PSoC 4 Learning Lab

Hands-on lessons and creative embedded projects for the Cypress/Infineon PSoC 4 and the CY8CKIT-042 PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit.

This repository began as a practical journey through the Cypress Academy: PSoC 101 tutorials. It then grew beyond the guided exercises into a collection of original training projects that combine programmable hardware, embedded C and external electronics.

Learn the blocks. Connect the blocks. Build what you imagine.

The lessons introduce one concept at a time. The projects show what happens when GPIO, interrupts, timers, PWM, ADC, CapSense, UART, I2C and SPI stop being isolated peripherals and become parts of a complete system. Once those building blocks are familiar, the practical limit is not the list of examples—it is what you decide to sense, communicate, illuminate or control.

The projects were designed and tested for the CY8CKIT-042. They may be adapted to another PSoC 4 kit, but the target device, component availability, electrical characteristics and pin assignments must be reviewed first.

The repository offers two complementary routes:

1. Guided lessons — learn the platform progressively, from a blinking LED to communication interfaces and low-power modes.
2. Training projects — reuse several lessons at once to build interactive, measurement, display and motion-control applications.

Cypress-PSoC4/
├── Lesson1.cydsn ... Lesson17.cydsn
│   └── Progressive PSoC 101 exercises
├── TrainingProjects/
│   ├── ADC, PWM, UART and CapSense applications
│   ├── LED and 14-segment display control
│   └── Stepper-motor control in three stages
└── PSoC-101.cywrk

There are 19 lesson projects: lessons 1–17 plus alternative versions of lessons 13 and 16. Several exercises deliberately move functionality from the CPU into the PSoC programmable fabric; an almost empty for(;;) loop can therefore be the intended result rather than missing code.

These projects are an important PSoC lesson: not every behavior needs to be executed instruction by instruction by the Cortex-M0. Some data paths and state machines can be assembled directly in configurable hardware.

The TrainingProjects directory turns individual lessons into small systems. Each project can be studied as both an application and a starting point for a new design.

The motor projects form their own incremental tutorial:

Fixed rotation demo
        ↓
UART position and speed control
        ↓
Interrupt-driven, updatable motion

This progression exposes a classic embedded-system design problem. The first controller blocks while completing a movement, so it cannot react promptly to a new command. The final version delegates individual motor steps to a timer/PWM interrupt and leaves the foreground loop available for UART input.

The display project is the broadest integration exercise in the repository. It:

• sends 14-segment bit patterns to a TLC5926 LED driver over SPI;
• translates digits, letters and symbols through a character table;
• receives character commands over UART;
• selects operating modes using CapSense buttons;
• uses PWM events to control display brightness;
• implements breathing, sawtooth, reverse-sawtooth and intermittent effects;
• retains a TODO hook for future LIN-based control.

It illustrates the central idea of this collection: the same components introduced in small lessons can be recombined into a much richer application.

Install PSoC Creator on Windows together with the programming/debugging drivers required by the CY8CKIT-042.

git clone https://github.com/jagumiel/Cypress-PSoC4.git
cd Cypress-PSoC4

Open the required .cyprj file in PSoC Creator. The root PSoC-101.cywrk is a historical workspace saved with PSoC Creator 4.2 and currently references only Lesson13-b; it is not an index of every project.

For example:

Lesson3.cydsn/Lesson3.cyprj
TrainingProjects/ADC-UART.cydsn/ADC-UART.cyprj
TrainingProjects/StepperMotorControl/StepperMotorControl-Interrupt.cydsn/StepperMotorControl-Interrupt.cyprj

A PSoC Creator project is more than its main.c. Review:

• TopDesign — hardware components and their connections;
• Design Wide Resources (.cydwr) — pin assignments, clocks and device resources;
• main.c and local headers — application logic and interrupt handlers;
• component customizers — UART speed, PWM periods, interrupt sources and other parameters.

Do not edit Generated_Source manually; PSoC Creator regenerates it from the schematic and component configuration.

1. Connect the CY8CKIT-042 over USB.
2. Build the selected project.
3. Program the PSoC 4 through the onboard KitProg.
4. For UART projects, open the KitProg USB-UART interface with terminal settings that match the UART component.
5. Compare the observable behavior with the schematic and firmware before modifying the design.

The first lessons mainly use resources available on the Pioneer Kit. The integration projects require additional components.

Never drive a motor or a high-current display directly from a PSoC GPIO. Check voltage levels, current limits, grounding and the external driver's datasheet before connecting hardware.

Try extending the existing projects:

• replace the potentiometer with a light, pressure or temperature sensor;
• add a framed UART protocol with validation and acknowledgements;
• control the RGB LED or display from I2C instead of UART;
• add acceleration and deceleration profiles to the stepper controller;
• wake from deep sleep on a sensor threshold or CapSense event;
• complete the planned LIN command path in the display project;
• combine CapSense, ADC feedback and motor control into a closed-loop interface.

The repository is intentionally a launchpad. A blinking LED teaches an output, a switch teaches an input, and an interrupt teaches responsiveness—but combining them is where a PSoC design becomes your own.

This is an educational and historical PSoC Creator collection rather than a single production-ready firmware package.

• Projects are independent and do not share one unified build.
• Designs target the CY8C4245AXI-483 on the CY8CKIT-042.
• Newer PSoC Creator releases may request component or project updates.
• Some exercises preserve comments, experiments and unfinished ideas from the learning process.
• Generated sources, build logs and compiled output are currently present in parts of the repository.
• Hardware behavior has not been revalidated across other PSoC 4 kits.

The guided exercises were developed while following the Cypress Academy: PSoC 101 video series. Thanks to Cypress Semiconductor—now part of Infineon—for making the original lessons concise, practical and easy to extend.

Some source files are adapted from Cypress example projects and retain their original copyright and license notices.

This repository currently has no top-level license. Until one is added, no general permission to copy, modify or redistribute the author's original code is granted. Third-party and vendor-derived files remain subject to their own notices and license terms.