what I was doing - but after hours of frustration I gave up. Fast forward a few years (a couple days ago) I found Alvaro's excellent blog with an entire section dedicated to the CC2500 radio. Well, I don't have the radio module he is using (which seems pretty cool and cheap in quantity) but I still have the eZ430-RF2500 boards. Since I am still a beginner with micros and TI is even more difficult than say Arduino, I was unable to use Alvaro's great library. So I decided to try and find more info about SimpliciTI. And this time I had more luck.

On the SimpliciTI page, there is a download of a SimpliciTI package for CC2500 radio using CCS for MSP430 (swrc132a.zip). After downloading and installing it, you get a treasure of information: sample apps, documentation and the entire library usable in CCS (I tried 4.2 and 5.3 and they both worked, following different steps though). One of the documents "Sample Application User's Guide.pdf" found in the .\Documents directory is of particular importance since it details step by step how to make it work in either CCS v4 or CCS v5. If only I would have found this a few years ago...

I now have a Talker and a Listener running and talking to each other, as described in the document I just mentioned, section 3.1. Hopefully I will be able to go from here and make something, that won't be as cool as Alvaro's stuff but at least it may be interesting.