Welcome to the official MIP Software Development Kit.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, please let us know! MicroStrain Support Portal

• Send commands using a single function

• Suitable for bare-metal microcontrollers

  • Minimal code size and memory footprint
  • No dynamic memory allocation
  • No dependence on any RTOS or threading

• Simple to interface with existing projects

  • FindMip.cmake is included for CMake-based projects

• It can be used to parse offline binary files

• C++ API for safety, flexibility, and convenience.

• C API for those who can't use C++

• Advanced Features

  • MIP packet creation
  • MIP packet parsing and field iteration
  • Data field deserialization

You'll need to enable at least one of the communications interfaces in the CMake configuration to use the examples.

The examples take two parameters for the device connection:

• For a serial connection: Port and baudrate. Port must start with /dev/ on Linux or COM on Windows.
• For a TCP connection: Hostname and port. Hostname can be either a hostname like localhost or an IPv4 address.

Documentation for all released versions can be found here.

The C++ API is implemented on top of the C API to provide additional features:

• Object-oriented interfaces
• Improved type safety and sanity checking
• Better clarity / reduced verbosity (e.g. with using namespace mip)

The C++ API uses TitleCase for types and camelCase for functions and variables, while the C api uses snake_case naming for everything. This makes it easy to tell which is being used when looking at the examples.

The C API can be accessed directly from C++ via the mip::C namespace.

MIP devices return an ack/nack field in response to commands to allow the user to determine if the command was successfully executed. These fields contain a "reply code" which is defined by the MIP protocol. This library additionally defines several "status codes" for situations where an ack/nack field is not applicable (i.e. if the device doesn't respond to the command, if the command couldn't be transmitted, etc).

See the documentation page for Command Results for details.

In order to implement command timeouts and provide time of arrival information, this library requires applications to provide the time of received data. The time must be provided as an unsigned integral value with a reasonable precision, typically milliseconds since program startup. By default the timestamp type is set to uint64_t, but some embedded applications may wish to change this to uint32_t via the MICROSTRAIN_TIMESTAMP_TYPE define. Note that wraparound is permissible if the wraparound period is longer than twice the longest timeout used by the application.

See the documentation page for Timestamps.

Two connection types are provided with the MIP SDK to make it easy to run the examples on both Windows and Linux systems.

A basic serial port interface is provided in C and C++ for Linux, Mac, and Windows. These can be modified for other platforms by the user. The serial port connection will be used in most cases, when the MIP device is connected via a serial or USB cable (the USB connection acts like a virtual serial port).

Enable it in the CMake configuration with -DMICROSTRAIN_ENABLE_SERIAL=1.

The TCP client connection allows you to connect to a MIP device remotely. The MIP device must be connected via the normal serial or USB cable to a computer system running a TCP server which forwards data between the serial port and TCP clients.

Enable it in the CMake configuration with -DMICROSTRAIN_ENABLE_TCP=1.

• A working C compiler
  • C11 or later required
  • Define MICROSTRAIN_ENABLE_CPP=OFF if you don't want to use any C++. Note that some features are only available in C++.
• A working C++ compiler, if using any C++ features
  • C++14 or later is required.
  • C++20 or later for metadata and associated examples
• CMake version 3.10 or later (technically this is optional, see below)
• Doxygen, if building documentation

The following options may be specified when configuring the build with CMake (e.g. cmake .. -DOPTION=VALUE):

1. Create the build directory (e.g. mkdir build).
2. In the build directory, run cmake .. <options>
   • Replace <options> with your configuration options, such as -DMICROSTRAIN_ENABLE_SERIAL=1.
   • You can use cmake-gui .. instead if you'd prefer to use the GUI tool (and have it installed).
   • An alternative generator may be used, such as ninja, code blocks, etc. by specifying -G <generator>
3. Invoke cmake --build . in the build directory
4. (Optional, if MICROSTRAIN_BUILD_PACKAGE was enabled) Run cmake --build . --target package to build the packages.

If your target platform doesn't support CMake, you can build the project without it. To do so, include all the necessary files and define a few options.

• All source files in src/c/microstrain/common, except logging.c if logging is disabled
• Source files in src/c/microstrain/connections for your required connection types
• All source files in src/c/mip and src/c/mip/utils
• All source files in src/c/mip/definitions (or at least all the required descriptor sets)

• The C files indicated above, except those in definitions (they can be added too but aren't required)
• Source files in src/cpp/microstrain/connections for your required connection types
• All source files in src/cpp/microstrain
• All source files in src/cpp/mip/definitions (or at least the required descriptor sets)
• Source files in src/cpp/mip/extras as needed for your project
• Source files in src/cpp/mip/metadata if using metadata

Pass these to your compiler as appropriate, e.g. arm-none-eabi-gcc -DMICROSTRAIN_TIMESTAMP_TYPE=uint32_t -DMICROSTRAIN_ENABLE_LOGGING=0

These defines must be set when building the MIP SDK sources and for any code that includes MIP SDK headers.

These options affect the compiled code interface and sizes of various structs. They MUST be consistent between compiling the MIP SDK and any other code which includes headers from the MIP SDK. (If you change them after building, make sure everything gets rebuilt properly. Normally CMake takes care of this for you).

• suppress_ack=true is not supported.
• The commanded BIT, device settings, and capture gyro bias commands can time out unless the timeout is increased.

See the documentation page for Known Issues.