ARM Mbed is a powerful embedded framework that supports many modern devices and allows creating complex firmware (like USB devices or Bluetooth LE beacons) using easy high-level C++ API. Although mbed comes with a powerful build system that makes sense of the numerous targets and features, it is optimized for the online compiler, so building the projects offline (and debugging them) could be tricky.

So we decided to make a tool that integrates into the Python-based mbed build system, polls it for supported targets, features and libraries and stores the recovered information in a structured XML file that can be used to create Visual Studio projects for various mbed targets. Continue reading Extracting mbed build settings for offline builds →

Today we are proud to announce full mbed 5.4.2 support in VisualGDB. It comes with a significantly improved integration level compared to the previous beta package:

• Features like Bluetooth LE area can now be easily enabled via the Embedded Frameworks page of VisualGDB Project Properties:
  
• Softdevices and bootloaders for Nordic nRF5x devices are now seamlessly integrated into the build process.
• Various configurable properties (like the default baud rate) are no longer hardcoded and can be conveniently edited via VisualGDB GUI:
• The codebase is updated to the latest 5.4.2 release.
• We have also added an example for Nordic nRF5x UART-over-Bluetooth LE that works out-of-the-box.

You can download the new mbed package via Tools->VisualGDB Package Manager->Updates.